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The Atkins diet may be helping you lose weight but any diet can be dangerous...and the atkins is particulalry notable in a biochemical sense.
From my biochemistry text book:
"This so called diet appears to work at first because a low-carb diet results in an initial water loss. This occurs because glycogen reserves are depleted by the diet and because about 3 grams of water of hydration are lost for every gram of glycogen. However, the long term results are usually dissappointing for several reasons. First, ketone body excretion by the human body usually does not exceed 20 grams per day (this is the scientific premise of the atkins diet: dietary fat goes through the Krebs cycle and are converted to ketone bodies). Second amino acids can replace carbohydrates in supplying the neccessary Kreb's Cycle intermediates, making the lack of carbs irrelevant. Finally a high fat diet is a high risk factor for artherosclerosis and coronoary artery disease.
There are also a lot of issues in getting the correct vitamins through the atkin's diet. A multivitamin certainly is necessary to go along with the diet.
Also the book points out that the diet gets old quickly and is thus another reason why it's hard to maintain.
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