Is there such a thing for Atkins?
I've been stuck at my weight for over 2 weeks now. Is my body adjusting to something or should I exercise more then 3 days a week? I'm drinking 9 glasses of water a day...do I add more?

I lost a 1/2 an ich off both my waist and hips. If things haven't changed when AF leaves (she comes next week) then I'll try that.
What would you consider a real plateau period?

oh okay so as long as there's a loss somewhere, its not considered a plateau. I get it. thx!

When I was losing a lot of weight about 10 years ago, and hopefully again soon, I always went by how my jeans fit. I picked my favorite jeans and rewarded myself with the smaller size as soon as I could fit into them. That was a great encouragement for me. I am going to do the same this time, but maybe I will just try them on to save money, and buy every other size.

True, I just put on a pair of Dockers that fit snug a couple weeks ago and now they're very roomy around the legs and tummy. The waist feels perfect. I brought out all my old clothes to hopefully fit back into soon. Sad about giving up 2 pairs of jeans that are slowly making their way out of my life. ;-)

I started (back) on Atkins August 2008 and have been through 2 serious plateaus since then. Both times, I lost A LOT of size while the scale stayed the same, bouncing up and down 10-15 lbs. The scale was frustrating me because I knew I was staying totally on plan, but I kept losing inches, and having to buy smaller clothes, so I didn't stress.

Once I got to the point where I wasn't losing significant size, I investigated plateau busters. I found two that worked for me, however, YMMV.

The first is "Texas Low-Carb Elimination Diet" (google it). It's pretty severe, but it works. You use it to find out what foods are stalling you, and it involves periodic fasts. It's not safe for long-term dieting, but it's a good tool to find out what's causing you to stall. I stayed on it 3-4 weeks, found out several Atkins-friendly foods that were causing me issues (e.g., bacon), then went back to Atkins and continued losing.

More recently, I stalled BOOM. No weight loss, no size loss, even though I was still 100% OP. So I started on The Metabolism Miracle. It's a lot lower fat than Atkins and is a bit more permissive with some low-carb foods like nuts, green veggies, etc. After getting comfortable with it, I decided it was working better for me than Atkins so I made a permanent switch. I've also virtually given up red meat--and DC Hound lived on red meat when I started this journey in 2008. It wasn't a snap to give up, but when all is said and done I'd rather lose this weight than keep eating steak. I let myself have one maybe once a month, but not daily, like before.

Investigate what's out there--there are plenty of low carb plans--and find the one that's right for you. I always say I think Robert Atkins should be nominated for sainthood--I truly believe that--but personally, I had to change from Atkins to a lower-fat plan because my body wasn't shedding weight like it needed to on the higher-fat plan. That's just me though, we're all different. That's part of the beauty of being human.

I agree that 2 weeks while losing 1/2 inch is not a real "plateau" even though it can be frustrating.

Your water looks fine, but there could also be an exercise angle to tweak (which could be easier than the food, depending on how you feel about exercise).

What kind of exercise are you doing 3 days a week? How intense is it, how long? In your shoes I would seriously look into increasing the intensity (short bursts of pretty much all-out activity for 5 min, then recover, then repeat). You could also try adding another 15 to 30 min to your exercise time, or adding another session per week. 3 x a week exercise is the minimal to maintain fitness for most people, and its not enough to lose for some. If you've been sedentary than at first 3x a week moderate exercise might be enough to get a benefit from, but fitness develop fairly quickly, and after several weeks you need to make it more challenging to keep getting benefits... (By the way, I am in NO WAY an exercise addict telling you this!).