Atkins Versus Ketogenic Diet – Your Ultimate Guide

If you’re interested in trying either the Atkins or ketogenic diet, then you may be curious to learn more about what the actual differences between the two are, and which one is the safest and best for your overall health and fitness-related goals.

With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at what these two diets are all about and whether they are likely to help you.

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The Ketogenic Diet

First of all, the ketogenic diet is a form of high-fat, low-carb diet that still provide you with moderate levels of protein, and it primarily aims to force your body into burning its own body fat, rather than using carbohydrates as it normally would if they are present in your everyday diet.

The technique works due to the fact that your body needs carbohydrates to break down into glucose. If carbs aren’t present in your diet, then it will break down your body fat in order to produce ketones which can then be transported around your body to fuel your brain and keep you functioning optimally.

This process is primarily achieved due to the liver’s unique ability to convert body fat into fatty acids, and then into ketones.

The Atkins Diet

Now, the Atkins diet is a low carbohydrate eating system that was developed way back in the 1960s by a man known as Robert C Atkins.

The diet has certainly had some bad rap over the years, but in general, it is a relatively safe and healthy way of eating, just as long as the specific rules are followed.

So, what are these rules? Simply put, the first stage of Atkins involves eating a very low amount of carbs each day, somewhere in the region of 20 g, primarily sourced through healthy vegetables.

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As time passes by, you can gradually increase the number of carbohydrates in your diet to around 50 g a day, but without leaning too heavily on the use of white flour, sugar, and other refined carbs which tend to spike insulin levels and trigger fat gain.

One of the great advantages that the Atkins diet offers is the fact that it doesn’t require you to count your calories or focus too much on your portion sizes.

The simple idea is to track the number of carbs you consume, and by keeping this relatively low, you are able to successfully lose weight using a four-stage process.

Which Diet is Best?

So now that you have a better idea of what the ketogenic and Atkins diets are, how can you tell which one is best for you, and are they both so similar to each other that there’s barely any difference?

Well, the ketogenic diet is actually a much older diet, being discovered way back in 1924, and it was initially designed to treat epilepsy.

However, many people have found that it is successful for managing weight as well, and it’s often the diet of choice for competitive bodybuilders who are looking to achieve very low levels of body fat while still maintaining high muscle mass.

The benefits of the ketogenic diet are clear in that they give you excellent blood sugar stabilization, encourage fat burning, and they can even help you to improve your brain health and generally feel better on a day-to-day basis.

The Atkins diet claims to give similar results, and it’s perhaps more widely used due to the fact that it is easier to follow and uses very simple rules to help keep you on track without having to do too much analysis of your diet.

Furthermore, there are a few other differences, such as the fact that the Atkins diet lets you have unlimited fat, whereas the ketogenic diet places some restrictions on this.

Additionally, the Atkins diet lets you have unlimited protein, whereas the ketogenic diet also gives you limits in this regard as well, so it is harder to follow, but it gives you more structure and perhaps better results, depending on what your goals are.

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