[Trust but Verify]

It is clear from this passage that the Atkins people were regainingweight by the end of one year. That is the flaw that I see in this 'diet'. If you have to stick with it for the rest of your life in order to keep the pounds off, most people just aren't going to do that. The people I know who have done Atkins have lost weight. Substantially and quickly, but then once they start moving away from the diet, they put it all back on again.

[workerbee]

Yes but that's true of any diet. Any effective diet isn't really a "diet" at all but a modification of behavior -- i.e., you have to change the way you eat forever.

[Judith Anne]

In my opinion, Atkins codified what sensible people have known for decades: if you want to lose weight, cut way back on bread, sugar, potatoes, and pasta. My grandmother advised that to my father, he did, and it worked. He never ate rice, and because he grew up during the Depression, he hated beans...And, as Gran said, eat your roughage (vegetables).

[sd-joe]

The point is that these articles that attack the Atkins diet by comparing it to other diets say things that are just not true.

Anyway you look at it, the facts in the reports show that people, on average lose and keep the lose more on Atkins than on the other diets.

The attackers take this basic fact and try to spin it to say something entirely different.

[Protagoras]

If you have to stick with it for the rest of your life in order to keep the pounds off, most people just aren't going to do that.

I have never seen ANY diet that works when you aren't on it.

[Dusty Rose]

you have to stick with it for the rest of your life in order to keep the pounds off...

This is what concerns me about Atkins, the long term consequences and the effect on the kidneys excereting huge amounts of nitrogenous by-products of protein metabolism. That, along with the lack of fruits/veggies for their beneficial antioxidents, fiber and phytochemicals.

[Old Professer]

It is clear from this passage that the Atkins people were regainingweight by the end of one year.

Actually there is nothing clear about this passage:

They found that over six months, 63 Atkins slimmers lost almost twice as much weight, an average of one and a half stone. >p> After a year, the gap had closed though, with the Atkins dieters down to an average weight loss of a stone compared with half a stone for others.

Like you, however, I believe the author is trying to say that the Atkins dieters had a net weight loss of about 14 pounds after one year even though they actually weighed less on six months of the diet in the beginning.

The problem here is that we aren't privy to the numbers; for all we know, a few of the dieters could have just pigged out and skewed the results for the whole group as time went on.