The Atkins Diet seemed to take the country by storm a few years ago. There was no doubt that it worked for a lot of people, but there were also a lot of questions about whether it was a good diet or not. After all, losing weight is not the only measure of how good a weight loss plan is. Sure, that is the main reason why people go on a diet, but what if that diet increases your risk of other diseases? Would it be worth it?
As mentioned, a lot of people were able to drop extra pounds, and they were able to eat a lot of their favorite foods at the same time. For the record, the Atkins Diet is a low-carb diet and people on it can typically eat all the meat, fish and eggs that they want. So, this would definitely count as a positive. But some people also complained of muscle soreness, and some medical researchers were concerned about too much saturated fat and cholesterol leading to heart disease. Another downside was the extreme cravings for carbohydrates, often leading to binges that would reverse any positive effects gained up to that point.
The funny thing is that both the negatives and positives are the result of how the diet works. What happens is that the body doesn’t get as many carbohydrates as it’s accustomed to. Carbs are a form of sugar, and they provide fast fuel for the body. The body will get that fuel from one source or another, which may or may not be a good thing.
So, if the body can’t get its fuel from carbohydrates while on the Atkins Diet, it will ideally start to burn stored fat to get the energy it needs. When this happens people get the positive effects of the diet plan. However, some people’s bodies will turn to lean muscle tissue for fuel, and that’s when the soreness and other negative effects kick in.
There is some debate as to what causes the negative scenario. Perhaps it’s because those people’s bodies are just programmed to burn muscle first. The other possibility is that these people cheated “just a little” on their diet, and had more carbs than they should have. While they may feel good for a short while because they satisfied their craving for carbs, they will do more harm in the long run because the body will then not be reprogrammed properly and will burn muscle tissue first.
But what about the concern over things like heart disease? The jury is still out, and people who favor the Atkins Diet say there is no such problem when the program is followed. But for the sake of argument, let’s say the odds of heart disease do go up. Then it becomes a question of how overweight you are and what risk that poses, versus the potential risk of other diseases from the diet. In other words it becomes a matter of playing the odds, and even in the worst case, the Atkins Diet may be a good choice.