http://www.turner-white.com/pdf/jcom_nov09_diet.pdf
Diets differing in macronutrient characteristics (fat, protein, and carbohydrate) achieved equivalent weight loss.
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/arti...ticleid=415074
A low-carbohydrate plant-based diet has lipid-lowering advantages over a high-carbohydrate, low-fat weight-loss diet in improving heart disease risk factors not seen with conventional low-fat diets with animal products. BUT of the 47 subjects, 44 (94%) (test, n = 22 [92%]; control, n = 22 [96%]) completed the study. Weight loss was similar for both diets (approximately 4.0 kg). (Essentially a high-carb diet may be bad for your heart).
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/95/3/614.short
Conclusion: Participants lost more fat than lean mass after consumption of all diets, with no differences in changes in body composition, abdominal fat, or hepatic fat between assigned macronutrient amounts. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT00072995.
I can go on and on if you want. I have read the insulin studies that you are referring to but all they show is that higher insulin levels are associated with fat gain/retention. Which, honestly, isn't a big surprising considering people who eat a lot tend to have higher insulin levels. In addition, you cannot simply look at how insulin effects fat gain without also looking at the rest of the body. Perhaps insulin does make you retain fat. Perhaps it also promotes another hormone that makes you lose fat. The only way to truly test these diets is through clinical trials of people on such diets, not through looking at mechanisms. Mechanisms are interesting but until we have a complete view of the human body, which we are woefully far away from, they are nothing more. They cannot be used to extrapolate conclusions.
BTW, I am a highly educated professional. Do not think I would believe for a second something I read on a bodybuilding website without first checking its source.
I realize that none of these studies tested the traditional 0-10% carbohydrates that atkins promotes so it is entirely possible that once you reach a certain threshold of carbohydrates/insulin, it makes no difference whether you have more. However, such an interpretation strikes me as quite odd and less logical than my belief that our understanding of the insulin mechanisms is simply woefully inadequate.
BTW, google scholar has a surprising number of free articles. But I do have access to Yale's library for when I run into an article I cannot get "for free".
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1....2008.529/full
In rats, atkins diet resulted in body weight loss (not body fat percentage decrease) and then in body weight gain above and beyond the baseline. Essentially atkins creates a situation where the rats would gain weight once they returned to a regular diet despite the fact that they were eating less calories than the control group.