The Atkins Nutritional Principles
Four principles form the core of the Atkins Nutritional Approach and are supported by a solid foundation of medical and nutritional scientific research.
1. You will lose weight. It’s hard not to. Both men and women who follow the Atkins approach to weight loss readily take off pounds and inches. For the small numbers who have a truly hard-core metabolic resistance to weight loss, there are ways to overcome the barriers that prevent a successful outcome. Optimizing body weight is a valuable element of any health-oriented program because, by and large, being significantly overweight is an indicator of health problems, either now or in the future. When you've pared pounds, you'll see benefits flow in to take their place and they'll be more than merely cosmetic.
2 You will maintain your weight loss. This is where the Atkins Nutritional Approach leaves most other weight-control programs in the dust. Almost every experienced dieter has embarked on a weight-loss program, worked hard at it, lost a lot of pounds and gained them all back in a few months or perhaps a year. This is usually due to the expected consequence of low-fat, low-calorie diets: hunger. Although many people can tolerate hunger for a while, very few can tolerate it for a lifetime. Deprivation is no fun. Once the biological gap between hunger and fulfillment grows too large, the rebound can be rapid, as well as heartbreaking and humiliating. But that’s the problem with diets that restrict quantities. The Atkins program refuses to accept hunger as a way of life. People who do Atkins gradually find their effective individual level of carbohydrate intake, the tool that allows them to maintain a healthy weight for a lifetime.
