"Sarandipidy" wrote in message
...
if you cut out carbs from almost your entire diet, you
have a high chance of gaining the weight back if you reintroduce them at
some
point-- at least i've seen it happen to people. it would have to be a
lifetime
commitment and carefully administered.

Actually, that's what Atkins, South Beach and probably all the low carb
diets say. When you start, you're on them *for life*. Any diet that uses
restriction and/or bans food groups has to be for life. That's why I'm not
convinved by powered proteidic diets, it's hard to keep on them for life...
It all depends on your view on obesity. If you consider it's like AIDS, and
impossible to cure and that's it ok to be on treatment for whatever is left
of your life and at whatever cost (side-effects, troublesome social life,
loss of cultural and familial identification), I guess low carb is no worse
than the other diets. Actually, if you consider the health-conscious
varations (health conscious fat balance, greens, tolerance for some
fruits...), they're ok diets. But if you consider that you can actually cure
obesity, low carb (and low fat for that matter) are not the way to go, they
don't cure obesity any more than AZT cure AIDS.