Atkins Diet

The Atkins diet, also known as the Atkins nutritional approach, is a low-carbohydrate diet promoted by Robert Atkins and inspired by a research paper he read in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The paper entitled "Weight Reduction" was published by Alfred W. Pennington in 1958.

The Atkins diet is classified as a fad diet. There is only weak evidence supporting its effectiveness in helping achieve sustainable weight loss.

There is only weak evidence that the Atkins diet is effective in helping people achieve short-term weight loss, or that it is better than not dieting at all in the longer term. One review found that the Atkins diet led to 0.1% to 2.9% more weight loss at one year compared to a control group which received behavioural counselling.

Because of substantial controversy regarding the Atkins diet and even disagreements in interpreting the results of specific studies it is difficult to objectively summarize the research in a way that reflects scientific consensus. Although there has been some research done throughout the twentieth century, most directly relevant scientific studies, both those that directly analyze the Atkins Diet and those that analyze similar diets, have occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s and, as such, are relatively new. Researchers and other experts have published articles and studies that run the gamut from promoting the safety and efficacy of the diet, to questioning its long-term validity, to outright condemning it as dangerous. A significant early criticism of the Atkins Diet was that there were no studies that evaluated the effects of Atkins beyond a few months. However, studies began emerging in the mid-to-late-2000s which evaluate low-carbohydrate diets over much longer periods, controlled studies as long as two years and survey studies as long as two decades.

There is some evidence that adults with epilepsy may benefit from therapeutic ketogenic diets, and that a less strict regimen, such as a modified Atkins diet, is similarly effective.

The Atkins diet is a kind of low-carbohydrate fad diet.

The diet involves limited consumption of carbohydrates to switch the body's metabolism from metabolizing glucose as energy over to converting stored body fat to energy. This process, called ketosis, begins when insulin levels are low; in normal humans, insulin is lowest when blood glucose levels are low (mostly before eating). Reduced insulin levels induce lipolysis, which consumes fat to produce ketone bodies. On the other hand, caloric carbohydrates (for example, glucose or starch, the latter made of chains of glucose) affect the body by increasing blood sugar after consumption.

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