ExRx.net

Low Carb vs. Atkins
You might be thinking of Atkins diet as you are reading my diet plan but there are differences and they should be clarified. Atkins is a low carb diet, but it is a different approach to a similar concept. The Atkins diet has 4 phases, Induction, Ongoing Weight Loss (OWL), Pre-maintenance, Lifetime Maintenance. Induction is the most controversial part of the Atkins diet. This part lasts for generally 2 weeks and the carb intake is only a mere 20 carbs in a day. Things that can go wrong in this part are vitamin deficiencies, bowel issues, and carb crash. The only reason these problems will occur is if the diet is done wrong. It is very easy to do on Atkins. The book consists of 500 pages and you need to read and understand the whole thing to be able to safely and effectively do the diet. My version takes up the length of several pages. The Atkins approach during induction allows you to eat anything you want as long as you don’t pass the 20g of net carbs. You may be thinking, "wow that’s awesome, I can eat all I want", but it's not. Since all you really eat is meat you are getting an excess of saturated fat, which throws off the 1:1:1 ratio of fats (as stated below in greater detail), which should be avoided. My version you won’t have to worry about that, as long as you eat a wide variety of meat, some dairy, veggies, nuts you will be good to go.

I will give a brief explanation of the 3 other phases:
OWL comes after Induction and this is where you raise you net carb intake by 5g per week to find your “Critical Carbohydrate Level for Losing” then stay at that level. After you get within 10lbs of your target weight you then move on to Pre-maintenance phase. This phase is where you raise you net carb intake by 10g per week until you find your "Critical Carbohydrate Level for Maintenance". The last phase is Lifetime Maintenance, this phase is where you take all the things you have learned from the previous phases and apply them on a daily basis to keep the weight off. That is the ‘basic’ version of Atkins. That in my opinion is too complicated of a system to get weight to come off. But if you are up for reading the book and close to obsessively counting carbs then it will work as an effective diet plan.

1. It has been my experience that people who lose weight the fastest seem to put it back on the fastest.
...
There are probably many reasons for this, the biggest being that people go on a diet without really making basic life-style changes, particularly in activity level.

1. It has been my experience that people who lose weight the fastest seem to put it back on the fastest.

I have a vague recollection of reading some research support for that, but it was a long time ago. Most people who have lost wt. with Adkins (or lots of other diets) have regained it.

Also, the more that people feel like a diet deprives them of things that are important to them, the more willing they are to give it up. I think that "eat less of this" and "eat more of that" are more effect messages than "eliminate this" and "eat only that."

In your comments about saturated fats and about cholesterol content, I know that you are speaking to basically healthy people. However, when you say, "Don't be worried about the cholesterol; as long as your diet is balanced and you are exercising continuously then there are no worries" you might want to add "unless your cholesterol is already high." Something similar for saturated fats.

You should read Good Calorie Bad Calorie and watch Fat Head too. Those have a lot of great information.