Believe me, I can identify with that. However, this year, after years of marching in place, I actually dropped a little lower. I hope you won't give up.

Nope. I never give up, but I do try new things to see if anything will work.

Stayed off the dairy for a full 7 days, now on Day 8! Had some sugar-sub the last few days as I made an almond flour cinnamon bun. I'm still having butter. At some point I will make some ghee and try to be 100% dairy free.

Not sure if being dairy free is helping me or not. Still have back/knee/hip pain. However, my appetite is down, but that is at least partially due to stopping a medication I was taking.

My blood ketones were .9 yesterday afternoon and NF BG was 80. So those numbers look good! I keep forgetting to look at my FBG.

I have been eating some squash, both summer and winter varieties. Not a huge amount of the carbier sort, but a little serving once a day.

When you're done, we'll compare notes. I ran out of ketone strips a couple of weeks ago but I do have about 20 days worth of data.

Hey, good luck on your whole7! I was thinking about doing a whole-something. I can't decide if my diet is out of hand enough to do that type of thing.

Looks like you're off to a strong start! Will be interested to see how it goes for you.

Well, yesterday was a steroid injection into my spine and I had some cheese when I was seized with steroid hunger. However, that cheese is gone, so it shouldn't be an issue in the future.

Back on track now, just going to feed myself a bit more protein for a few days and see if I can get the hunger subdued again.

Just in case there's anyone on here doing a Whole [something], I'm on my 5th day into a November Whole 30. Been lacking the motivation for 2 years(!) to do this again, but luckily I introduced my office-mate to the Primal Blueprint over a year ago and she's raring to go as well. Luckily, she's incredibly disciplined when it comes to challenges and whatnot, so it's really upped my game!

Sometimes it just clicks and at the moment *touch wood* I'm still feeling good about it. Just want to wish anyone on a challenge good luck!

Hey, Nancy! I see your weight is under 183

Don't expect too much from just 7 days.
I don't think I've ever noticed an immediate improvement from cutting out a certain food. I just feel the same as usual and then when I try to add it back (months later) it'll make me feel bad (or not, if I don't have a problem with it). It's very gradual (not sudden like when you cut out carbs). Then one day you notice that the pain isn't as bad or it's gone. I had chronic tendonitis problems and it took and long time to slowly fade away.
I did an elimination diet recently (well, I'm still doing it but I've been able to add several things back so it's not super restrictive) and it took me almost 2 months of basically just eating meat/fish, zucchini, carrots, coconut oil and lard till I started to notice that I felt better. I used to have to get up every night to eat something so my stomach wouldn't hurt (ulcer problems) now I can make it through the night without eating (sometimes I have to drink water). So results aren't always felt right away.

Well, I put myself back on the antinflammatories so my weight is now going up again. **sigh**

I'm very tentatively trying cutting out dairy - this is day 3. On day one I wasn't even sure I'd make it the whole day. And a Whole 30 is still far too overwhelming for me.

I'm already eating whole-foods very low carb (carbs <20) so it's really a question of taking out dairy to get me to Whole something. Although I won't add back in the carbs (fruits and many veggies) so it's mainly about cutting dairy (except butter - I have access to raw, grass-fed, amazing butter).

Maybe I can get through 7 days. I'm interested to see if cutting dairy makes a difference in hunger and weight loss. I'm not sure how long I'd need to notice a real difference.

Well, I'm on day 6 of dairy free. I'm thinking of trying to go 14 days.

It helps that I went through my favorite recipes and tagged with "Paleo" and found a bunch that qualify so I can see another week not being too difficult. Plus my husband is away for dinner most nights this week which also makes my eating simpler.

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see as a difference with dairy out of my diet. The scale moved down a smidge but honestly I was expecting that to happen anyway. I'm not sure I feel any difference in hunger or anything else, although maybe having another food group restricted makes me less interested in food (easier to see it just a fuel instead of as something to look forward to?). It's a small change if one at all, and not sure it would be worth the feeling of restriction that I feel (that I don't feel on regular low carb) but maybe another week will give me a better idea?

Some of the things to look for (at least that happens with me):

Less achy muscles
Less acne
Less phlegm and post-nasal drip
Less appetite (I think dairy spurs me to eat more than I should)
Less constipation (cheese)

People are different though.

It definitely does help to look through and plan out your week first so you don't panic and go "Oh noes! I can't eat anything!"

I did 21 days without dairy, and analyzed my results here :
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=457032

Maybe a better way of thinking of it is that marching in place is better than gaining a ton of weight and additional health problems. Nipping a 4-lb gain in the bud with techniques that work is a good tool to have.