I have been on and off the Atkins diet. I've found that the Atkins diet works for me in terms of weight loss, when I follow it strictly. After a while, though, I found that I desperately missed my bread and rice (not so much the soda and ice cream, interestingly).
So I'm currently following a "lowish-carb" diet. I eat complex carbs but not simple sugars, and I eat far less than the 300g/day the US government recommends, but not as little as the 20g/day the Atkins diet calls for. This allows me to maintain my weight, and that's fine with me
