Thanks so much for your thoughtful reply, Fiona. I'll think about a food journal. It would have helped me a lot more three or four months ago. These days, I really only eat unprocessed meat, poultry and fish, eggs, low-carb vegetables, olive oil, vinegar (which I'll have to dump to do Neanderthin), lemon juice, herb teas, spices, pork rinds, mustard, and an occasional bite, not piece, but bite, of low carb fruit.

Sam and Frances, it does seem that we are cut from the same cloth. I'm having a slightly harder time than you, Sam, probably because I'm female and much smaller. Have you two dieted all your lives? I keep thinking that each thing I give up will solve the problem and the weight will start to come off, but it never does. Maybe I just eat too much. It's hard to break the habits of a lifetime of being a compulsive eater, and it wasn't until I gave up everything except the foods I listed above that I really began to feel my cravings truly start to subside. I don't think that my goal is unrealistic. At this point, I'd just be happy to get back to the weight I was when I started low-carbing. It's just so disheartening to follow all the rules and wake up to see the scale up two pounds for some inexplicable reason. At least if I gain after eating a Carbolite candy bar, I know why. But I even make my own mayonnaise and salad dressings so I know what I'm eating, and I won't even buy turkey breast or roast beef from the deli anymore, just in case there are additives. One thing I did notice is that I actually do better over the long haul if I eat plenty of vegetables. I was trying for such a long time to keep my carbs as close to zero as possible, and I was starting to show some very unhealthy signs, and I had a harder time keeping my weight down.

I'm sorry to hear that there are other people as stymied as I am, but it's nice to know I'm not a loner. What do you guys think is at the heart of our problem? It seems that age has something to do with it for me. Until I turned about 42, at least when I went on a diet and followed all the rules and didn't cheat, I lost weight. On this last low fat/low cal diet before I went low carb, it took me 3 months to lose seven pounds until I started taking the ECA stack. I've tried using the ECA stack with low carbing, but it doesn't seem to make a difference, and it's so bad for you. That was one of the reasons I went to Atkins in the first place, so I could start eating like a sane human being and stop taking those awful things. My doctor told me there's such a thing as "Caveman Syndrome". It happens to some people after a lifetime of yo-yo dieting. Your body pretty much says "enough is enough already", and I've seen other references to it in this forum, just not called by that name. What I want to know is, is there any recovering from that, or once you cross over some invisible metabolic line, are you doomed forever?