I have to admit, before starting Atkins, I was eating junk. I had 1 candy bar every 2 days. I would by little bags of chips because then I felt less guilty than buying (and eating) a big bag of Doritos.

Last time I lost weight, I was calorie counting and I lost about 15 pounds in about 2 months. This was about the end of March and the begining of April.

Now, I decided to try Atkins. I started Tuesday at 255.8 and by Thursday I was 251. I thought that this diet is really working. But in the past 2 days it has slowed considerably. Friday I was 250.2 and today I thought I will finally be out of the 250s. Nope. 250.2.

I keep thinking that the inital 4 pound loss was water weight and I will not lose weight any faster than any other diet. (And a loss from not eating candy and chips - which I would do on any other diet). I have to weigh myself everyday, so I don't want to hear that I should only weigh once a week. Is the only way to know if your truly follwing Atkins correctly is Ketosticks? Because I do not have the money to buy them. I wouldn't even know where to get them. Or maybe I'm over reacting and there will be a big loss shown in the next few days? Because even though I read the book and am keeping track of carbs, I still think that if you are not sticking to the 20 carbs a day and are not actually in ketosis, that you will gain weight due to eating to many calories. Since you don't have to count them, for all I know I can be eating 2000 a day, but only 20 carbs. I don't know what I should do. I feel like eating pasta, but I know (from peoples experiences on here) that I could possibly lose great amounts of weight on this diet and that one bowl of pasta will not feel as good as being able to fit into a size 6 jeans.

Let me just start out by saying I never have a typical "day". I am still on a night shift schedule from years ago, so I am up and I sleep at the most random hours.

I will just tell you what I ate yesterday.

I had egg beaters and cheddar cheese cooked in butter. (I eat egg beaters because I cannot eat a normal egg).

I had a salad. Spring mix, cucumbers, mushrooms, feta cheese and 2 or 3 cherry tomatoes. I also put in some chicken strips (the ones that are precooked you can buy at the store). I used olive oil and vinegar as a dressing.

For dinner, I cut up chicken tenders into bit size pieces. Cooked them a little bit of olive oil. Then I made home made buffalo sauce. Melted some butter and mixed in hot sauce. It was too hot so I put in a pinch of Splenda. On the side I had blue cheese. Just enough to get the flavor. (When I used to get hot wings, I'd drown them in it). Then for my vegetable, I cut up a zucchini, sauteed it, and seasoned it with salt and pepper.

I also had a one or 2 wedges of Laughing cow Swiss chesse. And I cut up some raw broccoli for a snack.

How long did it take for you to lose 100 lbs? How much did you lose on average per week?

I have about 70 to go for this goal. I am 250 right now and will be thrilled when I hit 179. Ultimately, I would like to get to in the 160s. I am 6'1. My normal BMI range puts my ideal weight range between 140 and 180.

My 30th birthday is coming on the last day of June. I wanted to be under 200, but I don't see that happening anymore.

Low-carb for me works better than high carb of the same calories. I've learned that the hard way, by lots of failed experiments.

It isn't just "faster weight loss," that makes low-carb best for me - it's also that it controls hunger better. The hunger differential is shocking to me. I don't feel like a starved, caged animal on low-carb eating. I feel like I'm eating enough food to satisfy (I've never, ever felt that on any other diet.

Low-carb also seems to be less aggravating to some of my health issues. When I eat very high carb, my autoimmune and pain issues are more likely to flare.

I've food journaled long enough to tell you that I can lose little to noweight on 1800 calories of high carb food. I lose fairly consistency on the same 1800 calories of low-carb food. The lower I keep the carbs, the faster I lose, but I don't go under 40g because I get severe headaches and dizziness when I do (and it doesn't dissipate after two weeks, either).

I've been losing very slowly, because I keep thinking I can't live without my high-carb favorites, but every time I eat them (even if I plan to only eat a very tiny bit) I lose control. The crazy so-starved-I-can't-thing-straight hunger comes back and I feel like I HAVE to eat and eat and eat or I'll go insane. I've never felt that out-of-control compulsion in any other aspect of my life. I've never felt compelled to gamble, or go on shopping benders, or smoke, or drink... I've never felt out-of-control except when eating high-carb foods (and I never made the carb-hunger connection until only a couple years ago. I just thought I felt that way about ALL food - turns out it's only in response to high-carb foods).

I still sometimes think that I can't live without certain foods - but I've tried for nearly 40 years to control my eating - and I just cannot do it when high-glycemic carbs are involved. I've read that the insulin spikes can decrease with weight loss (that is high-carb foods may not trigger as crazy a hunger when I reach a normal weight, but then again maybe they still will. I'm starting to see high-carb foods more like drugs. Do I try to continue to "use" or does abstinence make more sense. For me, at least at this time, abstinence makes more sense (because including those foods hasn't worked yet).

Hi - I know it's really frustrating to hear a ton of people saying "don't worry about going fast" when you are finally at the point of being so sick of yourself & your weight that you're willing to make the changes NOW so you want the results NOW.

But I'm joining in with the others to say that really fast weight goals are usually counter-productive. We set the goals at the upper end of what is humanly possible (or frankly in the impossible category) and then are upset when we don't make them, instead of being happy that 7 pounds are permanently gone.

The wake-up moment for me (after lots and lots of dieting without waking up) was realizing that I am going to be Actively managing my weight for the rest of my life. Not for a few months, or a year or two, but seriously Forever. Kim (JersyGirl, above) is a great example - she's at goal weight and yet is active here on this board & is consistently making efforts to keep her weight where she wants it. I'm sure she has ups and downs, but most of the time she makes the good choices.

So I realized that's how I'm going to have to live. Whether I'm doing so in a size 10 body or my current size 14 body (or who knows, maybe even smaller than 10?) but I will pay attention to what I eat, how I eat it & how I move. Forever.

So does it really matter if it takes me "long" to lose? I know that November I am going to be actively managing my weight. I hope I'll be considerably smaller, but if I'm only a little bit smaller that's okay too.

Like Kaplods, the thing that's made me stick with low carb is not because I lose faster (I'm a slow loser regardless) but because I feel better & find it easier than the traditional low fat diet. The lack of hunger is remarkable for me, and it's what makes me stick with it. If you don't find benefits & you've been really following the program, maybe it's not the right diet for you. I do believe we're all different, and that we can each find a diet that we find pretty comfortable long-term, but it always involves tradeoffs. On Atkins/low carb it's no bread, no sugar but you get cheese & butter. On low fat you can have sugar but not cheese. We each have different thresholds, and our tradeoffs might change over our lives too.

I hope you find an approach that works for you - but other than surgery I don't think any diet program will offer the kind of rapid loss you crave.

Best of luck in finding peace within the options you have -- but don't give up -- the journey is hard, but it's worth it.

the diet has a diuretic affect as is explained in the book. this will lead to an initial weight loss of water stored in and around the body and will take 2-3 days you can get this same affect by taking diuretic pills. so forget your "starting weight of 255 and make your starting weight as 251 i.e the point at which it slowed down.

if you start to compare things tot he first 2-3 days you'll get very very quickly disheartened. i agree with jersey 50 is not only realistic its not going to happen so forget it. however saying that you can easily hit 15-20lb by then and thats without the exercise. if you add in regular cardio etc you could take that up to 25lb. ( i find i lose 2-2.5 a week normally and 3-3.5 with the exercise) end of june you are looking at 7 weeks so 25lbs is the absolute limit bar something going serioulsy wrong.

as for ketostix i dont' use them and never have. i tend to go by the scale if you eat to many carbs it will not move or go up. if you eat way to many carbs it will shoot up. in the book dr atkins stated taht 75g of carbs could show up to be as much as 4lb on the scale the next day.

as long as the scale is going down its working. if you stick with it you can be down to 170ish maybe a little under by christmas in time to look great for the office party!

When I said that I wanted to be under 200 by my birthday, this was the goal when I started in the beginning of January, not last week. I just switched to Atkins last week. Sorry for the confusion.

Finally hit 249, but I still don't know what I think about this diet. I'm going to give it another week - two full weeks of induction - and see how I feel about it then.

ah ok. well from now till your birthday getting to 200 is not going to happen.

if you are at 249 now from 251 on thursday that is 2lb per week and its only been 4 days! 2lb a week on WW is a great result not to mention what you averaged when you lost 15lb before! have a look on thursday 3 days from now and tell us all how much you've lost since the previous thursday at 251. then take that loss and compare it to the amount you lost in 2months before you'll be suprised.

if you only want to do 2 weeks run it as 2 weeks from when the weight loss slowed down and ignore the first 3 days of water weight. go to a week thursday as 2 full weeks of induction.

people don't get fat in a few weeks and you wont get thin in a few either. i sense you want something to rectify months/years of poor eating and i'm affraid if such a thing existed it would be the only eating plan out there as its not then you have to agree its yet to be found.

as i said you can be under 170 by christmas. now think about that realistically. you'd be under 200 by mid september at current rates. the joy of atkins is that you will lose weight without the exercise. exercise will boost the losses.

When you're eating low-carb your body needs less water to function. If you return to high-carb eating (even if very low calorie), you will probably gain the first week (it will be water gain, because your body needs more water to function on a higher carb diet). It's not a big deal, but you've got to understand it or you won't understand why the unexplainable gain.

In my experience, low-carb results in faster, easier loss than higher carb (I lose more on 1800 calories of low-carb, and feel less hungry on those same 1800 calories of high-carb), but weight loss by the fastest means possible is not the only legitimate way to lose weight.

If fast is your first priority, I can't think of a more effective WOE than low-carb. In my experience (of my own weight loss and those of others I've spoken with) low-carb results in faster weight loss than other methods. If fast is your only concern, low-carb is going to produce faster weight loss than any other method (except starvation).

What do you consider fast? How much per week is possible? The most I ever lost was about 3 pounds a week.

What is possible doesn't matter. You can only lose what you can lose - what some people can lose doesn't matter to you. 3 lbs is an astonishing large loss, not a slow one. Losing one pound a week would be better than I'm doing. Even on very low carb (so low that I have a constant severe headache) I can't lose 3 lbs a week. It's probably been 10 years since I could lose that much. I've had severe flu viruses during which I ate nothing, had diarrhea and vomitting and still didn't lose 3 lbs in a week. Last winter I had a bad flu and lost 12 lbs in three weeks - the most I ever remember losing with an illness. For the first week, I ate nearly nothing at all, and I didn't just not eat, I was in a constant sweat and fever. The next two weeks I started gradually feeling better, but my appetite was still entirely gone and I was eating less than 1000 calories per day. During the fourth week, I felt better and started eating and drinking more normally (but not excessively - still under 1800 calories) and I regained most of the weight (just because I was feeling better and could drink liquids. I'm sure the weight loss was mostly dehydration).


I didn't say that low-carb was fast - just that for myself and a lot of people I've heard talk about it, it's been the fastest way (except for starvation, or dangerous "speed" drugs such as amphetemines).

What I'm saying is that if you follow a low-carb WOE, then you're probably losing as fast as YOU can healthfully. If you're losing 3 lbs a week on low-carb, if you switch to a higher-carb diet of the same calorie level, it's likely that you'll lose less than 3 lbs. Low-carb isn't guaranteed to bring you weight loss that you consider fast, but I do suspect that you won't find a faster way to lose weight without endangering your health.

Until "this time" I never tried low-carb plans for more than three or four weeks at the very most. I considered them unhealthy, proved by how horrible I felt on them (the "carb withdrawal" symptoms didn't go away after 2 weeks as most plans claimed - I think it was actually low-blood sugar and I've solved it by increasing carbs, but just a little. I could lose a little faster if I kept my carb level under 40g, but I feel horrible at that level, so losing a little slower is a compromise I can live with. My solution is to aim at 100g per day as my upper limit).

When I was very young and tried low-carb diets, I lost crazy amounts of weight. I do remember one of my low-carb attempts. At the time, I was in my mid-20's and weighed 275 lbs. I only held onto the diet for four weeks, and gave up because of the intense headaches (I should have just upped my carbs a little, but I wasn't smart enough about low-carb diets then. I thought the headaches were proving that low-carb was dangerous. I didn't know that if I'd just upped my carb level a little bit, the headaches would have gone away and I would have lost a little less rapidly, but much more comfortably). The 4 week loss looked like this. 11 pounds lost the first week (probably water, mostly). 7 lbs lost the second week. 9 pounds lost the third weeks and 5 lbs lost the 4th week. 32 lbs in 4 weeks - amazing weight loss that I've never topped (which is why I remember it - it's a personal "record" that I've never broken). But I felt like my head would explode most of that month. That low probably wasn't healthy for me, but instead of trying to compromise with a slightly higher carb level, I gave up on the low-carb lifestyle entirely. BIG MISTAKE.

With every diet (or maybe it was just aging) my metabolism dropped. I was able to lose less and less and less. Even if I ate nothing at all, I don't think I will ever be able to meet or break my "record." Heck to lose 1/4 as fast - 8 lbs in a month seems undoable to me at this point. Of course, I do have physical health limitations that prevent me from being as active as I was during that time of my life too. I'm not walking 3 miles or more every day just in and around a college campus (because I had no car).


Low-carb may not be fast by your definition, but I doubt that you'll find a faster way that doesn't compromise your health.

Fast isn't everything. Personally, I wouldn't recommend reducing carbs below 30g a day - but that may be my own personal bias, because it's the point at which I get the blinding headaches.


Feeling like my head is going to explode - to me - isn't a fair price to lose an extra half to one pound loss per week. I'll glady take the slightly slower weight loss, and feel decent.

Kaplods gives good advice here - 3 pounds is a really fast rate of loss, and you need to know that 3 pounds now will become 2 or even 1 later as you become smaller. It's not the diet not working, it's how your body can release weight.

The truth is that there is no magic fast cure to lose weight. It takes dedication, time & a plan you can live with. For many of us, we've found low carb a good choice but I don't think it's much faster than any other plan out there (except maybe the water weight in the first days as explained above).

I hope you find a way to accept that a "normal" weight of loss is acceptable - either on this diet or on another one.

Best of luck in continuing towards your goals - however long that may take you