Woohoo blumunz! Way to go! Are you doing anything differently this month?

Welcome Sonia!

hi bike. No I'm not doing anything differently food wise. I did however add some suppliments. I have added cayenne fruit capsules 3 times a day, cascara segrada one time a day, omega-3 caps 3 times a day and acai capsules 2 times a day.

I would love to join this challenge. It seems 10# this month is an realistic goal. I have found this journey less daunting when I break it down into smaller increments!

What a bummer. I sure hear ya though. At this weight it seems we ought to be effortlessly losing 5 pounds a week! I truly don't understand the mechanism that causes weight loss to stop almost entirely when someone is close to 300 pounds. It does not make the least sense. One of the blogs I follow is junkfoodscience.blogspot.com which is interesting reading for debunking a lot of the diet-related articles that appear in the popular press (she had an interesting one recently debunking the recent headlines about red meat causing health issues). But I do admit her attitude about weight-loss is majorly depressing, with comments like: "As each successive weight loss effort fails, as they all inevitably do, fat people blame themselves for that, too...One cannot permanently change into a different genetic body type by varying what or how much one eats or does. Hence, dietary and caloric interventions tried for more than a century have proven ineffective... no study has ever shown weight loss itself to extend lifespan but, instead, it has been shown to raise risks for heart disease, cancers and all-cause mortality..."

Her basic philosophy seems to be that "what you eat has no bearing whatsoever on your weight or health" and "there is no successful way to lose weight and trying to make people do so is just even more detrimental to their health than staying fat, which they will do anyway no matter what they try". She she constantly refers to the countless studies that *prove* what you eat has no bearing on any medical problems you might have, and that trying to lose weight is fruitless under any circumstances"!

So while I do enjoy some of her debunking (when it agrees with my own philosophies, like the one about red meat, ) I also find myself getting depressed about her ideas too when I find the scale not budging. As as you say, at this weight it ought to be flying off our bodies! At this stage why should we have to be giving up so much stuff!



Hmm, well I take melatonin nightly (I forget the actual dosage right now) which I began taking as a way to reverse the terrible insomnia I developed after beginning strict low-carbing in January. It does help with that, but I never had any idea about hormone issues, and I am post-menopausal at age 57. But if I'd read that it postponed menopause by 20 years I would never have taken it! Maybe menopause does bring issues - but starting to get periods at age 11 was one of the most depressing events of my life, and when I stopped having them was the day I wanted to kiss the ground and shout "Hallelujah".



I also take milk thistle also. I began taking it when I was having gall bladder symptoms a couple years ago and I was trying to avoid surgery. My doctor actually suggested I look into herbal remedies as she had had another patient who did well on them, and research let me to milk thistle. When I stop taking it I *do* get twinges of gallbladder pain back, but as long as I stay on it I'm fine. Has not done squat for my weight loss however.



Yeah, I read his blog too and saw the same thing. I *did* buy a can of Pentabosol and have been taking it for a couple weeks now. His blog did not say how it's actually supposed to work. On the can it says two things:
- "Appetite suppressant" - in which case it has done zilch for me. I don't have the appetite I have when not on LC, but taking Pentabosol has not cut what appetite I do have in the slightest, or made me want to eat less.
- "weight loss accelerant" - which makes it sound like Pentabosol has some sort of thermogenic properties which cause your body to burn fat faster. If so it clearly has not kicked in at all for me! Still hovering at about the same weight I was at when I started taking it.

So unless I suddenly have a big whoosh one of these days I don't, at this point, see myself shelling out for another can of the stuff.

Glad to have you along, Tom! You've lost 77 pounds in 7 months -- good work!

Allison, I'm convinced I've been in a year-long "here comes menopause" stall, too. Since last July, periods had been one every 3 or 4 months, until i started the progesterone cream a couple months ago.
I'm really starting to think something may be up with either my thyroid or hormone imbalance (Estrogen dominance in women my age is a cause of extremely slow weight loss or even unexplained weight gain, and is pretty common). I decided to try the progesterone cream at the moment, and ran into info on DIM while researching the cream, and decided to try it, too. Testing would be better than guessing, but I know my current doctor, if asked to test for thyroid or hormones would just do the cursory tests that would come back "normal range", and not know to do the special tests I read about on this board... or he would try to prescribe Premarin - (horse urine). nor do i know how to go about finding a doctor on my insurance who would know to do the right tests and prescribe the correct compounded bio-identicals I might need... thus the frustrating feeling of floundering in the dark by myself. But not giving up!

Dr Eades has talked about estrogen dominance being a legit reason he found his patients who he truly believed were doing everything right, weren't losing.

Here's an article on estrogen dominance, see if these symptoms sound like you:
http://www.energeticnutrition.com/v..._dominance.html

Supplementing with natural progesterone is supposed to help restore hormone balance by redirecting estrogen activity and increasing the sensitivity of estrogen receptors, as well as help normalize a sluggish thyroid. The restoration of hormonal balance allegedly improves the body’s ability to burn fat, rebuild bone mass, act as a natural anti-depressant, a natural diuretic control hot flashes, restore sex drive, etc. That's a lot to hope for from a 1/4 tsp of cream rubbed on your thighs each day, but hey. I figure I got nothing to lose.

The article that made me decide to give DIM a try:
http://www.energeticnutrition.com/vitalzym/dim.html

I've been taking 5 mg of melatonin in lozenge form at bedtime for the past 2 months. I have a friend who is 65, looks 40, just married for the first time and new wife just gave him his first child, a son. he says his buddies at work have long called him "Peter Pan" and he claims melatonin is his secret.
I don't know if I'll find it to be a fountain of youth in a bottle (and if I get pregnant, I'm going to strangle him - LOL!) but I sure have been getting to sleep and sleeping better.
I'll be 51 on Wednesday.

Merpig, the doomsday theories from junkfoodscience you were describing is the kind of article I was referring to when I mentioned I've read articles about the body having a "weight memory" and tries to restore it's fat stores. I believe Dr Eades has blogged a little on this topic, too.

I'm hoping that maybe the body can be retrained to want to be a smaller size, if one can just maintain long enough... maybe 5 years? Quitting's not an option for me this time (diabetes) so sooner or later I guess I'll find out.

I will be following with interest your and Allison's Pentabosol trials.

Karen -- the description of estrogen dominance does fit me very well. I've ordered some DIM and progesterone cream. Thanks for the information and links; it's very helpful to get a push in the right direction from someone as knowledgeable as you are.

I'm very much looking forward to this month. Being below 300 is just around the corner, a weight I haven't been at since 8th or 9th grade. Anyways, just wanna say thanks for everyone sharing their weight loss stories, they really help me stay motivated.

Well I went and ordered some progesterone cream too. Pretty soon I'll be losing weight as I'll be spending so much on vitamins and supplements that I'll no longer be able to afford food!

I mean right now I'm taking:
multivitamin without iron, vitamin D, zinc, cod liver oil, magnesium, milk thistle, melatonin, MCT oil, fish oil capsules, niacin, CoQ10 .... those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, and I know I'm missing more than a few.

And yet my weight is still not really budging. I think the only goal that seems halfway realistic that I could set is to hope to get below 290 before the end of April. Losing 10 pounds is a total pipe dream!

I've been on the cream for 2 months, I've read it takes about that long to start noticing it's effects. One thing I noticed pretty much right away though was relief of my night sweats.

Look forward to hearing if and how it helps you ladies, too.

Merpig, I go through cycles where I'm taking lots of supplements, then get burned out on all the pill swallowing and cease for a while. Right now, all I'm taking is 3600 fish oil, 4000 D3, DIM, progesterone cream, and melatonin. Oh, and a few nights a week I drink some Natural Calm (magnesium supplement) at bedtime, if my legs are achy, to ward off cramps.

192.6 this morning. That's 4.4 for this challenge. Too soon to tell if it's real loss, or if I'm just on the down cycle of my year-long 7 pound seesaw. When I can see a 18something on the scale and maintain it for a month, that's when I'll feel like progress has been made. But still, it's better that the scale being up, especially since I haven't been acheiving 1200 calorie days the last few, more like 1600-1800.

Well, earlier this week I hit my recent low of 292 - but the next morning it was up to 294, and bounced between 293-294 again for the next few days. Yesterday I was bummed and had a "to hell with it" day. Not that I cheat as in the old days! After reading GCBC I don't want anything with wheat or sugar ever to pass my lips again. And I want to adhere to this way of life forever.

But "to hell with it" meant that in the afternoon at work I went down to the newsstand and bought a 3-oz bag of roasted cashews, and ate the whole thing! (I was going to buy the bag of pork rinds until I saw the ingredients included MSG and partially hydrogenated oils). Then after art class last night I stopped at Trader Joe's and bought a big hunk of brie cheese, and ate almost half the hunk when I got home!

So that's the way I cheat these days when I need to break out a little bit! And the result?

This morning the scale was back down to 292. Tomorrow is my official weekly weigh-in day. But I have recorded elsewhere that when I journal my weekly weight loss I use the method of a woman I knew from the old asdlc days which was "I've seen it, I weigh it". She did as I did, weighed herself every day, and on the official weigh-in day she put down whatever was the lowest weight she saw on any day that week.

So now I've seen 292 twice this week. That is down a pound from the 293 I spent three weeks at. So at the very *least* I'll be able to record a 1-pound loss for the week, and possibly even more if the scale is down ever further tomorrow, but I'm not going to count on it.

Still I'll be happy to record that one pound. It will look nicer on my graph to see a small downward trend.

Congratulations on your success Rob!! Fantastic! You're lowest weight since Jr. High! Woohoo~

Good job on keeping the "binge" under control, Debbie. Congratulations on your loss.

I'm down just another half pound. I've decided to now severely restrict nuts and eliminate sweetener. Giving up nuts has been a stall-breaker for a lot of people.

As for the sweetener, I use little now but I've read several times that a sweet taste can have the same effect as eating actual sugar in some people. Somehow it can cause insulin secretion in a select group of people. I think I might be one of those lucky few. The time I lost 86 pounds on lc I wasn't using any sweetener at all. And when I added it I faced a 3 month stall (and then just went off plan entirely).

That will bring me down to meat, non-starchy veggies, eggs, good quality oil, and maybe 1 - 2 tablespoons of nuts per week. I also use some things for flavor like olives, lemon/lime juice, g-f soy sauce.

Having said that, I also plan to have a couple carby things with Easter dinner and then get right back on the wagon.

There are 21.5 days left in April. How's everyone doing?