I came to a realisation tonight, that the diet I'm doing (I like to call it the rabbit diet cause that's what I feel that I'm eating like) is really not cutting it for me. I have 6 small meals a day that are healthy. The problem I'm finding is that I'm STARVING. I feel ok at first but sooner or later I'm dying to eat again. The second problem is all I do is think of food and what to prepare next. What can I buy? What can I eat? Is it 2-3 hours since my last snack? What is the fat content in this food and that one? I keep thinking I'll adjust but I'm sick of having hunger pangs all the time even though the weight is slowly coming off.

A fews years ago I did atkins for 3 months and its the most weight I've ever lost and this is with hardly any excercise. I didn't feel hungry, I wasn't always thinking of food and what I could eat because there were only certain things I could eat and it just felt so much easier than the rabbit diet. Unfortunately I stopped because of a personal crisis and gained the weight back with interest. The problem is that my dietitian and gp have told me not to do atkins, because of all the 'evidence' that its bad for your heart and other theories, but mainly because they see it as a quick fix and something that's "unmaintanable" in the long term.

So my question is, do these theories have any validity? And has anyone sucessfully been able to maintain a low carb diet after reaching goal weight for the longrun?

Low carb for me... only let me lose weight in the beginning (as with a lot of diets) and it was water weight. I went to the restroom a lot. I totally no what you mean... food always on the mind... Do I have enough snacks? IS this too many calories? Did I go over? Dang 1 hour left... Have you tried Weight Watchers points system?

the question is can you sustain the Atkins lifestyle for the rest of your life and be satisfied?

I think bugnessa hit the nail on the head. I think that for a lot of people, Atkins doesn't work (or rather, it works, but then, as you did, they gain the weight back) because they can't commit to the diet for the long-term and, unless you are ready to eat that diet for the rest of your life, you're likely to end up gaining the weight back when you stop eating that way. But if that diet is comfortable for you and you think you can continue to eat that way for the rest of your life, then I think it could work. There definitely seem to be people on this forum that have had success with it. I don't know enough about it to be able to comment on whether it is a healthy diet or not.

I also wonder if you don't need to do Atkins, but just need to add some protein and healthy fat to your current diet. Since you call your diet "the rabbit diet," that leads me to believe you are mainly eating just vegetables and I don't think anyone would suggest that this a healthy or sustainable approach to dieting. And it would sure explain why you're hungry all the time. The other possibility is that you just aren't eating enough.

If you wanted to post your diet for a typical day and your typical amount of exercise, I'm sure folks here could offer suggestions as to how to tweak it so you aren't hungry all day.

All I know, is that for me, carbs make me hungry. Processed carbs or highly concentrated carbs (flour, white rice, sugar, honey, syrups....) make me ravenously hungry. High fiber "good" carbs (corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, carrots, fruit...) aren't as bad, but I still tend to overeat them.

However any very low carb plan makes me feel like I'm going to throw up or pass out. Around 80g of carbs is usually my absolute minimum, which many low-carbers consider too high to be low carb. So, I don't really call it low carb, I call it restricted carb. I use an exchange plan inspired by a couple lower carb exchange plans I found (I choose to have a number of exchanges that I can use on starch, protein, fruit, or dairy exchanges, since they all have about the same calories).

It's flexible, so I could spend my exchanges on anything I wish to, but I when I spend it on too many or processed carbs, I feel horrible and hungry.

I don't think my plan is for everyone. I don't even know if it's "for me" forever, but it's working fairly well for me now. I don't think that any plan, even Atkins "makes" you gain it back if you stop the plan. On lower carb, I do retain less water, so I believe stopping any low carb plan could cause a few pounds gained in water retention, but only a few. Any more weight than those first few, I believe, are gained not by stopping Atkins, but by not starting something else.

Stopping any food plan or diet causes weight gain, if you're not doing anything else. Although magazines promised it, I've never met a person who was able to eat anything they wanted without gaining when they stopped a weight loss plan.

Thanks everyone for your responses. Been a great help. JerseyGyrl thanks for letting me know its possible to maintain! I have the book collecting dust somewhere so I'll give it a good reading.

Anyway, as suggested, here is aTYPICAL DAY for me

Breakfast
small bowl of sultanabran cereal with skim milk

Snack 1
4 vitawheats with low fat butter and vegemite and possibly an orange (the aussie is really coming out of me now.) Btw Vitawheats = crackers

Lunch
one sandwich - lowfat ham, lowfat cheese, lettuce, cucumber + tomato on wholegrain or low gi bread

Snack 2
skim chai latte or small fruit salad

Another snack sometimes cause I'm still hungry - a carrot.

Dinner
Small portion of meat (or should I say small-er portion cause I used to be a big meat eater) salad, piece of bread or rice

Snack 3
Handful of nuts and an orange

To most people, this would be sufficient enough but maybe like kaplods, carbs make me hungry

Anyway, in regards to if atkins would be able to sustain me for life. I only ever did the induction phase which is the minimal amount of carbs you can have on it, so once I up the carb intake it would probably be sustainable.

Does the hunger go away after a while when you've adjusted to a diet? Maybe I should just stick the above out. Decisions decisions

P.S I have tried the weight watchers point system and i was starving with that too.

I've also tried getting those meals delivered and again was starving with that.

you are very very carb heavy

do you eat dairy? milk or yogurt?

what about beans?


breakfast
cereal (grain) and milk... no protein or fat to hold you over

then snack more grain

then lunch is that 2 pieces of bread? so we're up to 3-4 grains already
then more grain at dinner so 4-5 grains/starches in a typical day?

also oranges can make folks hungry

have you tried berries or bananas or apples?

do you pair your fruit with dairy, fat or protein (cheese and apple or peanut butter and banana) to help slow absorption?

I agree - more protein. When I have cereal for breakfast, I add a small serving of walnuts which have protein and good fat (Omega 3). Plus you could have lots of veggies for dinner, and swap the rice for sweet potato, or maybe spaghetti squash which works nicely in place of pasta. Is the rice brown rice - it has a lower GI. Some cottage cheese with that orange would be good, or as Nessa says, other fruits (in college I always chose an orange for the quick pick-me-up about 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon). The only dairy I see is in the chai latte and on the cereal.

Not trying to pick on you, but rather help you eat more so you feel fuller without adding calories. Have you looked at the South Beach program?

yes i think south beach is a good plan (i lost 70 pounds on it before adding weight watchers points to it)

my meals now:

breakfast
1 egg (hard boiled)
some v8
oatmeal with milk fruit and a small amount of walnuts or pecans

lunch
large (huge actually) salad
with protein (chicken) and some feta (1 oz)
and dressing


snack
popcorn
yogurt

dinner
salad
protein
grain
veggie

also a couple of good fats each day

and maybe another fruit later on (with yogurt again)

i'm modifying a bit now to help with points but for example, today

I had a small whole wheat english muffin at lunch and no grain at dinner

but at dinner i had salmon, salad and beets (not truly a beachy veggie)....

and i was full.

I find this to be true with any "diet" not just Atkins.

What it boils down to is finding something that works for you.

very wise words Leenie.

as long as it works for you and it's healthy I can't see a problem with it.

for me my starting point was pure 100% South Beach Diet... and I would say i'm 80% still on the beach but i do eat things like beets now and white flour both of which are strongly discouraged on the beach....

sometimes you have to find what parts of what plan work for you and combine them and make your own plan...

now if a person eats sugar laden cereal for breakfast, soup for lunch and popcorn for dinner with grapes as a snack (I swear i have seen this in OTHER places) now that's not really a healthy plan and i doubt it's sustainable for life....

but if your doctor approves of what your eating, and your happy, and think you can do it forever (maybe modify later on) with minimal deviations (birthdays, anniversaries and occasional events I am off the plan) then go for it.

live long and prosper...

I think if you assume that you're going to be eating much differently maintaining than you did losing, it's going to be a lot harder to succeed. However, I think too much is sometimes made of needing to find something that you can do for life - in the sense of assuming that something that works today is still going to be working five years from now.

I don't know that you have to find something that you see working for life, but you do have to be able to see doing something that works for life. You may change plans two, three, or ten times, as long as you continue to be successful, the number of plans you've used to get and stay there don't matter.

I guess what I'm meaning, is sometimes I think we get on a diet (or WOE) "boat," and if the boat starts sinking we stay on it, or jump into the ocean of our old habits, as other boats pass us by. Then we say the boat didn't work for us. Well, why on earth did we jump into the ocean rather than onto another boat?

Sometimes I think it's so ingrained as a cultural diet habit, that when a "diet" isn't working for us, the normal response is to give up and gain the weight back. I've been wondering alot lately if part of the reason for the "diet roller coaster," is that it's the schema or pattern that our culture tells us is the way it is. It's what we've been taught to expect, so we follow the pattern, without even questioning it much. It's the doing what everyone else does, mainly because its what everyone else does. I think sometimes we get in life, what we expect in life and/or we don't get what we don't expect.

I don't think I ever fully believed that I could lose all of the weight, because I had never met a person that had ever lost and maintained the loss of as much weight as I needed to lose. Once in a while, I'd hear of someone doing so, but to be honest, but I'm not sure if I believe it any more than in the existence of Big Foot.

I wish I could pinpoint why I think this time is different. Maybe because I'm not only thinking outside the box, but I'm starting to see, recognize and avoid the box.

I totally agree with all the other posts. You have to find something you can live with, stay on forever. Most diets work, if you can fit them into your lifestyle.

I say do whatever you want. make it healthy. Can you see yourself eating like this a year from now? Go for it!