phew! thanks guys, for all the advice and loads of support! i feel tons better. i guess i was a bit worried because most of the weight i've lost so far, in fact probably about 14 pounds of it, was all during my first two weeks. then the loss stopped for a week or two, then picked up at 1-2 lbs per week. going from losing a bunch of weight in just two weeks to slowing down that much probably just scared me.

i've been eating a lot of meat mostly because that's basically the bulk of the acceptable foods list for induction. other than meat it's basially three cups of veggies, and who can live on that???? (note: in one of atkins' sample induction menus he gave lunch as being 8 oz steak and mixed salad, and dinner as 9 oz salmon and kale...so i modelled after that). and it said something about having your carbs with fat/protein so i throw chicken on my lunch salad. i'm going to reduce the amount of chicken to 3-4oz though, as lately i've been finding myself throwing away some of it. i need a little though, because two cups of romaine just don't really fill you up. oh, and i will actually start weighing my meat portions. er, i've been estimating the portions so far so i'm not even sure how accurate they are. (note to self: buy food scale).

i was only worried about the protein because i know an excess of protein can be converted to glucose, which is bad. i just wasn't sure of the cutoff level, if there is one. so i'll continue to watch the correlation between protein/weight loss and tweak it from there.

i'll stop rambling now (going to go reread atkins yet again), but again, THANKS!