skamito,

that's not how I read it, it appears from this study that even those who apparently stuck with the diet gained the wt. back:

"Among those who did stay in the programs, the differences in the amount of weight lost on the two diets were not drastic and, in the one-year study, those following Atkins started gaining weight back after six months, resulting in no significant weight-loss differences between the two diets by the end of the year."

there must be an explanation - from my own experience, and from those people I know personally that are following this diet, not to mention dozens and dozens of people on this message board, this is not a typical result.

anyway, Jane Brody just trots out the usual suspects when it comes to knocking the atkins diet, which are:

it's a low calorie diet in disguise...
it's just water weight....
no long term studies on health effects....
don't get to eat all those super healthy fruits and vegetables...

yawn.....