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I have no problem with whole wheat pasta or brown rice. The Atkins diet is not an all meat diet! Once you are steadily losing weight, and even more so once you have reached your goal, Atkins recommends adding healthy carbs, including whole-wheat grains, as long as the amounts don't reverse the weight loss. Grains are not as the basis of the diet, or people who easily put on weight will just put it on again. I eat a lot of wheat germ oil and get the health benefits of that without the starch. The carbs Atkins bans totally are sugar, white flour in any form, potatos, and white rice or any other processed grain product.

Also, simply exercising will not do the trick for many people, especially women.I can understand how you would not have a problem with consuming a lot of carbs if you are doing triathlons, but most people are far more sedentary. I was following a low-fat diet, eating whole grains, and running 5-7 miles a day, and not losing the excess 20 pounds I was carrying. And it wasn't because the fat was turning to muscle - I could still grab the flab on my stomach after months of doing this. After injuring my knee which prevented me from running, I switched to Atkins and lost the weight. For many people, the amount of exercise required to burn off the weight without dieting is simply impossible. That was certainly the case with me, and I was doing fairly strenuous daily exercise.

Looking closely at what I thought was a pretty good three-times-weekly exercise routine, I was dismayed to see that I was burning a whole 150 calories a session. Big deal. At 450 calories a week, maybe I'd lose a pound every two months. Only, I didn't.

Only the diet took it off.

Exercise has benefits--toning, aerobics, flexibility.

But it doesn't do it for weight control.

"I was following a low-fat diet, eating whole grains, and running 5-7 miles a day, and not losing the excess 20 pounds I was carrying."

I had a similar experience on a low-cal, low-fat diet, exercising my buns off and not losing an ounce. I lost weight on the Atkins diet. I think I'm one of those "carb-sensitive" types who just gains weight on carbs. I have a hard time staying away from them though; bread and butter and potatoes are just so good!