Why Bad Diets Are Bad?

Dogman wrote:

It does ZERO damage to an athlete, but competitive athletes will
usually want to keep their carb counts a bit higher than a non-athlete
might, especially when training. Depending on how their body
responds.

I remember one dieter who gradually ramped up her exercise program as
her weight dropped and once she hit her ideal weight just kept upping
her exercise until she became a competive body builder in her state.
Following the directions she just kept upping her carb grams to match
her activity. Before she hit the state level she was about 150 carb
grams per day because that's what the directions said to do. Clearly
the OP has no idea what the directions say to do. To prepare for the
state tourniment she switched to the cycle process that was standard
among body builds about 2000 and thus was no longer on Atkins. Note
that anyone who sees the number 150 and thinks that isn't Atkins has no
clue what the directions actually say to do.

The Paleo, Primal, Caveman, etc. diets are essentially the Atkins
diet, and are the new "fad."

Some folks like to claim that Atkins is just a rehash of Banting. In
one perspective it is. Before his plan becamse famous Dr Atkins used
other low carb plans as the starting point for his own plan. What he
did is make low carbing well known, and he did that from 1970 until he
died.

Some folks like to claim that other low carb plans aren't the children
of the Atkins plan. Nearly all of them are most certainly the result of
the fame of the Atkins plan. Dr A put low carb on the map. All the
other well known plans at least started with the knowledge that low
carbing was an option.

Calling them "essentially the Atkins diet" isn't as extreme as calling
Atkins a rehash of Banting. Calling them "inspired by Atkins" is not.
Any authors who claim they were not inspired by Atkins are making a
laughable claim. Atkins made low carbing famous. He made low carbing a
household word. No author of a low carb plan since 1973 could have
failed to know of Atkins. How about we say that the various low carb
plans have been efforts to improve the low carbing state of the art?

Hell, Dukan's probably pretty good, too.

Of course. Most low carb plans work well. I suggest that all of them
published since 1973 have improved the low carbing state of the art in
one way or another. Even from the brief summary posted by trader4 it's
clear that the Dukan plan does exactly that.