Your body needs carbs and sugar so don't cut them out altogether.
Wrong.
If you don't eat fat, you get sick, and if you continue to not eat fat, you die.
If you don't eat protein, you get sick, and if you continue to not eat protein, you die.
Ever notice how many folks in "health food" stores look really, really bad?
But if you don't eat sugar (carbohydrates essentially become glucose when digested, some just slower peaking than others), you don't die. In fact, you tend to have an increase in lean body mass, while at the same time losing fat stores.
Look at the science. And don't trust Atkins - Look at texts on how the body actually works, etc... A diet with a lot of carbohydrates tends to promote weight gain, and that weight generally ain't muscle... It also causes, after a time, a sort of "maintain the sugar buzz" change to one's system - pre-diabetes, where you eat, you crash, you eat again, etc., all of this flogging your pancreas to produce more and more insulin, which ends up producing more and more weight. Researchers are just now re-realizing that excess weight is not a CAUSE of diabetes, but a SYMPTOM.
NOTHING hacks me off so much as hearing from folks I know who are diabetic or pre-diabetic that their doctors/nutritionists TOLD them to eat rice, potatoes, etc...
If time comes where I have to defend myself, I wanna be in shape.