The Atkins Nutritional Approach or, as most of us more commonly know it, the Atkins Diet, is something that most people have heard of today. The Atkins Diet is so popular today that many tout it is as being responsible for the huge surge of low-carb and no-carb diets that have exploded onto the market today. But even though it may have just been in recent years that the Atkins Diet has become so wildly popular, the diet or nutritional approach has been around for decades.

The History of the Atkins Diet

The Atkins Diet was originally first created by Dr. Robert Atkins. After reading a research paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association, written by Gordon Azar and Walter Lyons Bloom, he was inspired to use the research to further his own personal issues with weight. That research was a stepping board for the research that Robert Atkins would prove and discover. And knowing that other people could benefit from this research too, Robert Atkins published his first book, Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution in 1972. This is the book that is still the foundation for the diet today, although Dr. Atkins did release an updated version called Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, which is mostly used by dieters today.

How the Diet Works

The actual process of the Atkins Diet can be quite long and involved. And in fact, if you’re going to remain true to the diet, it’s a lifelong commitment that requires a total lifestyle change and change in eating habits. The diet’s main goal is to severely limit the amount of carbohydrates that are consumed and to replace it with a high amount of protein, with some fats and sugars. There are four phases in total to the diet and each phase takes a certain amount of time and requires the dieter to eat different things from different food groups, although here is no specific menu.

Although the Atkins Diet may have revolutionized the way people think about food, it does have its critics. For the most part however, the Atkins Diet has been found to be one that is quite safe and that allows a person to lose a significant amount of weight, especially in the beginning phases of the diet.