Survey Reveals How Many People Have Tried Atkins And Hated It

A recent survey done by Health Digest yielded some surprising results when it came to looking at what popular diets readers tried, hated, and quit. The three least popular (but most-tried diets) were the keto diet, the South Beach diet, and the Atkins diet. All three have one thing in common: They're low carbohydrate diets that focus on eating more fat and protein, often in the form of meat. What makes them so difficult to stick with?

The Atkins Diet was hated by over 16 percent of people surveyed, with 11 percent disliking the South Beach diet and a whopping 21 percent of responders trying and hating the keto diet. It's not surprising: Most standard American diets are carbohydrate-based, and the shift to a low-carbohydrate diet can be tough, particularly in the early days of adopting one. There's a reason that people refer to the feelings of illness and fatigue in early days of keto as the keto flu (via Harvard Health Publishing). And the keto flu isn't just for keto diet followers, since all three of these low-carb diets overlap in their main principles.

Why is the Atkins diet so hard?

With the Atkins Diet, in the early stages, you're only eating 20 grams of net carbohydrates, which allows for some vegetables since carbohydrates from fiber are subtracted from your net total. That means going from a typical American diet of 45 to 60 percent carbohydrates to under 10 percent of your daily intake coming from carbohydrates (via the Mayo Clinic).

The Atkins diet is also tough to stick with because it makes eating out difficult. "You can't just hang out with your friends anymore and go grab lunch somewhere or meet someone after work for a drink, because the food that is generally available to us doesn't fit that diet," Wendy Wood, a psychology professor, told Business Insider about low-carb diets in general.

And while a low-carb diet like Atkins may have simple rules to follow, having enough willpower to stick with a diet that's so restrictive can be difficult, especially in the long term. And low-carb diets can be tricky because if you do accidentally or purposefully have a high-carb meal, it can be difficult to get back on track, since that may pull your body away from ketosis, or simply put you back into your normal, old eating routing (via Healthline).