I'm a heart patient.. so I have to limit my sodium anyway. That said.. cheese is a go to snack for me but I've noticed that I need to cut back because the more I eat.. the more I retain.. making the scale stubborn. I cut way back these last couple days and wouldn't you know.. with my latest lasix (this morning) I peed like never before and was finally showing loss. SO maybe watch the amount of that. Your results may vary but you may find what is "legal" on paper might now work as well with your individual body. Lastly, as backwards as this sounds.. eating more might help.

Hey Fefster - is it possible your hormones are coming into play? I know I retain water the second half of my menstrual cycle. Like Blue Ruby if I'm staying pretty much on plan, but doing things like having a glass or two of wine, or maybe some cheese, I know I'm going to see a jump in the scale in the morning and then it'll be about 3 days before the scale returns to where it was prior to my little wine and cheese party.

I find keeping a journal and writing down my food choices very helpful. That way, I can find patterns - for instance, now I know wine makes me crave chocolate day or two later.

I suspect you should be slightly more realistic in your expectations. You have to look at the long term, and if you have lost an AVERAGE of 1.75 lbs per week that is GOOD. I'm being very very strict and I track everything. Here is how my progress has gone:

Week 1: down 2.8 lbs
Week 2: down 1.4 lbs
Week 3: down 1.2 lb
Week 4: down 0.4 lb
Week 5: Down 3.4 lbs
Week 6: so far up 0.2 from prior low

Average loss per week across 5 weeks: 1.8 lbs per week, although you can see that Week 4 was a bust and during each week I was going up then down then up, and so on. Never a straight line downwards.

Consistency is REALLY important. If you incorporate even a bit of sugar from anything, you could halt your fat burning. Keep yourself solidly in fat burning mode. If you are in fat burning mode but eat some sugar, it might take 2 or 3 days to get back to fat burning. The little bit of sugar just isn't worth it to me any more, I'm tired of yo-yoing around with this.

I've seen with myself (probably true for most people) is I go up and down no matter how perfectly I eat. So I don't let it upset me. Sometimes I'll be stuck at a particular weight for DAYS. I've had times where I hit a new low, and the very next day I was up 1.5 lbs, yet I ate nothing bad. Weight fluctuates naturally during the course of a day because so much of our body is water. Period. So watch the trends over time and continue to eat in the way that you know puts you into a fat burning metabolism.

***Experiment: Weigh yourself when you get up, mid day, evening. All the weights will probably be different, all due to several factors including water retention. I did this one time where I was 2 LBS heavier at night. Due to food I ate that day, and due to water issues. What I ate probably made me hold onto more water. Of course I didn't "gain" 2 lbs of fat...it was just water.

***If humans dropped weight/fat too quickly and easily, the human race might die out too easily!!! For the body, it's all about maintaining the status quo, whatever that may be at any one time. The body rather reluctantly gives up fat stores, so once I lose fat I don't want to put it back on again!!

Consistency of diet + patience + time = success.

The success is NEVER NEVER NEVER as quick as you want it to be, and there isn't much you can do to make it faster than is realistic. Make peace with that fact....and your average 1.7 lbs per week is really right where it's realistic. Then just settle into being patient and give it all enough time. Don't cheat and don't give up. It will happen, really it will. TIME.

Don't then. Put away the scale and go by pants if you want. It is what i do.

Thanks, great advice

I have lost another pound, so that's 10 pounds in 5 weeks.

I got a piece of string last week and cut it to the exact size of my waist. I wrapped it around my waist this morning and although I have only lost a pound, I've lost 2 inches off my waist.

I've now made a mark on the string where my waist is this week and I'm going to keep doing this.

This has given me great motivation to continue.

Well done!

You're doing GREAT!! 10 pounds in 5 weeks is the top of what you can realistically expect to lose in that period of time, that's a solid 2 lbs per week and that's FANTASTIC!!

Thank you, so good to hear

At least we know your glycogen plus water is around 8lbs.

I would suggest you check your BMI out.

If you BMI is greater than 30, just eat no carb when hungry and you will lose weight.

FYI, most food has carb(trace of it at least). So eat no carb means trace of carb. It is easier for newbies to control their carb with no carb.

You might want to check meat/breast tomato cream soup out. It serves couple functions. One of them is to flush out excess water in your body.

Check out the little video I added to the Why Scales Lie post.
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...803#post9232803

You have probably hit the stage where your body recalibrates. The same happened with me - a few weeks in, I thought it was the end of weight loss. I just kept on keeping on, and the loss started up again and kept going. The fact that your pants fit better at a slightly bigger weight suggests you are building muscle and losing fat. Hang in there, this might be just the start.

This "recalibration" idea is something I find quite interesting as I've observed it with myself just about every time I go into seriously eating low carb. I lose fast the first week or two (probably mostly water dumping), and my weird "recalibration" weeks seem to be weeks 3 and 4, when I just bob up and down a few tenths all the time no matter what I do. This time I went up 1.5 lbs overnight for no discernible reason, and it took a full week to inch back down. But after that weeks 5 and 6 have been pretty stable, just inching down without the big pops up. I've found this interesting to observe this time because my diet has been absolutely strict and I haven't eaten anything to account of upward changes in even water retention (and thus weight), yet it has happened anyway, mostly in weeks 3 and 4. It makes sense to think the body was a bit "shocked" by the changes in diet, so maybe this really is an adjustment of sorts.

The body is not a spreadsheet. That's calories in/calories out thinking, which is outmoded and debunked, most amusingly by Dr. Fung of fasting fame.

What we truly are is a perfect storm of hormones directing a complex chemical factory. So we would all do best to stop expecting simple results in the short term. It's the long term that works, after all.

This is exactly my pattern. So far I have been:

Wk 1: -4lbs
Wk2: - 4lbs
Wk3: +0.5lb
Wk4: -0.5lb
Wk 5: - 2lbs
Wk 6: -1lb (so far)

So far, 5.5 weeks, 11lbs down.

I'm guessing I will hit 12lbs in 6 weeks. I'm delighted with 2lbs a week and really feel over the hump of that plateau. I hope this helps someone else because it is entirely demotivating to work so hard and see no results.