back-up position and convert our body to using it as a primary fuel source, the result is an extremely efficient weight loss and weight maintenance program. This switch occurs when only an insignificant amount of carbohydrates, our body ' s primary fuel, is available. And it ' s an easy switch to control, because very little glycogen( made from carbohydrate) is stored in our bodies; if we eat fewer carbs, we almost immediately trip the switch.
The Atkins Nutritional Approach can positively impact the lives of people facing the risk factors associated with diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension. It can also alleviate gastrointestinal problems, and certain allergies, chronic pain and immune system weaknesses.
In my clinical practice we treat individuals with optimized diets and vitanutrients. Only a small percentage of patients come to us with weight problems alone. Usually nutritional solutions make the difference that medication alone cannot accomplish.
There is a close relationship between the first boast and the second. Making proper nutritional choices is the largest single component of retaining or restoring good health.
My goal is to make you become a healthy and happy person and to show you how to stay that way. I will certainly also show you how to lose weight and keep it off forever.
Changing Your Mind Set
Have you bought into the idea that to lose weight and feel good you have to adopt a low-fat diet? If so, the principles and approach I ' m about to outline for you might just seem counterintuitive. They certainly do to those who criticize them. But in the ten years since this book was first published, new scientific research has been conducted and published that shows that a controlled carbohydrate nutritional approach is better for you-and for your body-than a lowfat, high-carbohydrate nutritional approach.
But let ' s cut to the chase. Here are three questions you should be asking yourself right about now:
1. Is this safe? 2. Is this nutritionally sound? 3. Will I keep the weight off once I lose it?
I take these questions, and the misinformation that surrounds the answers, so seriously that I ' ve devoted an entire chapter( Chapter 9) to the myths and misconceptions that have been spread about controlled carbohydrate nutrition. But allow me to tip my hand:
• Safe? Yes, and there is plenty of hard science to back that up. In fact, a number of studies conducted in the past two years( which we will refer to in future chap ters) show that a controlled carbohydrate nutritional approach helps improve the clinical parameters affecting heart disease and other illnesses while not causing harm to your liver, kidneys or bone structure.
• Nutritionally sound? Yes, a person following the typical menu and eating foods containing just 20 grams of carbohydrates meets or exceeds the daily recommended allowance of most vitamins and minerals. As you move through the phases of Atkins, you get even more. And that ' s not according to me, but to analysis using the leading
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