[nralife]

The Atkins diet is based on heavily restricting calories from carbohydrates, which is simply a low calorie diet that results in a net reduction of total calories consumed.

That's incorrect. The idea is to go into ketosis.

"Ketosis Defined: When your diet is depleted of carbs, your glycogen levels drop and you enter ketosis — a process in which your body burns ketone bodies to avoid draining the protein stores in your muscles and instead uses energy from your fat stores."

[Mase]

That's incorrect. The idea is to go into ketosis.

No, that's incorrect. Because so many of our food choices come from carbohydrates, restricting them results in a lower calorie diet. The Atkins diet is just a lower calorie diet in disguise.

Now, about ketosis, you can get super lean on a diet loaded with carbs (Michael Phelps eats 12,000 calories a day when he's in training, most of which come from carbs) and you can get fat as a pig on a ketogenic diet. This is a recurring theme. It's all about how much energy you consume vs. what you expend. Ketosis places a great deal of strain on the kidneys and the body ends up excreting a great deal of water. This is why people lose weight quickly from the Atkins diet, but are not able to keep it off.

No controlled calorie study supports the notion that carbohydrates, fats or proteins offer any metabolic advantage over the minor differences in their TEF - thermic effects of food/feeding, which is the amount of energy required to digest.

[Finny]

And there's such a thing as eating too few carbs. :^( I've almost done it, and one of my bros HAS, to ill effect, poor guy! Not on purpose, just not interested in eating them, though eating plenty of everything else. The body needs some carbs and I've found that a simple little mouthful of dry oatmeal washed down with water before vigorous morning exercise REALLY helps in the energy-sustenance dept.

To me -- and I may be totally incorrect -- the Atkins Diet basically represents the general approach of: One starchy carb dish per meal, as in bread, OR rice, OR pasta, OR corn, OR potatoes, OR chips, OR tortillas. It's when you pull up to a table where the meal includes bread AND rice AND pasta AND corn that you're probably joining a family that has many battles with weight.