Words of wisdom. People are so obsessed about their weight that they waste their lives worrying about it. Especially women. Woman are just plain obsessed over this. I was in a supermarket checkout the other day and there was over a dozen "women" magazines. Each and every one of them had a cover photo of an anorexic model. And all the headlines were a variation of "I lost 50 pounds in six weeks and YOU can too!"
The Atkins Diet may cause you to lose weight but you could lose weight on just about every "fad diet" out there. I just think it is unhealthy to limit your diet to a particular food or group of foods. I think the Europeans have an advantage over us in the area of dining. They know how to eat well and enjoy life.
The argument for the low-carb way of life (I'm not calling it a diet) is that it isn't a fad after all. As the article says, a steady supply of grains and carbohydrates weren't available to our ancestors until at most only 10,000 years ago. Some, like the Eskimos, still get very few carbs and don't have problems with heart disease. One might easily call the current accepted AMA diet pyramid the real "fad diet" because many people gain weight on it.
Low carb is not for everyone. But a lot of people do extremely well on it. No one should dismiss it out of hand.
SamAdams, first off Atkins is not a fad diet, this is how people ate until the advent of low fat/high carb quackery. It is low fat that is the fad and it is low fat/high carb that has caused an epidemic of obesity and Diabetes II in this country. Europeans do not consume refined carbs as 50% of thier diet as we do here. Many have high fat diets. Tehy don't have the obesity that we have here.
Further, the only food group that Atkins bans is the SUGAR food group. Whole grains are allowed. And refined sugar is BAD for you. There is absolutely no use for sugar in your diet - it only causes harm.
And Atkins does a whole lot more than weight loss. It is shown to reduce cholesterol levels, cure hypoglycemia, diabetes II and obesity.