>One more question though, being a woman, adding >carbs and seeing what happens for a week or 2, will >not necessarily tell me, if a certain food has an affect >on my weight or not. I only actually have a 2week >window per month in which I lose weight.

Yeah, I don't have scales and weigh myself on my friends scales.. it used to be once every 3 weeks early on, but now that things are slowing its the start of each month. I found that this helped me, becuase I'd just keep ploughing through it adding a food a week, going on HOW I FELT, and then every 3 weeks getting confirmation that the number was still going down. I think if I had gone by the scale, weighing at each new food, I could have convinced myself that 'strawberries make me gain' around my TOM! This approach does require a bit of spine though. I mean, when I entered pre-maintence I went up about 30g more carbs in 3 weeks (and feeling great, which is why I did it) before weigh in (oh, and weigh in went VERY WELL!, which has convinced me of the power of adding carbs).

>I have been following the carb ladder and have found >that I am having trouble getting up to 20 carbs, even >with the addition of dairy.
Yeah, ditto that. As a person who did a junk food free 3 cups of vegies induction, I spent week 3 of this diet just trying to get anywhere near 20 with more vegies - I mean, I ate a lot of calliflower and asparagus, but sometimes adding 5 carbs with lower rungs can seem a lot harder then, say, adding 10 with a slice of bread.

>So due to my experience, I firmly believe that it's >important to do OWL - if not adding foods in the >ORDER Dr. Atkins recommends, at least the way he > recommends...adding foods slowly so you can pinpoint > any problems
I agree. Process is the most important thing.