Rick, I found your post informative regardless of how old the original post was. There is a gal at my work on Atkins right now and she's been on it for 2 weeks and lost 8 pounds already. She said she's noticing that she's eating less because she feels satisfied. She also said she had a check up last time she went on it and got a good bill of health from her doctor. This plan wouldn't be for me, but it seems great for her and if it gets the unhealthy pounds off, then more power to you both!

Atkins will take off the weight big time. It's just a question of whether it's the right diet for you. As a carb addict i found it extremely difficult to stick to, and the headaches and mood swings during the first phase caused me to quit. Still lost 10 pounds in a week tho. Also contrary to popular belief, the diet does call for eating a LOT of vegetables. You can add fruits back in based on how much sugar/carbs it will bring into the diet. This is evident if you read the book. Most critics of the diet seem to have never read it and just pan it for including high fat foods.

They just finished a year long study on atkins versus some other commercial programs and atkins came out on top as far as weight loss. Even more than that, they proved that it would not cause cholesterol and lipid levels to go up and give people a heart attack. None of the critics will admit that they were maybe wrong about the whole "eating a low carb diet will kill you deader than dead" thing that was supposed to be proved by such a study.

You know one of the biggest things people like to bash Atkins for is saturated fat... If you actually have a look through recent research you will see saturated fat and cholesterol is not as bad as first thought and that carbohydrates may play more of a role in heart disease and the like then people realise.

Heck the other week there was a paper released in JAMA that showed not only did the Atkins group lose the most weight but they also had significantly more improvements in health markers.

Another recent way people like to bash Atkins with is folate, because we need to eat our nutritionless empty carbs like white flour and crappy cereals that have had synthetic folate added in after all their nutrients have been destroyed from all the processing

What a silly world we live in!

Anyway this is a load of rubbish, folate is so easy to come by on low carb if you eat REAL FOOD.

I started atkins in 2002, after 2 years I had blood tests done, heres a few that people like to bash:

Serum Folate: 33.1 nmol/L in which the reference range for deficiency was < 5.0 and normal > 10.0

Trigs were 0.5 (Normal range < 2.6)

Glucose 4.5 mmol/L (3.0 - 11)

B12 670 pmol/L (deficient <180> 210)


I would hardly say this was doing me any harm!

Its great for those that feel balanced when they eat some carbs but just because it bodes well for you does not mean it bodes well for everyone else. There are MANY out there who do not do well with too many highly processed carbs, many that CRAVE and feel ravenously hungry on a low fat diet. What low carb, particularly ketosis does for them is help settle their appetite and control their blood sugar.


There are many diabetes 2 sufferers out there who have been able too reduce if not elimate their need for insulin and many PCOS sufferers being able to improve and even concieve thanks to their low carb diet.

And fat and cholesterol, well there are many benefits to both, breastmilk is high in both for a very good reason!