Cris, I understand where you're coming from, but be careful and please update us after you've hopefully successfully moved to a reasonable, healthy diet. I don't see much wrong with using Atkins to simply shed the weight, as long as it isn't the long-term solution. I know that the diet works, as my father went on it a few times, one of which allowed him to lose a significant amount of weight. The problem was that he and my mom never shifted to the proper diet afterwards and went back to eating whatever.