Sorry, I read your message again and now I know what you're doing! It's an interesting approach. I know I alwasy creved sweets after lunch when I was on Atkins -- I just ended up eating more meat and cheese, which can't be good for you.

Hmmmmmm. Bears thinking about .

Jo

Hi Jo, I eat what I want for breakfast , then do lo-carb for lunch and dinner. It's the only thing that keeps the cravings in line for me. I am down about 6 lbs in a week and 1/2. I prob. started at 150. In fact I just came back from the diner and had a cobb salad for lunch, I was very good. But for breakfast I had waffles and jelly and butter and juice. If I do very lo carb for breakfast ,too, I feel sick. I need carbs in the am.

Stay in touch, Nancy

Wow - finally a thread with people like me - people who are dedicated to LCing, but just can't survive off of 20 grams or less a day!! I have DRASTICALLY cut back my carbs. . . . I do need to do a better job of keeping track of them, but eat around 60 - 80 grams a day. . have to or else I get all jittery and cranky!!

akbear

Actually, lots of people eat more carbs than 20g a day. In Atkins you're supposed to gradually increase the number of carbs after the first phase of 20g per day. But lots of people opt to stay at 20g. When my orchard is fruiting I definitely eat quite a lot more carbs.

Personally, for me, I'm convinced calories are more important to watch than carbs, but lowering carbs makes it possible to lower the calories without hunger and cravings.

Also, people have this notion, like someone posted above, that eating Atkins is all about eating meat and cheese. Which isn't the case at all. I do Atkins with basically unlimited low carb veggies. In fact, I typically only have meat once a day. I have berries occassionally and, like I mentioned, fruit from my mini-orchard when it is ripe. I enjoy my occassional sweets in the form of ones I make using low carb stuff like Splenda, almond flour and carbquik.

As far as saturated fats being unhealthy, well there's a lot of conflicting research about that. I'm not avoiding them, but then again, I eat tons of veggies. After 1.5 years of eating this way, my habits and tastes have changed so that I really don't crave the old stuff.

So yes, I definitely believe you can eat low carb (60-80 or even more) and lose weight. The issues I think you'll be dealing with are possibly more hunger than someone lower carb (because ketosis helps with that) and possibly not losing the cravings for high carb food, especially if you indulge in them. If you can deal with those then you're going to do fine.

I'm really interested in this thread but have to sign off right now, so, I need to write something to subscribe to it. I still don't have the hang of all this!

i could not lose weight on atkins. or maybe i couldn't wait long enough....forever? it seemed. i missed yogurt and fruit. didn't want them to seem like cheats either. i read GO-diet and realized that i was already doing it, so..i can lose weight easily and still eat nuts, yogurt and a little fruit. coffee's okay, too...in moderation for me.

After losing 66lbs and with about another 15lbs to lose I am very interested in just going to low carb, however I am a bit worried as I find that when I go over about 20 grams I put on a bit of weight (possibly water) but then don't lose.

Have other people changed and had something like this happen to them, and if so how long does it take before the body adjusts and they start losing again. In particular I would love to go back to eating fruit with an occasional desert.

When you start eating more carbs you will carry around more water weight because that extra glucose you'll carry around needs a lot of water molecules. So you need to be able to not freak out when you see yourself going up a few pounds. Once you've got that out of the way, anything else you gain is real and should raise an alarm. If you start adding more carbs you might need to pay more attention to your total calorie intake because you may end up eating more, driven by the ebbs and surges of insulin. Be careful, you don't want to undo all your effort!

I, too, am just modifying the type of carbs I eat. I am trying to stay away from the sweets, the packaged snacks, etc. I am finding that it's true.. those strong cravings get weaker and weaker every day as I eat better and fresher food! I never thought it would ease up! I thought I would always be a slave to my cravings! But now I can't remember the last time I 'had to have' potato chips. In fact, the last time I ate them, I was sorry I ever put them in my mouth!

I quickly lost about 15 pounds, and even though I'm at a bit of plateau as far as the scale goes, I feel better than EVER.

Hang in there... each healthy choice is one step closer to the goal.