Specifics of the Atkins Diet Menu

It sometimes takes a closer look at the Atkins diet menu to understand exactly what it would be like to be on such a diet.  There are so many things about the Atkins diet that only this kind of evaluation can shed enough light on this unique diet.  For example, you would start your day with a fried egg and some bacon. To drink, you would have decaffeinated coffee with a single cream.

For lunch on the Atkins diet menu, you would have a chicken breast, topped with melted mozzarella cheese.  This would be mixed in with mixed lettuce leaves tossed with olive oil.  Dinner would include 8 ounces of pan-fried steak along with spinach topped with sour cream.  As a snack, you can have two slices of ham.

On day two of the Atkins diet plan, you start with a mock Danish made with cream cheese, an egg, Splenda and Atkins hot cereal.  You also get four slices of bacon and decaffeinated coffee along with one cream.  For lunch, you get to eat as many pork rinds as you want, dipped in a dip made of tuna, pickles and cream cheese.  In addition, you can have a cup of salad greens and a tablespoon of dressing.  Dinner gives you spaghetti squash with meat sauce, parmesan cheese and two cups of salad with two tablespoons of dressing.   

Let’s look at the first Atkins diet menu.  It contains 1245 calories, 75 grams fat, 129 grams of protein, 6 grams of carbohydrates and 4 grams of fiber in single day.  In looking at the diet, it is reasonably low in calories so you would lose weight on it.  It contains far more fat than is recommended by the American Heart Association.  Healthy guidelines recommend that no more than one third calories come from fat.  In this day, 54 percent of the day’s diet comes from fat.

As opposed to the Atkins diet plan, the fiber content recommended is around 18 grams per day.  This diet allows for only 4 grams per day, which can put a person at risk for colon cancer.  The American Cancer Society does not endorse this particular kind of diet.

The second day of the Atkins diet menu noted above is even worse.  Imagine eating as many pork rinds as you want and still losing weight.  The fat content is much above recommended.  The trick with the Atkins diet isn’t so much with the calories counted or the amount of food eaten but with the types of food eaten. 

The Atkins diet menu supports the intake of protein and fats to the exclusion of carbohydrates.  The idea is that, without carbohydrates to eat as fuel, the body will burn its own fat for fuel and you’ll lose body fat.  It fails to mention anywhere in the diet plan that one is also eating a lot of fat.  Why isn’t that fat being used for fuel instead of body fat?

The Atkins diet menu has been found to result in weight loss if used over the short term.  Only short term studies have been done on this diet.  It isn’t known if there are long term complications of colon cancer, heart disease, and other vessel disease.  Many experts feel that the long term use of this type of diet is unhealthy and indicate that it should be avoided for anything other than a diet of a few weeks duration.