I don't see my Doctor again until the beginning of October, but last time we talked she discussed the Atkins, which I was already on and she was fine with, or going to a 1500-1800 calorie diet.

I have been on the Atkins, lost 40 lbs, but was beginning to feel sick. Constipation, being tired, weak, and had missed 3 days of work in 2 weeks. Then I began having horrible pains in my stomach, so I finally tried some stool softener.

The next morning I went to the bathroom, probably about 4 or 5 times, and all that came out of me was water and bits of nothing. I stayed on the Atkins for another day, where I felt the same stomach feelings, followed by the next morning of the same water passing instead of poop. In 2 days I had lost about 6 lbs and was still feeling horrible.

So I switched to Low Calorie. Since then, and its been about 5 days, I have felt great. My calorie intake is about 1400-1500, consisting of apples, a caesar salad, and a turkey and ham sandwhich, with other small things mixed in for snacks.

I stepped on the scale today not really knowing what to expect and unfortunately I have gained more than I weighed before I took the stool softener.

I've never tried a low calorie diet before, but everyone keeps telling me that it has to work, if you burn more than you eat, you will lose weight. And I am sure I probably sound dumb questioning this, but I'm eating 1400... 1800 on a bad day, and I am burning over 3800... I work out and burn nearly 700 calories just on my bike.

Can anyone tell me what they think may be going on? I really want this to work, and I don't want to have to go back to Atkins if I can get Low Calories to work for me.

Thanks for reading and any of the suggestions

and sorry for all the txt.

My only suggestion is that you either add your height and weight to your profile or tell us because its hard to make an assessment of your situation with only half the information.
And, stop obsessing about what the scale says. If you FEEL better counting calories then you did on atkins then you made a good decision. Playing with your caloric intake will take up to a month of adjustments until you find a "happy place" and because all of our bodies are different its hard to give advice in this arena.
Give your body two weeks at your current calorie level, then if you're not losing weight go down 50-100 calories a day, stay there for two weeks and see if you get satisfactory results. If not, go down another 50 calories or so and try again. Its going to take some playing around to find the right calorie intake for every individual.

Yeah, right now we dont' have enough info to give any real advice. Based on what you wrote, I can only say the following.

1 - How do you know you're burning 3800 calories a day? That sounds really high to me, but again I don't know how tall you are or how much you currently weigh.

2 - Any change to your diet is going to take your body some time to adjust to. 5 days simply is not enough time to judge your progress.

3 - When you change diets, you have to learn different "rules" for eating. It's possible that you may be consuming more sodium than before and gaining a little water weight.

4 - You can't judge your weight immediately after a period of time when you were ill and using laxatives. You're always going to lose some water weight when you're ill and using laxatives or stool softeners. You'll gain it all back as soon as you start eating properly again.

So .. those are my initial thoughts, but do give us more information to work with?

>

6'1" 315.6lbs

I jog for 45 minutes every night and walk for 4 miles along the beach in the morning before work, a job where I am standing and moving around for 8 hours a day. I would think that 1500 calories is burned up just in those 8 hours.

I am thinking perhaps its just my body adjusting to the sugars that its been without for the last 2 months.

I got the calories burned based on Fitday, which I have the program, don't use the online app... mixed with Caloriesperhour and a BMR calculator I got from Discovery.com

I know its not perfectly accurate, which is why I tend to eat 1400 calories rather than 1800.


I wasn't expecting a significant weight change, not after 5 days... I was just hoping to see something. I sort of feel like I am taking a blind leap of faith switching to this diet when the Atkins had worked for 41 lbs.

Sure!

First, I still drink the same amount of water, about 120 oz a day

Atkins...
Breakfast:
Sausage or Bacon/ 4 pcs about 45 calories a piece, 0 carbs

Snack:
String Cheese about 80 calories

Lunch:
Caesar Salad w/ Chicken 480 calories 9g carb 2 fiber

Snack
Sugar Free Jell-o 10 calories

Dinner
Caesar Salad w/o chicken 140 calories 2g carb

Snack
Beef Jerkey or String Cheese or Salami/Ham slices or sometimes more sausage



congrats on being below your goal weight, thats awesome.

The only thing really different is I eat a sandwich with whole grain and some mayo with ham and turkey instead of that caesar salad with chicken. It's actually about the same amount of calories. Tho I do end up having another one later i nthe evening so that my calorie intake is more than the 800-1000 I was taking with the Atkins.

I'm not a big meat eater... no steaks whole pieces of chicken... just could never eat the stuff... texture of it makes me.... ehhh

Maybe you should check with your doctor. What you're experiencing doesn't sound very normal to me.

Jay

Hey. I'm a newbie to this site, but I also did the Atkins to Low-cal swith. I also had similar problems as you. I gained back ALL of the weight I lost on Atkins and then some, but I'm losing again now. I think that with Atkins, a lot of it is a loss of water in your system. I don't really know why you gain it back, maybe it's the switch from using fat as a main energy source to burn to using carbs as one of your main energy sources.

All I know and care about though is that I feel much, much better on low-cal than I did on low-carb and that I'm once again losing. Not as fast, mind you, but it's worth it to just not feel sore all the time. Don't give up and play around with your calorie intake to see what works. Just don't expect results as fast as you got them on Atkins.