I am curious as to if you go on the atkins diet for a while and go off it but continue to eat in a healthy way and workout will you gain back everything you lost? I have heard that this will happen if begin to eat carbs again. Please give me your input!

yes, reverting to eating excess carbs will result in rapid weight rebound. Eating excess carbs (despite it being the recommendation of your government), however, is not "eating in a healthy way."

There are essential fatty acids, essential amino acids (protein.) There are no essential carbohydrates. It IS, however, important to eat plenty of fresh vegetables to get the fiber and phytochemicals/nutrients they contain; this cannot be done by taking a pill. All other carbohydrates can be avoided, and most cutting-edge health experts say they should be.

Though he emphasizes weight loss, even Atkins addresses this in his book (and, happily, many other authors emphasize long-term health over weight loss). The eventual goal is to convert to a healthy pattern of eating, which means grain-free, sugar-free, artificial-sweener-free, trans-fatty-acid-free. It means eating lots of real food (meat, eggs, vegetables, berries year round and moderate amounts of other local fruit in season, nuts, and seeds--and cooking them yourself to guarantee they are healthy). Such eating should not cause obesity.

However, many people come to this board with too-low weight goals. If we've been overweight our whole lives, it's unlikely we're ever going to get into size 5's. Aiming for an appropriate size (as you seem to have done), then maintaining it, is crucial to long-term health.

This is really not a diet, but a permanent, healthy lifestyle change.

HTH