What Is The Difference Between Keto Diet And Atkins Diet?

Keto and Atkins are low-carb diets that limit your intake of carbohydrates. It mainly emphasizes on food materials that are high in protein and nutrients.

The Keto and Atkins diet has varying restrictions on the amount of carbohydrates.

The Difference Between Keto And Atkins

Generally people follow these diets to lose weight and they may have many health benefits such as reducing the risk of heart diseases and type 2 diabetes.

Let’s see what are the differences between keto and atkins.

What is a keto diet?

It’s a low carb diet for getting more calories from protein and fat. The ketogenic diet is a short term diet that focuses on weight loss.

This diet forces the body to burn its fat stores and not carbohydrates.Keto diet has both mental health and physical health benefits. It’s not just restricting carbohydrates.

Apart from that, a holistic view of life is required. A ketogenic diet also has benefits against diabetes, cancer, epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. The reduction in carb intake puts your body into a state known as ketosis.

At this stage, your body becomes efficient at burning fat for energy requirements. There are several versions of the keto diet. The standard version is the most recommended one.

This high fat diet has many similarities with Atkins diet. This significant reduction in intake of carb puts your body into a metabolic state known as ketosis.

This state makes your body incredibly efficient to burn fat for energy instead of carb. This also helps to turn fat deposited in the liver into ketones, which supplies energy for the brain.

Several versions of ketogenic diet are:

• Standard ketogenic diet: This is the most recommended ketogenic diet and it is a very low carb and high fat diet. It includes 70% fat, 20% protein, and 10% carb.

• Cyclical ketogenic diet: This diet includes 5 ketogenic days followed by 2 high carb days.

• Targeted ketogenic diet: This diet includes more carbs than other versions but you have to do some workouts.

• High protein ketogenic diet: This is the same as that of the standard version of ketogenic diet but includes more protein.

Now you may have a doubt, what is ketosis?

Actually ketosis is a metabolic state of your body. in this state your body burns fat for energy. So by reducing the intake of carb, your body burns out all the excess fat in your body for fuel and thus it enhances weight loss.

Here are some of the foods that you must eliminate while following a ketogenic diet. They are:

• Sugary foods
• Wheat-based products or grains
• Starches, rice
• Beans
• Root vegetables
• Sauces
• Processed foods
• Alcohol
• Puddings, sweeteners, syrups

Here is a list of foods that you can eat while following the keto diet.

• Red meat
• Salmon and other fatty fish
• Whole eggs
• Heavy cream
• Cheese
• Nuts
• Avocados
• Berries
• Healthy oils

What is an Atkins diet?

Similar to keto diet, Atkins diet is also a low-carb diet recommended mainly for weight loss. It is very effective for weight loss and has many other health benefits too.

It leads to greater improvement in blood sugar, good HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, etc. The reduction in carb and increased protein intake may help you to reduce appetite. T

here are four phases for the Atkins diet. They are:

Phase 1 : Induction

This is the first phase of the Atkins diet and in this phase you have to consume under 20 grams of carbs per day for around 2 weeks.

Phase 2: Balancing

In the second phase, you can add more nuts, low-carb veggies and fruits into your diet.

Phase 3: Fine-tuning

You can add more carbs in your diet in the third phase of atkins diet

Phase 4: Maintenance

In the last phase, you can eat healthy carbs as much as you like

The foods to avoid while following  an atkins diet are:

• Sugary foods
• Grains
• Processed foods
• Vegetable oils
• High-carb veggies
• Starches
• Root vegetables
• Foods you should eat while following atkins diet are:
• Meats
• Sea food
• Fatty fish
• Eggs
• Nuts
• Healthy fats
• Dairy products
• Low-carb veggies

Difference between keto and Atkins?

Ketogenic diet and Atkins diet are similar to each other. But have some differences as well. The main difference is that the ketogenic diet has a moderate-approach to protein with about 201% calories.

But in Atkins diet it depends upon the phases and the minimum calories from the protein is around 30%. There are four phases in the Atkins diet and you will gradually increase the intake of carbs after each phase.

This will disturb your ketosis mode. But in a ketogenic diet, you will follow a low-carb diet from the initial phase to the end so your body will be driven into ketosis mode. 

Both keto diet and Atkins diet have their own benefits and downsides. Both of them are low-carb diets and have a significant effect on weight loss and diabetes management.

The ketogenic diet is more restrictive than that of Atkins. So if you’re having any serious medical condition or are under any treatment, then you must seek medical advice from your physician before following both the keto diet and Atkins diet.