I'm hoping to start induction tomorrow, and wanted to see what folks here had to say about the following:

first, I am a MAJOR coffee drinker - about 1 1/2 - 2 pots per day. I have what I guess is not the newest version of Atkins' book, which allows up to 6 cups of coffee a day. The Atkins' site seems to discourage any caffeine.
It was my plan to slowly wean myself off of the stuff - I need it to function most days, and I'm in a position where those nasty withdrawal headaches will cause some problems.
Opinions on not just going off coffee cold turkey - pros/cons?

secondly - what's the scoop with Aspartame? Can I still eat sf jello with Aspartame, or are there other options out there (again, the book I have allows it, the web site encourages splenda instead - I don't even know if jello offers a splenda version?) advice/opinions?

I'm very excited about getting started, and I'm thrilled to have found this board.

TIA,
Sandy in DE

I am fairly new to Atkins...(Day 11) and tried to do the caffeine cold turkey - not a good idea! I had a massive headache and was feeling pretty nauseous as well. This lasted about a day and a half.

It may be difficult to do all withdrawals (caffeine and carbs) at once. I am now proceeding with weaning myself (altho I only had about 2-4 cups per day). I bought myself some primo deluxe sumatra decaf from Starbucks and starting mixing it with "real" coffee every morning. (I am really enjoying adding real cream now!)

I am now to about 75% decaf and 25% caffeine and feeling pretty good.

Also I understand the jello is not on the acceptable foods list (see www.atkinscenter.com) so you may want to avoid it, at least for the first couple of weeks. I also read somewhere that the ready made diet jello is made w/Splenda? unlike the package kind which is made w/aspartame, so you may wish to investigate that.
There are also some diet sodas made with Splenda too.

Good luck and hope you have no major headaches!

Froufy

I can't tell you anything about the coffee cause I don't drink the stuff but I am using sf jello and it has not affected my weight loss.
In the New Diet Revolution Book it talks about not using asperthane on one page and on the next page it says diet jello is OK.

Yeah...Sugar Free Jello is one of my staples. It allows me to cheat without cheating at all. It hasn't effected my weight loss at all.