I am not a devotee, but see hysteria in the reactions to its popularity. IMHO this would be in that category.
I see hysteria, that is, a strong, unreasoning, emotional reaction, in the proponents of Atkin's-like diets. The opponents in the field of nutrition sciences are pretty uniformly fact-based in their criticism. Look at the hate mail to Fumento on the subject to get an idea of
pro-Atkin's hysterical hate-speech. Fumento starts with fact-based criticism, receives the hate-mail in response, and then, deliciously, answers on the writers' wavelength. It usually rolls off them in the water-off-duck's-back mode just as the fact-based criticism did because they are not interested in anything but what they want to hear.
Atkins has brought many to the understanding that what one eats changes one's hormonal balance, directly influencing one's sense of hunger. This, in and of itself, gets one from lack of willpower as the reason for failing weight-loss diets to what or how one eats. An obvious improvement .
This talk of food changing one's hormonal balance is an example of nutritional newbies talking in a superficial manner about a well-known subject and thinking it's all something marvelously new brought to the world by the much-maligned Dr. Atkins. However, it's long been known that a meal high in carbohydrates leads to faster gastric emptying which can lead to a more rapid onset of hunger compared to a meal with more protein and fat that promotes slower gastric emptying. This is no mystery.
It's also long been known that a low blood sugar level leads to increases in glucagon which signals low fuel levels and leads to fat burning as well as to a desire to eat. But it's also long been known that it's impossible to have an increase in body weight unless the caloric intake exceeds caloric expenditure and that human metabolism converts very little glucose into fat. Given that humans shift their substrate oxidation in a hypercaloric diet away from fat oxidation and toward protein/glucose oxidation, it's no mystery where the fat is coming from: the diet. If someone is consuming more kilocals than he expends, he'll gain weight in the form of stored dietary fat. If he is consuming a high carbohydrate diet that is also hypercaloric, he'll also be hungrier more often, leading him to maintain the hypercaloric intake and, hence, the steadily increasing fat content in his adipose tissue.
A few things follow from these basic nutritional facts.
1. If someone is eating mostly protein and fat (ie., a low carbohydrate diet) and he is losing stored fat, it is because his total kilocaloric intake (absorbed, not just consumed) is less than his total energy expenditure across the measurement period. The reason for this may be that he experiences less hunger and eats less often or less at each sitting.
2. If someone is eating mostly protein and fat and his energy intake exceeds his total energy expenditure, he will increase his body mass.
3. If someone is eating mostly protein and fat and his energy intake (consumption, not necessarily absorbtion) exceeds his energy expenditure and he doesn't gain in total body mass, it's because there's a problem with his nutrient absorption in the small intestine.