Rating: 
Summary: Lose Weight, Keep it Off, Be Healthy
Review: This book gets five stars because it is easy to read and the results are tremendous. Caution: As stated in this book, if you treat this plan as a fad diet you will have fad diet results. Losing weight on a low carbohydrate diet is easy. The foods are satisfying, unless you have a sweet tooth. As you approach your intended weight you begin to carefully add carbohydrates. What you end up with is a diet blue print for life. DO NOT RETURN TO YOUR OLD EATING HABITS! If you do your weight will balloon. The second time I went on this diet I learned my lesson. Being thin is arguably better than ice cream. Before you begin this diet know you are changing your eating habits for life. Your doctor and mirror will tell you your decision was a good one. I also recommend the Protein Power books by Michael R. and Mary Dan Eades. These books have more scientific evidence to backup the theories and explain what is actually happening to you. You can't have too much information. Especially when so many people condemn this eating philosophy. When you listen to the people that vilify this diet plan keep in mind the tremendous increase in obesity, heart disease, and drug controlled cholesterol patients among the folks that follow the food pyramid or American diet.
Rating: 
Summary: TRIED 3 TIMES STILL GOT SICK
Review: I HAVE TRIED THIS DIET 3 TIMES NOW, THE FIRST TIME I LOST WEIGHT AT A CONSIDERABLE FAST RATE, BUT FELT WEAK AND NUASEOUS. I WON'T TRY IT AGAIN. I HAVE HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE AND THE DIET DID NOT LOWER IT IN FACT IT MADE ME FEEL WEAK AND DIZZY. I AM NOW READING A BOOK CALLED EATING DRINKING TO BE HEALTY IT MAKES MORE SENSE THAN THIS DIET EVER COULD. I COULD NOT GET USE TO ONLY MEAT CHEESE AND EGGS FOR FOURTEEN DAYS, I MISSED MY VEGGIES AND FRUIT TOO MUCH.
Rating:
Summary: IT WILL SEND YOU TO THE HOSPITAL!!! GUARANTEED!!
Review: I read this book about 1 year ago and decided to try the diet out. I was only interested in losing about 10 pounds and figured this would be a "safe" alternative to the other diets out there and being that I have no history of health problems at all, figured it would be OK. I did the diet for the period of time required and followed it to a T. I lost the pounds and was happy.......althought it was tough to only eat these types of foods, it worked. About a few months later I developed pains right below my ribcage on the right side. My first attack happend at night and it was bad enough to send me to the hospital. A few days later, after an ultrasound, I was diagnosed with Gall Bladder Disease. After reviewing my history of eating and health, the doctors did indicate that the high protein diet (Atkins) that I was on "most likely" played a large part in the problems I was having. Long story short, I had Laparoscopic gallbladder surgery about two weeks ago and as of today, I'm about 95% recovered. But between my 1st attack and surgery, I had many smaller attacks that prevented me from eating certain foods and produced much pain. I'm a very healthy person (at least in my eyes).......very active.......and have never had problems like this before. I can only attribute this to one thing that I've done differently over the years......this "fad" diet called ATKINS. If you want to end up in the hospital with SEVERE pains in your side, than go ahead and try Atkins.......I won't say it will happen to you, but the chances of it happening just went up by a ton if you do the diet. Do yourself a favor and save your money and DO NOT buy this book. Buy a bicycle and some walking shoes......excercise and eat a balanced diet. You'll be better off.
Rating:
Summary: Each Person's Body Is Different
Review: This program works great for me but I've noticed a few angry reviews. I suppose some people's bodies aren't meant for such restrictions and some are. I've had no trouble with it and found that it kicked out a lot of extra perservatives and basically deals with meat and vegetables. Carbs and no carbs. Meat which contains no carbs or very few carbs and vegetables which contain carbs, but both lack extra added perservatives. I purchase frozen vegetables mainly, and rarely canned vegetables with the exception of hominy. In my own viewpoint I haven't seen it as a threat at all. It's kind of basically a pure program. Makes you see how much junk is added in a lot of food. And sets you up with a lifestyle that doesn't include those things (extra perservatives). I do note that Dr. Atkins says that every persons body is different and that his diet or program may not be for you. We all try it and it doesn't work for some of us. I suppose the people it doesn't work for tend to get quite ill. Perhaps some people need more carbs than others. I don't know, because as you lose weight you are allowed to increase in carbs. I would just advise everyone to read carefully and not jump ahead without knowing about the program. I think it will make all of the difference. Just try and make sure it's right for you and make sure you have no health problems. I think Dr. Atkins is very honest from the beginning to the end.
Rating:
Summary: I wanna kick Dr Atkins up the arse
Review: My God, this diet has messed me up bad. After 4 or 5 days I was weak, dizzy, light-headed, feverish and had stomach cramps. As soon as I started to eat carbs again I started feeling better, but now after 2 days of going back to my old way of eating, I'm still not completely back to normal. The stomach pains are gone, but I'm still dizzy, faint and feverish. When the hell am I gonna return to normal. I've had to eat more than my normal quantity of carbs to offset the total absence of carbs over the previous 5 days which means I've ended up putting weight on, not off.
I suppose I'm to blame for being so gullible in the first place.
God knows how most of you are not getting sick on this diet. If thats what it did to me in just a few days I can only imagine what the long-term effects must be. Though in my case I'm sure I never would have seen the long-term had I been foolish enough to continue with it! The theory was great, the practice was very different. You guys are playing russian roulette with your health. It's back to the food pyramid and the established wisdom for me - assuming I recover!
Rating:
Summary: Am I the only one who gets ill on this diet?
Review: The polarity of the reviews on this diet are amazing, people either love it or hate it. It either gets 1 star or 5 stars. Personally I wanted to love it, but I hate it. I read this book and 'Neanderthin' which also supports a high protein/fat low carb diet and offers very convincing arguments based on the natural hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our Paleolithic ancestors. The books made such logical sense to me. Our ancestors ate primarily the meat and fat of animals they hunted and supplemented this with nuts, seeds, berries and fruits that they foraged for. Even the veggies they ate were not like those we eat today that have been mass farmed. Their veggies were lower in carb and higher in fiber and were used more as a source of fiber than to provide energy - which really came from animal fat. This all made sense, and since our bodies and digestive systems have barely evolved at all since then, this should still be our natural diet. So far so good. Great theory. The problems came when I actually TRIED this diet. Each time I was OK for the first few days. I went into ketosis and did notice some slight weight loss. But by day 5 I started getting sick. I felt faint, light-headed, dizzy. So much so in fact that I feared I was going to faint or have a dizzy spell while at the wheel of my car - not a pleasant prospect. I also had stomach pains, felt slightly feverish and unlike many others who have complained of being constipated I had the opposite problem of diarrhea. Which makes sense when you think about it because your body is getting practically no fiber. God knows how Eskimo's survive - where the hell do they get their fiber from? At first I thought it might just be a one-off reaction. But I've tried it 3 times now and had exactly the same illness after 4 or 5 days. I won't be trying it again.
Rating:
Summary: Changed my life and blood test results for the better
Review: I love reading all the reviews on this site, so I decided to write my first review for a book that changed my life. My cholesterol was really high as were my triglycerides. I was in a "danger zone". I had read several of the Dr. Atkins books and asked my doctor about the diet. She said "no way, it's dangerous" (like someone below wrote). I am a "nutrition junkie" and retired ballet teacher who has gained weight and gotten unhealthy with my "pyramid eating" patterns of fresh fruits/veggies and lowcarb, lowfat eating. I have exercised like a fiend and had all the water I could consume. I still gained weight and bodyfat doing everything that I had been trained to do all my life. I decided to go against my doctors recommendations based on the older version of this book, but I now own this new version which I really like better. I had my blood tested the day before I embarked on the induction phase. I did the induction for nearly 3 months with several maintenance times here and there. I had my blood retested. My doctor called the minute she got the results. She was so excited and asked "how on earth did you do this". My triglycerides were 50% lower, my HDL (good) cholesterol was 50% higher, and my cholesterol dropped to a normal level. My risk ratio was off the chart *below* the "lowest" risk level. She was shocked and speechless when I said I did the Atkins diet. My theory on the person below who said that everyone loses on this diet and then gains when they go off of it is a "no-brainer" (sorry). When they go "off" this way of eating, they consume sugar and flour and all those things that cause all the problems to begin with -- thus they gain. I also have to agree that "Sugar Blues" is one of my all-time favorite books I've ever read to shake up your brain/thinking on sugar! It's a sure-fire wake-up to get off sugar. Dr. Atkins is to be admired and congratulated for his consistent drive to tell the truth even though it's not the fashionable thing to do. I'm also glad that one of the hour-long news shows finally did their own report which showed that it does work! I especially enjoyed the end where Dr. Atkins is speaking to the medical community, and the doctors in the audience are either asleep, or eating bagels and donuts while "listening". What does this tell you? These are the mainstream doctors that are giving us the information in their own offices on nutrition (but they don't even listen!).
Rating: 
Summary: Tried it... won't do it again...
Review: While I lost 12 pounds in 2 weeks on this diet several years ago, I won't do it again. I've found that restricting my carbohydrates to this extent causes constipation, and I had two days worth of painful intestinal gas after eating too much turkey (made a turkey dinner with all the trimmings for the family, and all I ate was the turkey and the green beans). If you've ever had problems with constipation or hemorrhoids, don't attempt this diet. There isn't enough fiber to keep you regular. Like I said, I lost weight, but it wasn't worth the health problems that arose from my particular situation.
Rating:
Summary: WARNING: Health Risks ...
Review: Purpose: To inform those on the diet that serious health risks can occur, and after the diet retires, most of your weight will come back. I'd like to explain the pros and cons of this diet here. The upside is that you can eat all the eggs, meat, and breakfast sausage and omelettes you'd like, and your weight will drop faster than any other diet you may go on. Add that to exercise and your weight will drop even more. And there are candy bard made just for this diet sold in your local grocery or nutrition store. But this diet has major flaws here. You may have heard rumors on this diet causing heart disease, but it gets worse. There is a potential that this could cause several types of cancer, or even give you diabetes. These are serious health risks. And once you are on this diet, you'll most likely be engaged to it, more likely a slave to it, for the rest of your life. Once you get off of it, before you know it, you'll gain most or even all of your weight back. If you like this diet, that's fine. But this ONLY melts the pounds away, and there are some kinds of carbs you actually NEED TO HAVE. Stick to the nutrition charts. Don't be like me and waste your time.
Rating: 
Summary: We'll see...
Review: My doctor (internist) has just OK'd the Atkins diet for me. I am severely overweight at 5'3" 246 lbs. My blood sugar is borderline high and I'm 36 years old. I got this way over the last seven years from taking psychotropic medications for severe bipolar disorder -- before that my weight was normal. I haven't been on Atkins yet but I have seen good results with other people. I want to dispute what "funniegrrl" below says about ketosis burning muscle for energy. This is not true. In the absence of carbs, the body uses FAT for fuel, not muscle. No one disputes this, what is under dispute is how safe it is. My doctor believes it is safe, and I've never personally seen anyone pass out or get sick on this kind of diet, as I have with a few other diets. On the contrary, people tell me how great they feel and how much energy they have and how much better their digestion is. Some of the people who are reviewing this book seem to be "playing doctor" and dispensing medical advice. You have no idea who these people are, so my advice is to ask your doctor. Then, if you still have doubts, get a second opinion. From a DOCTOR. Good luck in your quest to get fit and strong. God Bless.
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