The Atkins diet was created to help people accomplish three major things with their weight loss program. The first thing that you are supposed to accomplish is to restrict your intake of processed foods and refined carbs. The second thing you are supposed to accomplish is that you are supposed to learn to eat mainly nutrient-rich unprocessed foods. The last thing that you are supposed to accomplish is to use supplements to help your body get the nutrients it needs to be healthy, mainly by taking vitamins.

The Atkins diet is made up of four phases. The first phase lasts two weeks and is considered the induction phase. It is during this phase that "benign dietary ketosis" is induced so that your body can quickly burn up any excess fat, which is what leads to the rapid weight loss. During the first phase of the diet, you are not allowed any fruits and vegetables and you are only allowed 20 grams of carbs a day. By vastly restricting what you are consuming you are encouraging your body to burn up any excess fat that you have.

The second phase of the diet lasts until you have almost achieved your target weight. This phase is designed to allow you to lose weight at a steady rate, but you can also begin to eat more variety in foods because this phase is less restrictive. During this phase, you are allowed to eat more vegetables and you can increase how many carbs you are eating each day. During the second phase you can increase the amount of carbs from 20 grams up to 40 grams, less if you want. When adding any new foods to your diet you will want to do so carefully so that you can gauge the effects that food is having on your weight loss.

The third phase of this diet is considered the pre-maintenance diet and you should begin working on this phase when you are only five to ten pounds away from your overall weight loss goal. The third phase is used to prepare you for entering the final phase of the Atkins diet, by allowing you to lose the final few pounds at a slower pace. How this phase works is that you start to slowly increase the amount of carbs that you are eating until you are only losing about one pound a week. With that goal in mind, this phase can take up to nine or ten weeks to complete, depending on how much weight you have left to lose.

The final phase of the program is the maintenance phase and it is designed for you to use to keep your current weight for as long as you want. This phase was put into place to show you that in order to keep the weight off once you have gotten it off you will still have to eat smart, by watching what you eat. This phase gives you a strict diet that you will have to follow if you want to keep the weight off. You will also need to limit your carb intake to a level that you feel comfortable with, which for most people is where they won't be gaining any more weight.