Good question. I've been slowly coming to the conclusion that your body adapts to whatever you give it.

Here's a current version of my theory: Say you start off with 35 gms. of carb and lose. Over time your body adapts; you stop losing. Then you go to 25 gms carb and lose. But again your body adapts and you stop losing. So you start in on the exercise, say 20 minutes of medium intensity cardio and lose again. Your body adapts to this too. You add more exercise .... You get the idea.

I'm starting to disbelieve in the CCL (critical carb level at which you can reliably count on losing). I think it is constantly changing with the circumstances your body is presented with. I think you have to constantly be one step ahead of that little thermostat, constantly changing things around and confusing it.

Think about this: they say Eskimos, Aborigines, and Neanderthals all originally had a diet with little or no carb content. But these people couldn't have lived their entire lives in ketosis! Their bodies must have adapted to the diet to prevent their wasting away.

Of course, if you've got a ton to lose like me, you can't just keep going to increasingly severe levels. I think it's going to have to be more complex than that. Like maybe going back through a low-fat phase? I don't know. Maybe a season of low-glycemic carbs? I just don't know.

I do know that worked for me in the first month stopped working a few months later. I figured out the offending foods, eliminated them and began to lose again. What worked then is not working now. In my experience, you can't count on the fact that low-carb bars and bacon weren't a problem for you before and so shouldn't be a problem now. Survival mechanisms kick in and suddenly your body learns to use bacon and low-carb bars in a way it didn't before.

Human bodies just seem to be too well designed and they "learn" to deal with the new conditions we give them. My current advice is that you should NOT start off severe, as newbies are so often inclined to do. I think it only worsens the problem later. If I could do it over, I'd skip Atkins induction and start with a liberal plan like the Zone or Schwarzbein. Then there's more room to move down to Protein Power levels and finally to Atkins when necessary.

Most importantly, include exercise. I think you'll have to change it around constantly so that it is always a challenge, which is a pain. As soon as it becomes comfortable I think it's no longer effective.

Allison