Atkins Diet Plan and Food Guide

With all the hype surrounding low carb diets, it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between good carbs and bad carbs. Some people will assume that all carbs are bad because of the bad rap they’ve gotten over the years, but that couldn’t be farther form truth. There are some carbs out there that are actually beneficial to your health and I’m going to point them out in this article.

When people are referring to bad carbs, they’re usually talking about refined carbohydrates. Refined carbs come from foods that have been refined trough machinery so they could have a finer texture and better taste. These foods have been stripped of all their nutrients and are not as good for you as unrefined carbs.

A prime example of a bad carb is white flour. Any food that contains white flour falls into the bad carb category. White sugar and white rice are also prime examples of bad carbs. Anything that contains high fructose syrup is also considered as bad carbs. Anything that contains any form of starch is also very bad for you if you’re on a low carb diet. Corn starch and modified food starch should be avoided at any costs.

Now, let’s talk about good carbs. It’s very important to know that your body needs certain amount of carbohydrates to function properly. If you don’t eat enough carbs, you might experience fatigue, poor mental performance and muscle aches.

Everything that is made of whole wheat is considered good carbs. These are called complex carbs and they take a lot more time to be processed by your body. Refined carbs are absorbed very fast and cause sudden spikes in your blood sugar level. This is very bad for you if you’re on a diet because irregular blood sugar levels will make losing weight harder for you.

Anything that is made of whole grains is a source of complex carbs. Go for whole wheat cereals instead of flakes or puffs. Cereals that are made of puffs or flakes are usually heavily transformed and rarely contain whole grains. Brown rice, oatmeal, legumes and raw fruits are all great sources of good carbs, so make sure that you get as much of these foods possible into your diet.

So there you have it! Now that you know the difference between good carbs and bad carbs, you’ll be able to make sounder decisions when dieting. Just remember to stay away from foods that are made of refined flour and sugar and stick with whole grains and raw fruits as your main source of carbohydrates and you should be alright.

With the low carb mania prevalent among the dieters, Atkins diet made a comeback in the last decade. Originally introduced in the 1970s, it became extremely popular after its re-introduction by the author. Nearly 25 million Americans have now taken to the new diet plan shelving the fat free diets that were so popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Atkins plan has made inroads in the current decades as well. While doubts were raised in many quarters about the effectiveness of the diet plan, it has proved to be quite useful over the years.

Safety and Effectiveness
A couple of considerations for physicians, dietitians and dieters are the safety and effectiveness of any diet plan they adopt. It is therefore essential for all them to learn how the Atkins diet really works. However, it can be said without any reservation that it has proved to be safe and effective and has passed the acid tests to which it was put by scientists all around the world with aplomb.

Atkins Diet Components
The low carb diet plan has the following components:
• No more than 20 grams of carbohydrate per day during the induction period of first two weeks.
• In such periods the diet is made of unlimited meat, poultry, eggs, cheese, bacon, sausage, butter, oil, seafood, and margarine.
• Carbohydrate limitation is confined to carbohydrate components in sauce, dressings, cheese and lettuce greens or other green vegetables per day.
• No milk, fruit, cereals, grains, breads, or any vegetable that has high glycemic index are allowed during the first two weeks.
• Vegetables like potatoes, carrots, corns, and peas are also prohibited.
• Extent of carbohydrate in diet can be enhanced to 25 grams after two weeks period and 5 more grams can be added on every subsequent week.
• Even in the long run the total amount of carbohydrate in the diet should not go beyond the 40-90 grams range.

Carbohydrate Draught
In fact the Atkins diet is based purely on the thesis of carbohydrate draught. Amount of 90 grams of carbohydrate a day is also on the lower side compared to the recommendations of dieticians and physicians. While there are other diet plans such as the Mediterranean, Jillian, and South Beach diet plans, this one is the topper so far as low carb diet is concerned.

Carbohydrate Misnomers
Some of the misconceptions that is quite widespread is that higher quantum of carbohydrate will lead to obesity and illness. This concept is also the basis of all low carb diet plans such as the Atkins diet. However epidemiological studies all over the world have proved it to be otherwise. For instance; the people of Japan use high carb diets with a lot of fish and all of them do not become obese or fatty. Perhaps the reason is that in this way they also get a lot of protective omega-3 fatty acids.

But that is one of the few exceptions and the common rule continues to be that low carb diets usually help fat and weight loss.