No idea, but unless you're on a super-tight budget (I know the feeling, believe me) they're not too expensive. I think I paid $7 for a box of whatever brand they carry on Netrition.

Lori, thanks for the tip on spice shopping! You'd think I'd remember these things, considering the number of foreign grocery stores I have been to, but I'm lazy when I'm home and never make it further than Kroger. I need to start broadening my horizons.

Today is day 10, if I'm remembering correctly. My weight is pretty much the same as it has been since Saturday. The slow weight loss I can deal with (okay, I will probably whine, but I won't give up) but I do wish the lack of hunger would kick in already. I'm better today than yesterday, but I feel like I eat more than most people when I compare my menu to others posted online, and the fact that I stopped losing after I dropped all my water weight makes me wonder if my calories are too high.

Always second-guessing myself, that's me! So instead of monkeying around with my calories I will just stick with it at least until the end of the 14 days, and see what happens. I've been reading all sorts of exciting stories about people having trouble losing at first, which makes me feel a little better.

I mean, yes, I am down 8 pounds from the start, which is AWESOME and even if I lose nothing this week I would be happy with that, except that I know it's mostly, if not all, water weight, since I started at the end of TOM. Hence my vague disappointment.

I understand, Caroline, it can be frustrating. Plus the first couple of weeks of this diet can be so hard. It's not easy at first!

And I think there is not necessarily a guarantee that the hunger will go away when you reach 14 days. I have been reading more, and some people say that it took about 3 weeks for their hunger to go away.

I hope the hunger will go away for you after the second week, as it did for me. But please don't give up if it takes an extra week.

I really find that I need to eat enough protein and fat at every meal, at least 3 times a day. I don't stuff myself, but I will have for example two scrambled eggs (scrambled in butter) for breakfast (sometimes with some sauteed peppers, sometimes with some shredded cheese). That keeps me going until lunch. Lunch is usually a salad for me with full-fat salad dressing. That leaves me good to go until dinner. When dinner is cooking, I do start getting a bit hungry as I smell it, and I usually have a few cut up low-carb veggies I munch on as I make dinner. Low in calories and helps fill me up. Also helps me meet the daily veggie requirement. I have a generous portion of meat for dinner (probably more than 6 ounces, I don't bother to measure) usually fried or sauteed in olive oil. If I'm hungry in the evening after dinner, I have a handful of kalamata olives or a piece of cheese (one ounce.) I often have a cup of chai tea to which I add artificial sweetener and one Tablespoon of heavy cream. It tastes like dessert to me and fills me up.

I lost a lot of weight in three weeks, sure, but most of it was water weight. Water weight doesn't mean a thing. What matters is how you feel, how your clothes fit, etc. And see, when I stopped the diuretic I was on, I gained 3 lbs. back overnight! But again it's water weight. Doesn't matter.

Once you get to the stage where you aren't hungry all the time, it won't be nearly so hard.

In fact Dr. Atkins advised us (at least in the early, 1970's book) to eat until we were satisfied the first two weeks, as long as carbs were kept in line. Eat lots of butter, lots of steak, lots of chicken, fish, whatever you want, as long as the carbs are kept low. You might not lose any fat those first two weeks, if the calorie level is quite high, but what you are doing is switching your metabolism to run on fat instead of carbs, and you are also calming down the insulin response so that you won't be hungry all the time. It's kind of like a 2-week preparatory period before the "real" diet.

So this diet takes a whole lot of patience, which is hard, especially when you are hungry, having Atkins flu, and not even really sure if it's going to work for you or not.

Please hang in there. Summer is coming. Summer is going to come whether you stay on this WOE or not. But if you can stay on this WOE, there's a good chance you could lose a pound a week on average, maybe a bit more.

Pick a date on the calendar, any date that seems good to you. If you lose one pound a week on average, what weight will you be on that date?

Remember, it won't be weeks and weeks of hunger like you are experiencing now. It will just be sort of normal life. Yeah, it's a hassle to eat a burger without the bun, in a way. But for the most part it just feels like normal life, only (at least in my case) actually better.

Hang in there!

I am a slow loser, too, in past situations (I would usually lose about 2.6 to 3 lbs the first week of any diet, then hover between a half and 1.5 lbs a week after that) -- but I'm going to hang in there, too, because I know this will work, and selfishly, because I like to be able to eat if I am hungry -- whenever that may be!

The good news is, this is my 3rd day, and I have already lost about a half pound and I'm happy with that, especially considering all the delicious foods I've enjoyed. I have a fatsecret account, so I've been logging food there just to compare, and I'm eating way more calories than I used to, but I feel lighter and I have already lost a little something. It's unheard of to eat as well as I have been and to lose rather than gain. Even if I stayed the same for a week, eating like this and not gaining is hard for me to wrap my brain around. This is great!

Good luck with the rest of Induction, and you might be really surprised in about 5 or 6 more days. You could wake up one morning to a significant drop and be really happy.

I am also a slow loser and I think that's because I am going through menopause but I'm not 100% sure if that's the reason.. I think exercising for 30 minutes as many days as I can really helps, I do the Leslie Sansone's WATP tapes. I just bought a Sculpting DVD for toning.. Has not arrived yet but will soon.

I don't need to have a "perfect body" as that will NEVER happen (never had one anyway), but just to lose the weight makes me happy..

But the bottom line is that I am losing and I am really happy about that!

Toby

I promise I am in no danger of giving up. I may seem impatient, but it's just because I have been trying to break this plateau since October. My lowest weight that month was 150.4, and it lasted all of one day before I started bouncing back up again. So this is all just frustration talking.

I am really used to my body fighting me every step of the way (3 1/2 years to lose 90 pounds without ever really giving up is certainly not a normal rate of loss!) so if Atkins is not the 'magic wand' for me, that's okay. I can lose slowly as long as I lose eventually, you know?

I'm hoping for one of those whooshes here soon, but I have never really been a 'whoosher' so it might not happen. I am going to stay off the scale for a bit, though. I guess I'll put it away until Monday (my 'official' weight for the week) and see what it has to say then. That might take some of the pressure off, at least.

I know what you mean about feeling lighter. I feel that way too, though it's not reflected on the scale yet. Time, that's all we need! Time and some patience, on my part. I need to take a cue from you and be happy with my tremendous success in week one!

I do pretty heavy lifting (my sister and I do the P90X program, maybe you've seen the infomercial) and pretty tough cardio, mostly because I've never been able to lose without working out hard. So I'm in great shape (under all the fat! ) and I'm building all kinds of muscle, and I wonder if maybe that's interfering some with my loss. Though if that's the case, I will take the plateau over muscle loss. I like my muscle!

I think you'll enjoy the body sculpting DVD once you get it. It makes you *feel* so much better to tone up, even if it doesn't always reflect on the scale.

I figure it's progress, not perfection, and slow and steady wins the race! Actually it isn't even a race. It's more like planting a garden (eating this way) and then you just kind of plod along and after a few months, you start seeing some results....

I shouldn't let the scale bug me, but since I went off the diuretic, I gained five pounds of water weight in two days. Yikes! I know it's only water weight, but it's still five pounds on the scale, LOL. I know I've been keeping my carbs and calories both low...so it's not "real" weight. But five pounds in two days...that's a lot. Plus...I might regain even more water weight, who knows? Might be another two or three pounds that go on. Sigh. Well, this is healthy for me. I can't stay on the diuretics because my bp will be too low at this point and I will be too dehydrated, because this WOE is in itself a diuretic. Already I'm not having the light-headedness and higher resting heart rate - I'm completely normal now.

And, hubby said this morning I'm looking a lot better than I was just 3 1/2 weeks ago. So that's what I should focus on, is how my body has already changed for the better, and how it will keep changing for the better over the next several months and over the next year. This isn't a race. It's just hard to see five pounds come back on. That means I will have to have all of February as my stall month, and maybe even March if any more water weight goes back on. Well, that's okay. I can handle it. Anyway, I'm debating on whether I should change my ticker/stats to reflect the five pounds of water weight back on. I suppose I should. I'll think about it. That would mean I could only claim to have lost 12 pounds in four weeks. That's still pretty darn good. Maybe that's how I should look at it...I'm still 12 lbs. down from where I began, and that's a very good thing. Maybe tomorrow I will only be 10 lbs. down from where I began, LOL. Well, since my blood pressure is great, obviously my body needed some water back. The most important thing is how I feel and my health, not a number on the scale. I trust this diet - it takes the hunger away and makes it sooo easy to only eat 1,200 calories a day - and I will keep on plodding on.

Four inches of snow here, and two more storms on the way that promise to dump a lot more snow than that. Sigh. Guess it's still winter here in Virginia. This is kind of unusual for the DC area, to get this much snow in one winter.

Ouch, Lori, that is really frustrating. Having carried around a bunch of water weight for the past three months, I definitely feel your pain. It's great that you're feeling so much better, though, and I'm glad you have your husband there for positive reinforcement.

We'll get through this together! I know you're not going to give up, and I'm certainly not, so eventually the scale has to reflect our efforts. And you're right, 12 pounds is still awesome. Ten is pretty awesome, too.

I lived in DC for awhile a few years back. It was the year of that terrible spring blizzard that dumped a few feet of snow on us and shut down the whole city for days. It also preempted my sister's bridal shower! I'm from the north, so I'm used to a lot of snow, but that was a doozy. We're having a snowier-than-usual year here in Tennessee as well, but for us that just means the snow sticks around for a few days instead of melting on impact.

Thank you, Caroline! I'll lose weight eventually, it will be okay. I'll just keep plodding along! I went ahead and changed my stats to reflect the added five pounds of water. Now that I've done that, I'm okay with it. Now I know that any weight I do lose, will be fat and not just water weight! I knew most of what I lost that first week or so was water weight anyhow, and I knew it would come back. So it's okay that it's back, because my body needed that water to be healthy.

Good for you for exercising so hard! I'm going to try to get into doing the weight machine and build some muscles. It will take many months to build up a little muscle, but eventually I will get there, and the weightlifting will become part of my life forever, as I try to stay healtlhy as I go into my older years.

Day 11: I put my scale away this morning. I got on it this morning and it was the same as the last five days, which is fine. The problem is that I got on it *last night*, which is a sure sign of obsession for me. So away it went, and I will not take it out again until Monday morning. We'll see what it has to say for itself then.

I also packed more snacks today to fend off my usual workplace hunger. (Egg salad lettuce roll-ups...mmm.) I've just been coming to work unprepared, and that has to stop or I'll never get anywhere. So my goal for the rest of induction: Stop letting myself get so hungry, and stop obsessing about the scale. I think that's doable.

Thistoo, I hear you about scale obsession

I have a white board on my fridge, and I write out each day of the week, and every morning I weigh and record, so I know how I am approaching Sunday, my weigh-in day, heh!

But I have been known to get on it at night too... I don't know why, because I am never, ever lighter at night

That's a great decision, Caroline! If I were smart I'd get rid of the scale for a couple of months too...or maybe for all time, LOL....

Ditch the scale and start taking measurements! I do measurements once per month and even when the scale is bouncing or not moving, I am losing inches. I am betting you are too!

See, last night I was only up 2 pounds from the morning, and usually I'd gain like 5 pounds during the day, so I hoped for a loss this morning, which, of course, did not happen. Just goes to show that I'm retaining less water during the day on Atkins, and I need to stay off the !@#$ scale!

I do that too! Sadly, mine have not gone down during this plateau. I've been stagnant on all things since October. I checked my waist the other day and it was still the same, but I'll keep writing them down in the hope they start changing again soon.

The scale, the scale! Either we love it or we hate it! I try to ignore my scale in my bathroom though first thing in the morning I am tempted to weigh myself and then I quickly finish my "business" and get out of the bathroom.

My plan is to only weigh myself once a week.

Caroline, that's so funny that you put your scale away, LOL! Out of site, out of mind?

Lori, you are so right that slow and steady wins the race, yes, I will be a turtle too.

Oh, I couldn't get the curry out of my mind, so I made curry chicken with broccoli for dinner tonight.. Yummy! I just made up the recipe as I went along.. I bought a huge package of chicken breasts (skinless, boneless), individually saran-wrapped them and froze them. I left 2 breasts which I cut into bite size pieces (as the broccoli was steaming), melted some butter and olive oil, cut up some scallions, and did a stir fry which I then added curry powder, little bit of sea salt and pepper. Added the broccoli and yummy!

I don't know the net carbs and I know the carbs will be from the broccoli so I will figure that out later. Had salad with a couple of pepperoni slices for lunch and eggs for breakfast.. That was my day.

I am not stuffed but I do feel very satisfied!

Toby