Apeco Health and Fitness

One of the more popular weight loss plans for a while was the Atkins diet, also known as “low carb” or “no carb”. It was named after Dr. Robert Atkins who founded the diet under the premise that eating low or no carbs forces the body to burn off fat to function, and therefore you get skinny. Sounds good right?

The way it works is that when you don’t feed your body sugar it goes in to a process known as ketosis which makes the body burn stored fat (slow burning fuel) instead of sugar (fast burning fuel). The problem is that you need to get the sugar (aka glucose) out of your system before your body triggers ketosis.

Well, it does have its drawbacks. You know like you can’t eat bread, cereal, rice, sugar, milk, fruit, even carrots on the diet for as long as you’re doing this or the whole thing fails. Sounds super right?

Ketosis is also VERY sensitive, so if you are on the diet for a week or two, and break down and have a slice of bread with your friends at a party later that day it can snap your body out of it. As you can imagine I’m not a big fan of these all or nothing diets because at some point even the most disciplined professional athlete will fail on their diet and if they will fail, trust me you will fail at least once too.

A lot of people got sucked in to the low carb plans because they were promised that they could eat as much bacon cheeseburgers as they want, as long as they don’t eat the bun. It’s cool at first, but trust me after a while you never want to see a block of cheese or eat an egg again. It becomes very gross and it’s obviously unsustainable for the rest of your life.

There are tons of “helpful” products that the diet industry pumps out to take advantage of low carb dieters. Fake chocolate or peanut butter bars, shakes and other gross processed foods make for a quick solution, except that half of them are filled with nothing but chemicals and food coloring. Seriously if you need convenience and pre-packaging at least try Medifast that actually works.

So if you’re thinking about trying Atkins, do yourself a favor and try to lose weight the natural way first. Atkins sucks, trust me it does. It works for a little while and then you gain it all back when you start eating bread and cookies again (and you will at some point) because your body shifts back to normal. You’ll spend weeks eating gross food that’s not really good for you and you’ll be back at square one. Save yourself the frustration ok?