Can someone take a look?

[MollyM]

Hi All,

I'm new to posting around here, but have been a lurker for a while now. I love atkins and have been primarily eating low carb for about 10 years now. But for the past couple years I've been struggling to get off the last of this baby weight! Then over the holidays (and well into the new year...) I gained about 7 pounds. So I decided to go back to induction and recommit to eating low carb. Today is day 8 and as of this morning I've lost 4.5 pounds. The thing is, I lost 4 of it the first two days! Water weight I'm sure, but that means I've only lost a half pound the remaining 5 days? Does this sound right? I've always been a slow looser, anytime I diet with a friend, she'll always lose faster than me, everytime. But at least the one thing I know about atkins from my personal experience is that if I just keep plugging along I WILL continually make progress and the weight DOES come off. And without needless suffering. But, I'm just wondering if some more experienced low carbers could take a look at my daily menu and see if anything jumps out at you, anything that could be slowing my weightloss.

Here's my average intake according to my Atkins app for the past 7 days: 1494 calories/day, 7.21% carbs/day, 65.95% fat/day, 26.83% protein/day. Is that too much fat or calories?

The foods I eat in a typical day are:
Breakfast: 2 pieces string cheese or 2 eggs w/1 ounce cheese
Lunch: 4-5 ounces chicken and 1/2 cup of green beans with 1 tsp butter
Early afternoon Snack: 1.5 ounces of almonds
Late afternoon Snack: Pepperoni sticks or babybel cheese, both if I'm hungry.
Dinner: Atkins meal or sausages.
Late snack: only occasionally, an atkins bar, 3 net carbs.

I also drink 3 cups of coffee in the morning, and I put 2 S&L and 2 Tbsp of 1/2&1/2 in each cup. Plus a 12oz diet coke in the afternoon, and 20oz diet coke in the evening. Now I know that some people have issues with the artificial sweeteners, diet coke, etc. I've tried cutting that stuff out in the past, but have never really noticed a difference... I wouldn't be opposed to trying again though.

[cfine]

Here's what stuck out to me:it looks like you eat cheese at least one, if not two times per day along with the nuts. I have found that if I have cheese, it has to be only about 1-2oz AND I can't have nuts on the same day. I know it sucks, but that's been my observation about myself.
A note about the Atkins bars and other processed junk like that: just because its only 3net carbs doesn't mean that your body is not handling the sugar alcohol like carbs. For a lot of people, they have to count the sugar alcohols in their total carb count for the day. I don't personally have that problem, but a lot do. Maybe try cutting that out.
One more thing. Why are you eating so many snacks all day long? It would probably be better if you got in a routine of trying to eat three times per day and just skip the snacks. Life is much easier when you are not thinking about food all the time. Try not to be afraid to get a little hungry. It makes your food taste better

[moniruth]

Hi MollyM,

I would drop the Atkins bars totally- I used them 2 years ago but they made me stall and gave me bad habits. Today I am cutting out cheese as I think I am eating too much of it and it seems to be making me stall.

Hope this helps!

[ApplePomme]

I'm also new here, but thought I'd offer my .02

-Drop the diet coke, or at least severely cut back. Replace with water
-How much water are you drinking? Make sure you're almost never without a glass nearby
-Drop the atkins bars
-Lower your sweetener intake. Can you get by with 1 pack instead of two per coffee?
-Switch from regular to decaff coffee

I've had to drop from 2 to 1 regular coffee a day (switched to decaff for my second one) because my weightloss seems really slow to me. The book suggests that too much caffeine can stall some people so I figured it was worth a shot.