Diet is one among so many attempt we done to live a healthier live. Just like the word “you are what you eat”, we have to choose our food carefully since it will give an effect to our body whether it is good or bad. In today Whole30 vs Atkins article, we are going to compare these two popular diet method and give you more information regarding how to do the diet and what you can expect from them. If you are interested, go check our article below.
In this article, we are going to give you information about:
– What are Whole30 and Atkins
– What Whole30 and Atkins can offer to you
– How to do Whole30 and Atkins
– Whole30 vs Atkins
About Whole30
Most of us are eating a variety of food groups and we never know whether a certain food have a bad impact in our body or not because they are indeed commonly seen as a healthy food. Some of us may experience inconsistent energy level and aches or pain here in and there that can’t be explained. There are also digestive issues and some of us find it so hard to lose weight. Those symptoms may related to your food and to know how they impact your health, the easiest way is to avoid them.
Just like its name, Whole30 means you have to eat whole foods for the next 30 days. The point of the diet is not eliminate the foods continuously and only as an attempt to reset your body and heal whatever those foods may affect your health. For the next 30 days, you have to remove the most common craving-inducing, blood sugar disrupting, gut damaging, inflammatory food groups to see what will happened to your body when you don’t consume them.
Whole30 Benefit
The main benefit of Whole30 is not for losing weight but instead it is used to improve your energy; sleep quality; improve any digestive issues like gas, bloating, constipation, pain, and diarrhea; reducing/removing joint pain or swelling; improving skin; reducing migraines; asthma; as well as biomarkers like cholesterol, blood pressure, and fasting blood sugar. The last but not least is probably the most popular benefit why people do this diet is because it can reduce body weight even without counting calories or measuring food.
Besides the benefit, most diet also bring side effect and the most obvious is being cranky but let’s put this annoying part aside since you can get rid of it as your body get used to the diet. Taking high-protein and low-carb diet like Whole30 will make your body entering a ketosis state, which mean to supply energy they will release ketones to break down fat since there is not enough carbohydrates to burn and high ketone level may harm your kidney. Read also: Whole30 vs Keto here.
Whole30 Eating
The hardest part of a diet is usually the choosing food stage and this one have so many restriction. For the next 30 days, you have to eat moderate portion of meat, seafood, and eggs with many vegetables and fruits. You also have to consume plenty of natural fats, herbs and seasonings.
What you have to avoid are added sugar whether it is real or artificial, alcohol in any form, grains, legumes, dairy, carrageenan, MSG or sulfites, baked goods, junk foods, and treats. However, there are also some exception like ghee or clarified butter; fruit juice; certain legumes like sugar snap peas and snow peas; vinegar, coconut aminos, and salt.
About Atkins
Another diet you can try if your main goal is to lose weight is Atkins. This diet is created by Dr. Atkins who is a well-known cardiologist to help his patients losing weight by reducing their intake of sugar and carbohydrates. There are so many studies have found that low-carb diet without counting calories will be very effective against weight loss and help improving your body’s health. The diet was previously hated by mainstream health authorities because it include high saturated fats but new studies found that saturated fat is actually harmless and since then, there are lots of people already feel the benefit of Atkins diet.
Atkins Benefit
As it has been mentioned earlier, the main goal of Atkins is to help you lose weight. Even though the name is different, this diet will work in a similar way like Keto where there is not enough glucose from carbohydrate in your body, so they will use stored fat instead or fat and protein consumed from foods, so in the end you will also lose some weight. Since the diet will replace processed and high carbohydrate foods, it also beneficial to prevent and treat diabetes.
If you are eating saturated fat from healthy source like grass-fed beef or coconut oil, it will help increasing HDL cholesterol levels and lowering the risk of cardiovascular problems. The last is reduce dementia risk because low-carb diets is found to be beneficial for fighting cognitive problems like Alzheimer, dementia, and narcolepsy.
Just like many other diets, Atkins is also prone to annoying side effects like fatigue or lethargy, less energy, trouble sleeping, digestive problems like constipation because of low fiber intake, indigestion, mood swings, and bad breath.
Atkins Eating
Atkins have 4 Phase to follow. The first is induction phase where you have to eliminate almost all carbs from diet to make your body switch metabolism from depending on carbs/glucose for body fat. Second is balancing phase where you have to increase carbs intake by around 5 grams daily for 1 to 2 weeks in an attempt to determine maximum carbs intake your body can tolerate before stop losing weight or gaining weight.
Third is pre-maintenance phase where you have to increase whole grains intake as well s starchy vegetables and add more fruits while still adding about 10 grams of carbohydrate to monitor your weight gain. Last is lifetime maintenance phase which is the part where you have already achieved target weight and able to eat a variety of foods without gaining weight because now you already know how much your body can take carbohydrate daily so it won’t gain weight again.
Comparison
Now, let’s compare Whole30 with Atkins. Their basic idea is different but will lead your body into a similar condition, which is replacing carbs with protein and healthy fat. However, Whole30 is stricter since they will limit your food into only whole food and limits what may have a bad impact in your body even though they are natural foods while at the other hand, Atkins is limiting carbs no matter what type of foods you use to replace it. It will also have longer impact since you have to maintain it for life-time.
The hardest part of Whole30 is choosing the food you can consume and the hardest part of Atkins is measuring the carbs you can take daily before stop losing weight or gaining more.
Whole30 vs Atkins
| Whole30 | Atkins |
|---|---|
| - Avoid trigger foods | - Reduce carbohydrate |
| - Last for 30 days | - Last for lifetime |
| - Many restrictions | - Less restriction |
Conclusion
All in all, the decision is all yours to make. We know that there is no one diet for all and people’s body work differently, so we never know what suit us the most without trying them first. However, if we are to choose, we will start with Whole30 first since it takes shorter time to complete.