Theory of action
- The Atkins diet claims that a metabolic advantage of 950 calories per day would be burned. As fat requires more calories to burn which will make your body adjust and burn more of the stored fat in your body as a new source of energy instead of carbs,which will make you lose weight and sustain higher consistent energy levels throughout the day . In other words it is designed to “flip the body’s metabolic switch” .
- The increased protein content reduces your appetite faster, which makes you consume fewer calories than you normally would if you were eating carbs.
- It limits the postprandial spikes of blood sugar and insulin that cause sudden hunger and cravings and resultsin weight gain and over-eating.
- As carbs are the major stimulus for insulin release andthe inhibition of fat breakdown and promotion of fat storage that makes weight loss even harder. That is why stopping carbs can lead to lower insulin levels and increasing fat oxidation for energy use instead of carbs with subsequently less fat synthesis and total fat reduction that ultimately causes weight loss.
- Another factor is that low-carbs food choices are more limited,which is what makes dietary adherence have forced caloric restrictions.
- Finally,the goal is nutritional ketosis in which the liver forms ketones (acetoacetate ACAC and hydroxybutyrate BOHB) that enables the use of fatty acids from adipose tissue as a source of energy ketone levels don’t exceed 3 mmol/L unlike ketoacidosis which is a pathological increase in body ketones and a complication of uncontrolled type-1 diabetes mellitus in which ketone level exceeds 10 mmol/L.
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