About the Atkins Diet

The Atkins Diet remains one of the most popular diet programs among people in the health and fitness communities. While everyday dieters are often intimidated by the advanced health concepts behind this plan, it is nevertheless one of the most effective regimes for short-term weight loss. Learn more about the Atkins Diet before getting started, and read about its history, logic and structure.

History of the Atkins Diet

The Atkins Diet gets its name from its creator, cardiologist Robert Atkins. While the diet saw a huge boom in use and attention in the last decade, it was actually first introduced by Atkins all the way back in the 1960s, when it was originally called the "Vogue Diet." Atkins borrowed many of the principles of this diet from the fitness philosophy of Alfred Pennington, whose own diet Atkins himself successfully followed.

The logic behind the Atkins Diet

The Atkins Diet advises users to cut dramatically back on carbohydrates. Since a lack of carbs in the body prevents the triggering of the insulin response, the body goes into emergency mode, burning stored fats. This diet offers fast and dramatic short-term results for many people, but does not and cannot offer the same benefits to dieters that already have a low body fat percentage.

Four phases of the Atkins Diet

The Atkins plan is broken down into four phases: induction, ongoing maintenance, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance. As noted earlier, the diet produces very dramatic early results thanks to the induction phase. Hanging on to those results, though, requires a strict adherence to the prescribed diet through the other three phases, which are designed to maintain and optimize weight loss over a lifetime.

The Atkins Diet has remained popular for nearly 50 years despite some very public criticism. Find out more about the logic behind this program, and decide for yourself if it is right for you.