I've lost 30 pounds since starting the Atkins diet after New Year's. I was 215, now I'm 185. I'm 5'9" though I have a pretty heavy build. I'm happy with my weight loss so far. Ideally I'd like to lose another 10 pounds but I won't kill myself to do it - I already look and feel way better than I did. Because of my build, there's almost no way I could get down to a weight that would give me a mid "normal" BMI.
The diet has been an interesting experience. Not nearly as hard as I thought it would be, in fact. Before that, I was mostly eating junk food, drinking sugared soda, etc and my weight had slowly crept up from where I was in high school when I played football and activity kept me in shape. A lot of people have misconceptions about the diet that prevent them from giving it a fair shake. One is that all you eat is meat. You eat a lot of meat but, to be honest, my family and I eat far more vegetables now than we did before going on Atkins. You're limited on fruits, but most vegetables are allowed from the start and basically all are allowed once you've moved beyond the first two weeks.
Another misconception involves the duration of the program. Like ANY diet, when you quit and go back to eating junk, you gain the weight back. This is true with Atkins, Weight Watchers, South Beach, anything you can name. The logical extension of this is that if you lose weight on a diet and want to keep it off, some form of that diet will have to become your permanent way of eating. When I consider that the stuff I eat now is: nuts, vegetables, meat, cheese, berries, it doesn't seem like such a bad idea to eat like this permanently rather than the burritos, pizza, mountain dew, macaroni & cheese, and other junk I used to eat every meal of every day. The food you're allowed may be high in fat, but it's also generally high in nutrients and low in additives. It's a lot more natural food and a lot less processed foods (though there are still some miracles of science like low-carb icecream). I drink diet soda and eat/drink very little sugar, compared to the bunches I used to eat.
Ok, one last one. A lot of people think the Atkins diet means you can never have some certain food again (pizza, pasta, whatever). The truth is that eating pizza doesn't make you fat. Eating pizza 3 or 4 times a week makes you fat. Drinking a 2 liter of coke with your pizza makes you fat. It's the overall combination of what you eat that does or doesn't cause problems. The only people who will have to permanently avoid certain foods on the Atkins diet are those who are true carbaholics. For these people, eating one cookie will lead to eating the whole bag. Since they've eaten the whole bag of cookies, might as well go out for pasta for dinner. Since I wrecked yesterday and am a fat pig, might as well give up. Those types of people need to simply stay away from temptation. Most people can go have a huge hunk of lasagna on a Friday night without killing their weight loss - so long as they're willing and able to go back to a steak and a salad the next day. I've lost my weight with minimal exercise so in my case, it was clearly diet related. Whether it's because low carbs worked for me, or that I simply ate less (food/calories), I can't prove it either way. I do have to say that the variety of foods has been pretty good and it's hard to feel deprived eating a bacon cheeseburger (sans bun) or a huge cobb salad.
