We have been low-carbing for 2 years on Sugar Busters, which caused me to gain weight (from 148 to 155), but everyone else in my family lost --- my husband lost 60# and is back to his 174 which is what he weighed when I met him. My longtime baseline weight was 130-135. I felt great while I was SB, but got off of it because I was gaining, and went low-fat low-carb (Body-For-Life without most of the carbs) and doing the Joyce Vedral workout and finally lost a couple of pounds. Miserable the whole time, by the way...Starving all day with hunger never going away!

So one month ago I got on heavy duty Atkins, (rest of family living well on SB) and I've been gaining weight and inches every since. I am currently on the fat fast, drinking tons of water, using L-carnitine, EFA's, and Q-10 coenzyme, and am decaffeinated. Throughout the last 2 years, I've been such a stickler about not cheating. I count my carbs religiously (less than 20/day), including the couple of pieces of Trident gum (Splenda/Recaldent) that I chew while at work, and my scrub pants are getting tighter. A couple of the other nurses that I work with are also on Atkins and losing weight, but they are as distressed as I am because they are watching me gain, and they know I'm not cheating.

Thyroid's OK, trig's and Chol are way normal (on low end) and I don't fit into those "yeast" or "syndrome X" profiles. I take low-dose birth control. Otherwise, no meds.

I have not done any Joyce Vedral since I started Atkins a month ago...but I take the stairs at work, and it KILLS my quads since I've been doing Atkins. The stairs have never hurt me like this, and I was used to doing them 3 and 4 flights at a time with very little trouble prior to 4 weeks ago.

I have contacted the Atkins people on their website, and am waiting for a response about what I should do.

Have you ever encountered anyone with my problem?

Can you post some of your day's menus? Someone here might be able to figure out what's up.

Cindy

cream cheese and macadamia nuts right now--an ounce of cream cheese every 2 to 3 hours, and an ounce of macadamia nuts in the afternoon between the cream cheese...I started this yesterday and am continuing this today, but don't think I can do it very long...

The past 4 weeks, I've been eating 2 eggs fried with about 6 pieces of bacon ( sometimes 4 or 5) for breakfast.

Lunch has been a chicken breast cooked in butter and olive oil with a couple of tablespoons of cream for the drippings (that tastes kind of like a "gravy" to me).

Dinner is salad (about 2 cups romaine) with a couple of red onion rings, one or 2 chopped boiled eggs, about 1/4 cup grated cheddar, and some grilled chicken breast (about 1/2 chicken breast). Dressing is Hidden Valley Ranch mixed with mayo and 1/2 cream 1/2 water. Occasionally a grilled beef patty (can get 3 of these out of 1 lb. of ground chuck) with melted cheddar on it with same salad sans chicken.

80-120 oz water a day, not including coffee.

No Milk!!! No diet drinks!

Christmas Eve I had artichoke dip (about 1/2 cup) that I made with mayo and shredded parmesan, dipped it with homemade "cheese chips", but only ate bacon and eggs that morning.

I have cream in my coffee (decaf with 1 tsp cream per cup, about 4 cups a day, 1 pkt of splenda per cup) I've been eating almost no veggies (except salad) because I'm trying to keep the carbs low!

You already know about the gum.

The day before yesterday I made a soup similar to the Tuscan Soup at Olive Garden using 1 lb. Hot Italian sausage sauteed with 1/2 an onion and 4 pieces of bacon in bacon drippings, added 2 cups chicken broth, and 1 cup cream. Added 8 oz. frozen spinach, and it was OINK! Had this for lunch and dinner Saturday, and the other half of the pot is still in the fridge.

Sorry this was so long, but this is pretty much what I've been eating for 4 weeks.

LD

Well for starters it sounds like your metabolism is pretty slow. I know your thyroid checked out normal, have you tried taking your temp -it is in Atkins book. One doctor told me my thyroid was normal I decided to get a 2nd opinion with a specialist who tested other things and put me on thyroid hormone. There is a lot of info on about.com. Before I took thyroid I didn't get into ketosis eating 15 carbs a day, now I do.

Otherwise you will have to be very careful-whatever plan you follow. Each cup of coffee, even decaf is 1 carb, each artificial sweetner also is a carb plus the cream, so 4 cups can add up fast. Cheese can also be a problem, cut it out for a week and see what happens.

In some people just the taste of sweet causes them to release insulin, you may not be able to chew gum or have sweet coffee without that happening.

Your quads may be hurting from not getting nutrients. Increase your calcium, magnesium. Mine get really tight, when I added 300mgs per day of mag in addition to my 100% from my daily vitamin it went away.

I admire your effort and once you figure out whats going on with your body I think you'll be rewarded, so don't give up.

Cut back on the bacon; it's high in sodium and it sounds like you're getting a lot of water retention. Nitrates also have a negative effect on some people weight loss-wise.
If you're still on induction, it seems like you may be going over your limit on both cheese and cream. Cheese is limited to 3-4 ounces a day and cream is limited to 2 fluid ounces (1/4 cup) per day.
Coffee has about 1 gram of carb per 8 ounces and artificial sweeteners have about 1 gram of carb per packet (these are limited to 2-3 packets a day on induction too), so those 4 cups of coffee with cream and artificial sweetener are adding up fast on you.
You can also try adding more veggies, either at breakfast or at lunch (or both if you feel brave ). I'd also suggest adding a potassium supplement along with the calcium/magnesium combo (check with your doctor first if you are taking any kinds of medication for blood pressure).

You're doing great on the water and that soup sounds delish...I think I'll give that one a try for a first course for New Year's dinner tomorrow.

I've never replied to someone's actual meal plan before, but I do have a suggestion I'd like to share. Cut out all the "man made" foods for awhile and see if you have an improvement.

Cut out bacon, cheese, store bought dressings, sour cream,coffee, sweetners, anything that isn't straight from the animal or plant.

Try 3-4 eggs for breakfast in butter, or softboiled.

Salad with a few other raw veggies, and oil/vinegar dressing you make yourself with a little salt and pepper. Then your meat too.

Same thing for dinner.

I'm realizing the more "junk" I eat, be it dressing or whatever, I don't seem to lose as well. I'm planning on going as natural as possible starting in the New Year.

I don't know, but it's sure worth the try.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to echo the same...and I base this on my own experience of battling the same 10 pounds up and down for 8 months...when I finally lost my appetite completely and started to lose, it gave me a chance to see what I had been doing wrong.

First, the cheese...I used to melt it on everything...it was legal, right? Yes, but can really slow down the works. Now, if I would like the taste of cheese, I have it with some salami or shred it onto a salad.

I have big salads...a LITTLE bit of bacon now, not my usual 6 slices with my 3 eggs. Now, just a little butter in the pan, two scrambled eggs...do without the cheese - save it for something better - and that's breakfast with my coffee (w/half and half).

I eat a LOT less in portions now...still don't count calories, but I do watch how much food I put away in a day. No matter what the plan, if MORE is going in than can be processed, there's going to be trouble.

Your water sounds good, and you're eating a good variety of foods. But macadamias KILLED my progress...yes, they're low in carbs but (and I hate to bring up the calories again ) but check out how much they are!!! All nuts tend to stall me, so for a while I would just nix them completely.

I wouldn't worry too much about carbs coming from the veggies...if there's one place you have to over-do it, that's not the worst. The fiber and roughage are good compensators for the few carbs they contain. Onions and tomatoes are high, carrots, of course, are out!

Try tweaking your menu just a bit and don't give up. You have the right determination and commitment...but like the rest of us, you have to find what combinations work for you.

Stay the course, check back in here with us!!

Happy New Year

Oink is right! I made it for the first course of our New Year's dinner tomorrow, but it wouldn't all fit in the bowl so I had to sample some tonight. I'm definitely going to add this one to my low carb recipes file.

Well,

That pretty much leaves me in despair. I have given up so much on this diet... now I guess it's plain meat, low-carb vegetables, and eggs. The cheese and the bacon were making the diet tolerable. I will commit to doing this for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

LD

LD...

I know that sounds pretty grim, but you can eat well without cream, bacon and cheese. Dairy, processed foods, caffeine and artificial sweeteners are stallers for a lot of people but not necessarily all of them. You can try eliminating all of them for a couple of weeks and see what happens. It's only for a few weeks. What have you got to lose except pounds? If you start losing, try adding them back in one at a time and see what happens. You may find that only one of those items was interefering with your weight loss or that you can have them, but in much smaller amounts. I know it seems terribly unfair that your co-workers are losing great eating whatever low carb foods they want but, as you're finding out, we're all different and the same thing doesn't work the same way for all of us. Each of us has had to experiment and tweak to find the right combination of carbs, foods and calories that works well for us. Keep trying...you'll get that scale to start moving downward soon!

CHECK YOUR THYROID RESULTS

Who says they are normal? There is a lot of debate going on about what is "normal". If you want I could take a look at them.... but you may have already checked this out...

Are you eating a little meals every 2-3 hours? Sometimes this works for people. What happens is that if you eat your meals far apart from eachother, the metabolism can go down.

Maybe you could start counting calories. It helps me.... (10 to 12 times your lbs = cals per day).

Maybe increasing your carbs a little and cutting down fat a little... also is working for me. You may be fat resistant... the Atkins book says that sometimes this happens.

I wish I could help more . Fortunatly, I don't run into many problems except for the ones above so I don't know of any more solutions. You are very strong to keep going. Dont get discouraged. YOU WILL GET THERE. YOU CAN BE A LOSER AGAIN!



Good Luck

Alex

Hiya Lumpy,

To me, that diet sounded like you needed more food!! You maybe robbing your body of well needed nutrients. That will cause those pains in your legs.

I'd like to address the "an ounce of cream cheese every 2-3 hours" Whoah...that's alot of cream cheese. Atkins recommends only about 4 ounces of cheese a day.

Try alternating your meal plan slightly, try turkey bacon instead of regular bacon, it is pretty good with less sodium, or you could try the low sodium regular bacon.

Try to have your salad at lunch time, with some meat like ham or roast beef from the deli, fill yourself up a little bit more. For dinner really try to eat some meat. Taco Salad, Burgers, Roast Beef, Pot Roast, Chicken...I hope things come together for you.

Are you keeping a log of exactly what you eat on Fitday.com?

I didn't know exactly how to say this but here goes. Maybe your body is happy and healthy right where you are. You're pretty tall and you work out so your pretty muscular. Your weight is in the normal range for your height, so maybe your just hurting your metabolism more than your helping yourself with dieting.

Have you measured your bodyfat?

I haven't measured the body fat, but it's pretty obvious in the mirror!

By the way, the deal with the cream cheese and macadamia nuts is on the Atkins web site, called a "Fat Fast"---I for sure don't do this every day, just was trying it for a couple of days to try and get a weight-loss kick-start.

This can't be an ideal weight for me...I am so much heavier and flabbier than I have ever been. But I will be increasing the exercise.

Thanks for all the support and advice...I'll just muddle on until I figure it out.

LD

Well, you say you are 5'6". I'm a smidge under 5'6" myself and have virtually no muscle on my body. At 115 I know I'd look horrific. But we are the same weight right now and I know how I look and feel. Check out my pics in my WWW page (scary huh).

I do think we are all harder on ourselves and how we look than the next person does.

Maybe we can buddy up since we have similar stats and all, probably close in age too, I'm almost 40. Let's chat.