Thanks for the answers.
I guess there is still a part of the question unclear to me.
I actually agree on the
food quality points of the paleo critique of Atkins (or other low carb). The food quality argument is particularly valid to critique Atkins per se (a critique many on this site share from what I've seen, with the promotion of Atkins bars, shakes, candy...)
I've actually personally always been whole-foods Atkins and just because of my own preferences never ate seed oils, we are foodies and buy very high quality pastured meat, etc so I'd say I've always been "primal" even if I feel more comfortable in the "low carb" label.
And I can accept the
lifestyle factors as good advice (even if I don't follow most of them, largely because I'm far more focused on weight than the other stuff and also because I have little kids and the sleep recommendations sound dreamy but laughable at this stage of my life! But the lifestyle advice doesn't explain the dissing of low carb.
The
crossfit/heavy exercise argument is a sound one to me. I'm sure some of the hard core athletes need more carbs than I do, and while maybe they can do low carb and exercise like they want to, maybe they can't, or don't want to, fair enough.
Of course, one thing that seems so strange is how the paleo community generally accepts, or even advocates for "cheat meals" and "80/20" rules, which frankly bring their diets farther afield from their ideals than most Atkins-bar-drinking low carbers are probably doing...
But I guess the stuff that I'm still not understanding is the "hard on the adrenals" and "bad for thyroid" arguments against low carb paleo for healthy weight loss. The frequent advice I see in paleoland to tell other paleo followers that they need to eat more starch, as opposed to dissing the Atkins community.
I actually just spent a few minutes googling, looking for an example of the paleo-hate I'm talking about, and instead ran across this article (well, it's a whole series, but this was the best of the bunch) of Robb Wolf's take on low carb. And basically he concludes that for anyone "doughy in the middle" (sheepishly raises hand!) that low carb is advisable.
http://robbwolf.com/2013/01/09/thou...episode-3-hope/
So I'll just dismiss the "paleo perfectionists" for now. It's true that I'm following several "perfectionist" things these days, AIP is very demanding and rigorous.