Add some fats to your diet, you do need more than 900 calories. Have a hearty salad with cheese and dressing, maybe some sliced chicken on top? You might want to squeeze in a couple of snacks as well;-) And I have to agree about avoiding the bars and shakes. Eat whole foods as much as you can. If you need something easy and convenient, try making flax seed meal muffins, deviled eggs, string cheese... these are all easy to grab, eat, and go!

There's a "rule of thumb" that you should eat 10-12 times your current body weight in calories in order to lose.

So... 900 calories isn't going to work out real well for you.

The reason you're tired is because you're not eating enough. Along with not eating enough food, you could very well not be getting enough food... you need 20 net carbs a day on Induction, with 12-15 of them coming from vegetables.

And, if you're not drinking ALL your water (and only water is water), that won't help you not be tired either.

sj miller

Atkins since 12/29/03
maintenance since 9/23/05

"Any suggestions on upping my cals? My TYPICAL day looks like: Scrambled eggs for breakfast, bar for lunch, chicken breast with my veggies for dinner."

This is not nearly enough food and definitely not enough fat. The bar is not allowed on induction and may not be so good for you, either. How about a meat with your scrambled eggs, something else for lunch and some snacks and dark meat for dinner. Also, you should be eating salad, not so much veggies. Eating a bit of cheese here and there can help.

Janine

You could also try adding an avocado or 1/2 of an avocado to your day. They are so yummy, have a lot of fiber and some creamy good fat for you to enjoy!

Girl, you need to eat some more food. Also, not everyone loses large amounts on induction, but continued low carbing results in continuous weight loss. Have patience, eat, drink water. The induction flu does go away and may still be present once you eat more calories for a time, but does go away.

My first reply seems un-necessarily short, and I apologize for that. As everyone has stated, you just aren't eating enough. So many time people get hung up on the calorie piece, and just cannot accept that (at least in the beginning) calories just don't matter.

So many great ways to add fat to your diet, everyone has listed some, my fave is avocado, cut in bite size pieces and then sprinkled with vinegarette. so wonderful. And I will jump on the start a journal bandwagon. It really will help if you list your foods daily, nothing fancy if you don't have the time, just list them. Sometimes when you SEE what you are eating, you can figure out what is broke in your woe.
good luck

Thanks to everyone for their reply. I went to the doctor yesterday to tell him my woes and also get my blood work done. He said I should up my cals to between 1000 and 1200. Which, surprisingly, when you're eating hardly any carbs, is NOT EASY!!!! I don't like cheese or may or stuff like that. So it's a learning process. He also mentioned it takes some people a month to really get into Ketosis/Lyposis.

Thanks for the Avocado idea. I LOVE THEM!

I've dropped the bars and shakes as well as my beloved Onions from my omlettes . I did a Keto strip yesterday and I was excreting only a small amount. The book suggests that Onion could be the problem. I am going to see how this week goes.

Small amounts still mean ketosis, by the way.

Fat is the best way to up calories...but you dont like cheese or mayo, which are two of the easiest ways.

It is so cool your doc is on board with your WOE. Good luck!

My doctor gave me a big huge motivational speech yesterday. I've lost 15 pounds since I began taking accountibility for my food (which is May). He said as long as I'm not gaining and the numbers are going down (even if it takes a year!) it's a good thing. I know I'm lucky to have a supportive doc.

I'll eat mayo, but it just is sort of icky to me I'm gonna keep trying

I think you'll be surprised (pleasantly?) at how the stuff that used to seem icky to you will soon be your absolute favorite!!

You really are doing GREAT!!

Olives, cream, cream cheese, coconut oil (in your coffee, perhaps?) and olive oil (drizzled on steamed veggies, maybe?) are all great ways to add some calories, as well as fat soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids, to your diet;-) I know you said that you don't like cheese, but maybe shredded and mixed in with salad greens? Or some real blue cheese salad dressing? Can you tolerate mayo in tuna or egg salad? Or in deviled eggs?

What does the book say to do when you're not losing weight?

I doubt very much you will lose on 1000 - 1200 calories a day.

That's "starvation mode".

You might want to check your BMR at www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

Most people can eat 250 calories ABOVE their BMR and lose.

If your doctor understands low carb, or Atkins, your doctor should know that the calories he told you to eat isn't good.

That's the problem right there.

Consuming only 900 calories will lower your metabolism to a screeching halt.

You need calories to keep your metabolic furnace up and running. try these few steps:

1. Don't eat a lot of cheese. Cheese will stall you faster than a 1963 Winnebego. Cheese should be eaten as little as possible. When I eat a lot of cheese (about a 1 cup or more) I stall.

2. Don't eat a lot of salt and DO drink a lot of water. Drink a LOT of water. But not all at one time. Do it in sips. You need the water to help flush your fat byproducts from your body. If you're only drinking about 30 oz of water a day, they can attribute to your stall. Salt will keep that water in causing water gain.

3. Eat fat but not too much. When you eat fat, your body spends the entire day burning off the fat you ate during the day and burning your stored fat only at night when you are sleeping. However, if you are exercising a lot then you can burn off your stored fat during the day if you eat moderates amount of fat.

I consume about 13 gms of carbs and 20 gms of fat a day plus 200 gm of protein. So far, it's been working for me. A pound a day since June 10. My wife is loosing a lot as well.

4. Stay the hell away from coffee (sorry for the language lol but its true!). Coffee is a stall magnet. You've got sooo many carbs creeping in one cup it aint funny. If you use three splenda, some whipping creme and a venti size of coffee at Starbucks, that's about 5 gms of carbs; about the same amount of a full plated breakfast of eggs and sodium free bacon.

5. Stay away from frankenfoons and processed foods. cheap hotdogs, sausage links, prepackaged bacon = yuck. Get it all fresh. Fresh cut bacon from the butcher is not only TASTIER but it is also better for you: no hidden chemicals.

6. EXERCISE! I walk (fast walk) about 3 to 4 miles a day at work and it helps. The days I dont walk I loose about .3 pounds a day. The days I do work, I loose over 1 a day. Exercise IS KEY.

I have heard this repeated in several forms all over the internet, everything from "dietary fat is burned before stored body fat", to "dairy fat is burned first, then animal fat, then stored body fat"... but when I have asked nutritionists (and others) if this was true, I could never get a straight answer. When I stated it elsewhere in this forum, someone took me to task on it, and try as I could, I could not find a solid source for this, only hearsay. What is your source on this information? And if it's true, how is it that people lose faster on a fat fast (when they eat almost all fatty foods and little carbs)? I'm not trying to start anything, I honestly want to know. Is this fact, or one of those things that gets repeated so many times that people just assume that it's true?