Oh, BTW, about supplements: I get them at vitacost.com. The prices are the best I've found. (I have no affiliation with the company and sometimes their service is less than stellar.)

I agree, I use vitacost too. So far, never had a problem with service (knock on wood).

Congratulations to everyone on new low numbers.

Afternoon ladies. I am getting closer to my second pound goal as I am down 3.1 pounds this week. Hope everyone is doing well.

Hey that's great Carrie! 3 pounds in a week is ideal, in my opinion.

Moreover, I see you've passed from the 300s to the 200s!

Yes that was a major milestone for me. Has been awhile since I have seen the 200's. I step on the scale almost daily and saw I was down on Thursday and was hoping it would say the same this morning. Was expecting to see 299 was overjoyed to see 297.

Congratulations on your milestone!

I know it's getting late in the month to join, but I'd still like to give it a shot. I'm retaining so much water I'm sure I can drop 10 lbs by the end of the month. I also want to commit to getting back into a routine of drinking all my water and taking my supplements.

I need to re-commit myself to exercising. I have been slack in that department ever since I was sandbagging a few weeks ago. Tomorrow morning I will be at the gym at 4:30 hitting the weights and the treadmill. Hopefully the weight loss continues with the steady drop I have been having the last couple of weeks.

Well the scale hit 289 this morning, which means I've met my April Challenge mini-goal of getting below 290. So that's a plus! Still half of April to go, so what can I plan for next. Getting below 280 seems like a stretch, but after this week, who knows?

I'm participating in the Dr. Kwasniewski 'Optimal Diet' experience over in General Low-Carb. The idea is that long stalls, *particularly in women* are caused by excess protein in the diet, and Dr. K stresses that protein should be *adequate* but not high, and that fat should be the highest macronutrient.

I never paid much attention to protein other than making sure I got *enough* a la the Eades formula. But Dr. K feels that is too much.

Based on his guidelines I should be having only about 52-64g of protein a day - whereas I was easily eating double that following the Eades formula.

So before I was eating 100+g of protein daily, calories varying in the 1300-1800 range, fat was 60-70% of calories. I was never hungry, but the scale was not budging either.

Now, since Saturday, I'm eating 52-64g of protein daily, calories are in the 2000-2400 range, fat is about 80% of my calories. And so far I have dropped *three pounds* this week! The downside is that I am hungry just about all the time. I guess the extra protein really suppressed hunger. It was easy for my to have few calories, as low as 1200 even, and to IF for 24 hours, as I was rarely hungry and never thought about food.

With this lower protein Dr. K plan I am ready to eat my desk just about all the time! I admit this part is a bummer. I don't think I could possibly IF now under this plan. It is a big effort just to hold off on breakfast until 9 AM, and by 11 AM I'm starving again.

But I'm willing to give it a go for a bit if the scale keeps moving along as it has this week. Interesting thread about the Dr. K plan, though it's now 12 pages long I think!

I'm late welcoming you, but ... welcome!

The idea here is to break the weightloss into pieces, to make it a little easier to swallow psychologically. So partway through the month still works.

You're doing great! Your workouts are very ambitious; I admire that. I hope you get to sleep on this schedule too.

Three pounds is great! Is the hunger issue improving?

I don't know what to think about that whole Kwasniewski thing. On the one hand, I'm slightly desperate. On the other hand it sounds like a lot of carbs (I'm a Taubes worshipper), an unnatural amount of fat (my thinking has been influenced by the paleo people), too much food weighing/calculating, and a whole lot of confusion.

There seems to be a lot of contradictory information and, since I can't read Polish, no good way to sort it out. Even figuring out how much to eat of each macronutrient is ambiguous, since there seems to be a special clause for people who are overweight -- they should eat more protein according to something NancyLC found. But then, that's a lot of fat, a lot of carbs, a normal amount of protein and a whole lot of calories. I can't figure it out.

I'm glad you've found something that's working. I just have a feeling that this is about how I eat when I get very lazy and tired of meat on low carb -- and it causes me to gain. I've never been able to even come close to the amount of protein that Eades calls for. I like his books but have never been able to attempt his plan because of the large amount of protein.

I agree there is a lot of confusion. I don't claim to have my head around it fully. But the main part I've gotten from it is that I was probably eating too much protein before. So I'm working on decreasing the protein and increasing the fat. The carbs are not really super-high. Higher than Atkins induction, but my calculated carb range is 39-52g daily - which is not out-of-the way for many low carbers.

I'm also a T2 diabetic, and probably the most dramatic thing for me about trying to follow the Kwasnieski ratios is that I have seen my blood sugar *plummet*. My jaw has dropped from it. I'm getting *much* lower numbers than I was getting with "regular" low carb that included a lot more protein even though fewer carbs.

But I have a low carb friend who is an insulin dependent diabetic. Even before I got into this Kwasniewski thing she had begun changing her ratios so that she was eating 80% fat, 5% carb, 15% protein (close to Kwasniewski) and she it was only at that ratio she could lose weight at all (though slowly) and get off almost all of her insulin. So I have her experience to think about as well as Kwasniewski threads.

I'm still sitting at 289, but we'll see what the week brings .

I'm down to 294, that's only four pounds for the month so far. I have to admit that this time I'm responsible. It's not just my metabolism. I went off-course on Easter day and there was also an encounter with a pint of agave-sweetened coconut milk "ice cream". When will I adjust my behavior to fit my knowledge? Sigh.

Since I wrote that last post, Debbie, I've started reading Barry Groves book Natural Health & Weight Loss. Some of Groves' followers say that he's on the same wavelength with Kw. And he writes in English. So I'll keep reading and see if it sounds like it would help and what exactly the plan is. So far, though, he keeps emphasizing how important it is to lose slowly. Um, yeah, done.

I have not read Groves though I'm beginning to think I may need to get his book, and probably more easily and cheaply that the Kwasniewski book. Apparently there are similarities, but Groves appears to be higher in protein and lower in fat that Dr. K. One of the Kwasniewski threads indicated that Groves's plan is about 20-30% protein and 60-70% fat - which is just about the ratio that I was stalled on. Dr. K is closer to 10% protein and 80% fat.