MARCH 29, 2009 - WEEK 2 INDUCTION RESULTS

Weight on Day 1 - 150 pounds
Weight on Day 15 - 148.5 pounds

Waist on Day 1 - 31.5"
Waist on Day 15 - 31.5"

Thigh on Day 1 - 24.5"
Thigh on Day 15 - 24" (Yippee!)

Here is an average of my daily food intake for this past week:

1874 Calories

139.5g Fat (67%)

120.4g Protein

34.2g Carbs

13.6g Fiber

20.7g net carbs, of which 15g came from veggies

I have given up cheese and avocado all together, to see if it will help my weight loss. I'm drinking 75 oz. of water every day, sometimes more.

For the first 10 days, I took no supplements. On Day 11 I started taking vitamin/mineral and Omega 3 fish oil supplements.

For the first 14 days, I did no exercise. On Day 15, I began my walking program with an 18 minute mile (3.33 mph).

I am on fitday.com, and I wonder how I lived all this time without it!

I am eating more food than I've ever eaten in my life, and I'm lovin' it!

My only complaints have been a mild headache during week 1, and a few middle of the night leg cramps since I started. Oh, and that I haven't lost 12 pounds at first like some of you guys! :-}

Induction is not always a big weight loss time, as I've been told. So I'm hanging in there! Plus, I am dealing with a medical problem that causes weight gain, so we will see if the resolution of that will help!

For everyone who is struggling with a slow weight loss, you hang in there, too!

Oh, and about moving on into OWL: I will go up to the next level on Day 22 of Induction. I am extremely metabolically resistant, so I've giving myself one more week, but no more! Wherever I am on Day 22, I'm movin' on up!

MARCH 22, 2009 - WEEK 1 INDUCTION RESULTS

Went from 150 pounds to 148.5
Waist was 33", and is still 33"
Thigh was 24.5" and is now 23.5"

Here is an average of my daily food intake for this past week:

1759 Calories

129.8g Fat (66.4%)

111.1g Protein

36.6g Carbs

16.3g Fiber

20.2g net carbs, of which 15g came from veggies

I am drinking 75 oz. of water each day. I have cut down my cheese to 2 oz. per day, as I have heard too much can stall weight loss with some people.

It's been a good week! It would have been fun to lose more weight, but I'm not dissatisfied! How could I be, with all the wonderful, non-diety food I've been eating all week!

I am going to my granddaughter's 2nd birthday party this afternoon, so wish me luck! I will have nothing that's not on Induction! I would rather go hungry and eat when I get home.

MARCH 15, 2009 - ATKINS - TAKE 2

I would not want anyone to go through what I went through the first time, which also led to the next nine years of yo-yo dieting which left me at the heaviest weight of my life – 158 pounds.

The day I hit my highest weight – February 25, 2009 - was the day that I started The Zone diet. Over the next three weeks, I lost 8 pounds, but I was starving the whole time, eating only 1,000 calories per day. According to that diet, that is the amount of food I would have to eat for the rest of my life! No thanks! I now know that not only is it hard to starve all the time, but it is unhealthy and unnecessary!

When my husband's doctor told him on March 13, 2009, to go back to Atkins, I was heartbroken. Not again! I just can't do it again! And I can't have the two people in my house eating completely different menus, either.

That same night, I found the Atkins website. I looked at what the plan is all about. I couldn't believe it! Vegetables required? Net carbs? If you don’t lose weight, eat 5 net carbs more vegetables? This was not what I remembered from the first time on Atkins…

I read as much as I could on the website that Friday night, made up a shopping list on Saturday and went shopping for low carb foods, plus some really bad food to eat that day. Last chance, right? And on Sunday morning, March 15, 2009, we started Atkins.

MARCH 15, 2009 - MEAT, EGGS AND CHEESE!

On my computer, dated August 31, 2000, is my menu for my first day of Atkins (this was before net carbs - I was just counting carbs):

Breakfast
3 slices bacon (0 carbs)
1 oz. cheese (0 carbs)

Lunch
1/2 cup cooked chicken breast (0)
4 green olives (0)
2 slices bacon (0)
1/4 cup celery (2.1)
2 Tbs. mayo (0)
2 slices deli ham (0)

Dinner
2 hamburger patties (0)
1 oz. cheese (0)
a few bites of vegetables (5.5)
a few bites of pork steak (0)
2 slices American cheese (2)
1 piece low carb chocolate (3)

Total Carbs for the Day - 12.6

Yay! I'm doing Atkins! But wait... I GAINED 2 POUNDS?!

This basic diet went on for 9 days. By then, with going up and down with weight, I was 1.5 pounds heavier than when I started! What was I doing wrong? I was eating less and less every day, trying to get it to work! I was already down to 1000 calories per day, which, when you are eating nothing but protein and fat, is really only a few bites of food each day. Something had to change! I went back to the book, and decided to change what I was eating.

Here is my menu for September 9, 2000:

Breakfast - 2 oz. cream cheese (0)
Lunch - 2 oz. cream cheese (0)
Snack - 2 oz. cream cheese (0)
Dinner - 2 oz. cream cheese (0)
Snack - 2 oz. cream cheese (0)

Weight loss for the day - 2 pounds! Now, I thought, I'm on to something!

I kept this up for 4 total days and lost 5.5 pounds!

The next day, I incorporated a steak into my cream cheese diet, and immediately gained 1/2 pound.

Back to the cream cheese! Another day of cream cheese, and I lost the 1/2 pound again. Whew! That was a close one!

So the next day I tried having an Atkins Advantage Bar and a few macadamia nuts with my cream cheese. I gained another pound!

I guess you can see where this is headed.

I continued to cut calories and carbs, until, at the end of 20 days, I was 5.5 pounds lighter, eating 1000 calories per day, 5-10 total carbs per day ( not net carbs!) and I was starving and miserable!

I even called the Atkins Center, where they put a $75 charge on my credit card and told me I needed to cut out all carbs, and eat nothing but protein and fat. And that if, when I tried to add carbs back in later, I started to gain weight, I should spend the rest of my life eating no carbs.

Would anybody be surprised to know that I quit on Day 21?

In the meantime, my husband was eating all the meat, cheese, fat, and eggs he could stuff in his mouth! Within a few months, he had lost 35 pounds.

As time went on, it didn't seem to be working for him anymore. I accused him of cheating. He denied it. He got off of Atkins and started eating a "regular" American diet again with me and gained back all the weight.

MARCH 15, 2009 - ATKINS - TAKE 1

I thought I would give you a little background on how I got involved with the low carb lifestyle. In the year 2000, all I had heard about Atkins was it was some horrible fad diet that was killing people. Then my dear friend, who was substantially overweight, went on it and lost about 30 pounds really fast.

When she told me what she was doing, I actually said, "Really?! Well, I hope you don't die!" She took that crack pretty well, and calmly told me that I should read the book before I passed judgment.

She was right - all I knew about Atkins were the rumors I had heard about eating pounds of bacon, dozens of eggs and slabs of cheese and butter. Everyone who goes on Atkins has a heart attack, right?

So I read the book. No, I inhaled the book, in one sitting, and I was totally convicted by what I read. By the end of the day, I was asking my husband if he would mind trying a new diet. "You'll like this one," I told him. "All you have to do is eat as much meat, eggs and cheese as you want!" He had 35 pounds to lose and I had 25.

In my haste to absorb the main points of Atkins, I somehow missed a few important things, like that you are supposed to eat veggies. Well, in my defense, he did give an example in the book about a man who could only lose weight and then maintain that weight when he ate zero carb.

We started the next day and ate nothing but meat, fish, fowl, eggs and cheese, all in unlimited quantities. I knew that we were also supposed to eat a small salad and a cup of cooked vegetables each day, but I was afraid to do that part, because my friend didn't do that, and I wanted her success.