I'm a little frustrated and worried since eliminating carbs from my diet because I have not lost any weight, and if anything I seem to have gained 1 pound. Before this, I was trying to eat low-calorie but I was really suffering from hunger and weakness, and I would binge a lot.

I'm eating more food and more frequently since starting this diet, since one of my main issues before was feeling weak, dizzy, and shaky between meals. I thought if I eliminated carbs and ate more frequently, I could lose weight and stop feeling bad between meals.

For breakfast, I've been eating plain yogurt with grain-free and sugar-free granola, sometimes with about 1/4 cup of some fruit like berries. For lunch I usually eat meat or fish with a salad. For snacks I eat cheeses (maybe about 4 pieces total), salami (about 5 slices) celery and peanut butter, and cucumber and carrots with hummus. For dinner I eat different things, but it's always basically meat with vegetables. At night I usually have a glass of milk with sugar-free 0-calorie chocolate syrup or about 1 cup of chocolate carbsmart icecream.

I have been kind of low on my exercise lately and I haven't been keeping up with it properly. Usually I exercise about three or four times a week for about 15 minutes at a time on an elliptical.

I've had my thyroid and blood checked by my doctor for the dizziness between meals, but she said she didn't see anything unusual in my results.

Is it the increase in food that's making me unsuccessful? Too much dairy? not enough exercise? I'm not really sure. I really thought when I cut out carbs I would definitely lose weight, at least initially.

Check the carbs you're eating. Eating granola is far from a typical low carb diet. Also, people who have high blood sugar will get false hypoglycemia when it starts to come down. It will pass, but eating more protein and fat may help.

Check out the salt thread too. That helps with the "flu like" symptoms.

Dont eat any sugar substitutes or anything sweet - so no berries, granola, chocloate syrup, icecream, carrots, humous, milk. (Look at their carb counts) Certainly not until you're in ketosis and comfortable with this way of eating.

Eat low carb natural food, keeping the carbs down to under 25g per 100g and mainly eat fat and protein.

Jo xxx

I see that your diet is The Glycemic Load diet and I wonder if that is necessarily Low Carb (fewer than 50 gms carb per day.) Most of us here eat LCHF and follow the "no snack" rule because every time we eat, insulin goes up. When that happens, no body fat is burned.

We tend to concentrate on eating real food, only when actually hungry.

LC eating is like pregnancy, you can't be a little bit pregnant. Eating too many carbs will always keep you wanting to eat more.

Thanks for all your advice. I guess I thought it was enough just to remove all grains and added sugar from my diet to be "low carb." I'm going to take the advice and put myself on a more strict diet. I'll take a look at some Atkins meal plans.

Give it a try!! I found that within the first 10 days, my appetite went and my cravings, sweet stuff went and I lost weight!!
Good luck and you can always have a look at the trials and tribulations on here or ask if you're not sure

Jo xxx

I agree with the advice you were given so far. You need to get enough healthy fats. That is what is going to stabalize your appetite. Make sure you drink enough water. These are all things I had to learn the hard way, thru trial and error

While I completely agree with everything that has been said so far, I have a question for you.

Why do you want to lose weight when your weight, at 128 pounds is completely normal for a 5'3 woman?

If I were you, I would relax a little and keep eating as you are doing. By all means drop the carbs, because that is the healthy way to go, but please don't fret over whether or not you need to lose any more. If you do lose some, that's fine, but if you don’t, that’s fine too.

lot's of great advice already was given, but i would add to Roz's point re: your weight. As you are not really overweight, you will lose it very slowly, compared to folks who are obese. Also, a pound is not a gain. weight fluctuates several pounds, so relax, you might just need to poop
it looks like your plan is much higher than a ketogenic plan, but without the granola, it looks like a maintenance plan for a healthy, active person to me (I would not consider an hr on an elliptical to be "active.").
So I would drop the granola for sure, and then maybe switch the milk for almond milk, choose cucumber slices and baba gnoiush over carrots and hummus, etc....add the berries back once you get further along i your plan....
for example, i eat hummus 4 times a week- which is an 8 serving tub. but i am not trying to lose weight.....for someone trying to lose, i would go for baba gnoiush, guacamole, fresh salsa, tzatiki, etc.....for a dip.