Atkins anyone?

I lost a lot of weight with atkins but it was not a diet I could stay on. I just never felt good. Good luck.

I have been trying to stick closely to South Beach. It is my first week trying it. I have PCOS and high carb amounts are apparently bad for you if you have it. I am unsure how its going to work since I did not do a weigh in yet. So far I have found no breads and pastas hard.

My mom had been on it many years ago. She'd been sick the whole time.

You do lose weight, but it also increases your risk for a lot of health problems, which is why most folk want to lose to begin with.

BELOW IS SOME OF WHAT WEBMD HAS TO SAY:
Robert H. Eckel, MD, director of the general clinical research center at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, agrees. He tells WebMD, "Our worries over the Atkins diet go way past the question of whether it is effective for losing weight or even for keeping weight off. We worry that the diet promotes heart disease. ... We have concerns over whether this is a healthy diet for preventing heart disease, stroke, and cancer. There is also potential loss of bone, and the potential for people with liver and kidney problems to have trouble with the high amounts of protein in these diets."

The American Dietetic Association also has concerns about the Atkins diet. Gail Frank, PhD, "The body needs a minimum of carbohydrates for efficient and healthy functioning -- about 150 grams daily." Below that, normal metabolic activity is disrupted.

"The brain needs glucose to function efficiently, and it takes a long time to break down fat and protein to get to the brain," says Frank. Carbohydrates, especially in the form of vegetables, grains, and fruits, are more efficiently converted to glucose. And this more efficient use of glucose has developed over a long period of time, according to Frank

Volumetrics author Barbara Rolls, PhD, who holds the Guthrie Chair in Nutrition at Penn State University, offers this: "No one has shown, in any studies, that anything magical is going on with Atkins other than calorie restriction. The diet is very prescriptive, very restrictive, and limits half of the foods we normally eat," she says. "In the end it's not fat, it's not protein, it's not carbs, it's calories. You can lose weight on anything that helps you to eat less, but that doesn't mean it's good for you."

I tried it when it was really big (about 8 years ago?)

I lost weight quickly but I didn't feel very well on it, I really felt deprived and missed stuff like fruit and bagels. It became obvious that it wasn't something I could sustain. Friends tried it and almost all of them broke down and started eating carbs again. I had a friend who got really into it and used those ketosis urine test strips and his breath smelled and everything but I'm not sure if he still does it, haven't seen him in a while.