First of all congratulations on your weight loss. Carbs are not completely cut out on Atkins. It is just that for some people their bodies don't metabolize them correctly and they wreak havoc on their bodies. For those people they do have to be careful, on which type of carbs as well as how many carbs.
I find that the real carbs really don't bother me too much except for most fruit. So I eat it sparingly. I don't like feeling like crap. That is my motivation to low carb.
It's the refined junk, you know the fake foods, partially hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, white flour, sugar, chips, cakes that really is the culprit.
Yeah--that garbage.
They put it in everything--read the ingredients.
It's a cheap substitute for sugar.
I used to think that soda didn't taste as good as it used to because it now comes in plastic bottles instead of the glass bottles it came in when I was a kid.
Perhaps that is true, but a bigger reason it does not taste as good is because they stopped using sugar.
They use corn syrup instead--it's cheaper.
(But that's not my problem any more: I weaned myself off soda by drinking plain seltzer water instead. Now I'll never drink soda again. Yuck.)