~Ms Arielle -- that's what I've been doing, eating more carbs and seeing how I handle them. The problem is that with my fatigue issues I can't tell if I feel lousy because I need more carbs or if it's because of my underlying issues. When I don't really improve after eating more carbs it's so easy to think that's because I'm not eating enough carbs yet! I feel awesome on my cheat days but I don't know how to get the same effect without one.

I was eating even fewer carbs than the Atkins diet allows during my final stab at the ketogenic diet and I felt just awful. My first try I stayed below 50 grams of carbs and couldn't function at all, so I do know I need to get more than that.

Altogether I think I was on the ketogenic diet for about eight months. The longest I stayed on it at a time without a single cheat day was around two months. I did feel a change when I was in ketosis but not the fabulous results everyone talks about.

Do you mean you want my meal plan? It's pretty simple.

Breakfast: a smoothie (1 cup milk alternative, almond milk right now, 1/2 frozen banana, 1 tbsp each of flax seed, cocoa powder, peanut butter, and maple syrup, though I'm going to ditch the peanut butter since it doesn't satisfy me) with a bowl of clam chowder. (Last batch was split into 12 portions, it had 3 lbs potatoes, 6 cans of clams, 800ml canned coconut milk, 1 liter chicken broth, 1/2 bag bacon bits. The next batch is going to have 2 lbs of potatoes and 1 liter of cream, too many taters and not enough "broth"!)

Lunch: 2 hard boiled eggs and cheddar cheese, 1 cup of blueberries. I'm going to go back to eating trail mix once I finish off those evil eggs, that was a mixture of peanuts, plain shredded coconut, craisins, and chocolate covered coffee beans, I think I'll be replacing the latter with freeze dried strawberries though.

Dinner: they all have the same formula, 3 lbs of marinated meat (chicken thighs, ground beef, or salmon) with 3 bags frozen vegetables, and another smoothie.

If I need a snack I'll have a single piece of Lindor's 70% mint chocolates. I seem to average two pieces a day unless it was a busy day, then all bets are off.

~SilverEm -- wow, thank you for all of the links! That's a lot of interesting reading. The Schwarzbein Principle actually sounds pretty much like I'm aiming for here, I'll have to do some homework on it.

I hadn't read much about the Atkins diet because I think it's stupid to change your way of eating when you stop losing weight, you'll just gain it back! Plus I get so sick when I don't eat enough carbs that I wouldn't be able to safely do the carb reintroduction phase. But then again that's exactly what I'm doing right now, I just took a flying leap over my danger zone. I had no idea that you could go up to 100 carbs on it, maybe I should take a closer look at it too.

Well I already have written my own meal plan, but at the same time that doesn't help me figure out how many carbs to eat! I slapped fruit and potatoes into my ketogenic meal plan and called it good, but it needs some fine tuning still. I want to get to a point where I don't need to snack anymore. Atkins and The Schwarzbein Principle sound very similar, sounds like either one might well apply to my current meal plan, I should take a closer look at their carb guidelines.