Everybody knows that without professional training there is no bodybuilding profession and without will there is no game. But what is the thing missing? You have a good training schedule, you have trained for almost a year now and it seems like you are not quite where you want to be. Something is missing. Have you tried considering the fact that your diet plan might not be quite adequate with your needs? Do you really think that you eat enough or at the right time to be a professional bodybuilder?

Well if your training is good, your body endures it and you like what you are doing but if this still doesn't work than probably you will need to change the way you eat. Protein is the foundation on which you build your body. Your body needs protein to grow and develop muscular mass.

What is a low carbohydrate diet? It is a diet in which your nutrition is based on proteins and unsaturated fats rather then carbohydrates. Carbohydrates or carbs are substances from which your body drains energy. If they come in large quantities they start creating fat deposits. Carbohydrates are the sugars and starches found in bread, cereals, vegetables, and fruits, which, during digestion, are changed into glucose.

Let's talk now about some low carb diets. Generally the low carb diet is associated with Dr. Atkins' diet. On the Atkins diet you are encouraged to eat good quality fats and proteins until you enter the ketosis phase when your body starts burning fat deposits like crazy to produce ketones to be used as energy instead of carbohydrates. Other diets are similar: Zone Diet, Protein Power Lifeplan, South Beach Diet and so on. These diets are based on the way our ancestors used to live and feed. Their basic food was meat. So a meat based alimentation is very rich in proteins. They were able to have a good energy and the best muscular mass only by eating vegetables and meet. No sugar or bread (cereals started to be eaten a little later). So Dr. Atkins thought he should make a diet based on our ancestor's diet.

The Atkins diet has four phases. The first is the induction phase when you have to eat food like: eggs, cheese, mushrooms, any type of meat, etc. but you have to completely exclude fruits, bread, potatoes and pasta from your diet. This is the preparatory step before entering ketosis. Many people have a lot of side effects while they are in this phase like: headaches, nausea, fatigue, muscle crams, bad bread and blurred vision. This is just the body adapting but after those 2 weeks you will feel excellent and the carbs will also rise from 20g a day to 40g. Remember that the switch from 20g to 40g has to be gradually: each week you have to add 5 carbs to your diet until you see when your weight losing stops. When you stop losing weight you had to subtract 5 g of carbs: this is the second phase and has to be maintained during the whole fat losing process.

When you reach a level where you have 10-5 pounds to lose you will have to increase the carbohydrates with 10 g. This helps your body adapt to the carbohydrate intake and will still make you lose weight but a little slower. The last phase is for life; it allows you to eat more carbs but limits them to a certain level and you can chose from bigger variety of food. The Atkins diet and all the diets which are based on proteins work on the following principle: when your body lacks carbs it will use fats and proteins as sources of energy and this way it will be drawing all the energy from your fat deposits.

Many people think that the Atkins diet and other similar diets are bad for our health and can lead to major diseases. If you don't eat saturated fats and choose healthy products you won't have any affection after you finish with this diet. To improve the way you feel during this diet you should take some vitamins and some potassium supplements because this diet has less vitamins. If you are following a low carb diet chose your food carefully because too much fat will cause you to gain weight instead of losing weight and you don't want that. You should prefer eating lean meat instead of fat meat and drink low fat milk instead of whole milk. When you stop a diet like this you have to be extra careful to your meals because if you eat too many carbohydrates the amount of kilograms you lost will come in no time.

Drink a lot of water and avoid diet soda or mineral water because it's bad for your stomach. You will need to drink more than 2 l per day because you will lack fibers and you may develop constipation. Following this diet only brings a great advantage to the meat lovers because they will love it but for the rest of the people who don't know what diet to chose I have to tell you that for an year period this diet gives the same results as other diets. If you don't like meat and have a high cholesterol don't chose this diet because it will only torture you but if you are a meat lover I warmly recommend you to at least try it for the first two weeks and see if you feel better.