Oh wow, thanks for all the responses to my "success" story. I appreciate you all taking the time to read it. Karen I'll swing by your journal in a sec to answer your question but oh yeah I have had missteps. I feel sorry for anyone that hasn't personally I gain a lot of strength in knowing that I have fought my carb cravings and not only survived but thrived. I'll swing by your journal and answer in more detail.

From Stylus' Journal

The things that helped are fairly easy to list. I never gave up. I reread the book every so often and I never strayed far from the support of this forum. Hurdles however, were a learning experience.

The first hurdle I had to leap over was kicking the LC treats habits. I had a hard time getting my head around the fact that after over a year of not counting I had to start counting the sugar alcohols as carbs if I wanted to loose the last 20 pounds.

Another hindrance was my fear of the gym. I stopped going because I felt awkward using the equipment with other people around. I eventually did have to incorporate more exercise (along with walking) by using exercise videos. I did return to the gym at the beginning of this year and I love it.

When I realized that calories do count for me I went to the extreme. I lowered my calories to 1200 calories for an extended time to loose the last 20 pounds. The problem with doing this is that eventually my metabolism learned to function very well off the lower calories. If I ate something remotely off plan or salty my weight would shoot up by 3 pounds or more. This had a paralyzing effect on me because I was extremely fearful of moving through the phases as Dr. A instructs.

My solution was to remove the final hindrance from the equation. The scale. I put my scale in the garage and I only weigh in once a week now. Before, I weighed in daily. The body can and will go up in weight when you start moving up the carb later. If you do it slowly and as Dr A instructs the water should disappear as it did with me. Seeing my body’s every fluctuation made me not WANT to do anything that would make me gain weight. I’m sure the fluctuations are still there. I just don’t see them now.