Fad diets?

The Atkins diet is the most famous low-carb weight loss diet in the world.

Created by cardiologist Robert Atkins in the early 1970s, the Atkins diet claims to produce rapid weight loss without hunger.

It consists of four stages, including an initial two-week Induction Phase that restricts carbs to 20 grams per day, while allowing unlimited amounts of protein and fat.

During this phase, your body begins converting fat into compounds called ketones and switches to using these as its main source of energy.

After this, the Atkins diet asks its followers to gradually add back their carbs in 5-gram increments in order to determine their “critical carbohydrate levels” for losing weight and maintaining the loss.

Studies that compared the Atkins diet to other diets have shown it to be at least as effective and frequently more effective for weight loss (1, 2, 3, 4).

In the famous A TO Z study, 311 overweight women followed the Atkins diet, the low-fat Ornish diet, the LEARN diet or the Zone diet for one year. The Atkins group lost more weight than any other group (4).

Other controlled studies have shown similar results with low-carb diets based on Atkins principles, along with improvements in heart disease risk factors (5, 6, 7, 8).

You can read all about the Atkins diet here.