Melinda,

One more thought. This might appear to others as heresy, but it worked for me, so I'm going to share it with you.

The problem with being on a diet--any diet is I always felt like I was depriving myself. That's why I had to get off and eat as much junk food as I could to satisfy my deprivation. So I tricked myself on Atkins. And I did it while still adhering to the rule of induction. This is what I did: I ate about 2400 calories per day which is actually too much to lose much weight even at 20 grams of carbohydrate per day. But I ate about 6 or 7 times a day. I ate a lot of sugarfree jello with whipped cream sweetened with sucralose. I ate a lot of homemade ice cream made with sucralose which happens to taste better than anything you can make in the stores. I chewed a lot of sugarless gum all day long. I made chocolate pudding with cream, cocoa powder, and Atkins Thicken Thin thickener. On top of the foods above I would have Cobb Salads with tomato, avocado, bacon, chicken, and blue cheese or other dressing. I would eat plenty of chicken and beef during the day and have broccoli too. And the beauty was that I felt like I was binging. I didn't feel deprived. I didn't let myself get hungry. I was eating about every hour and always had gum in my mouth, but I stayed in ketosis and I lost one pound a week.

I did sacrifice the fast weight loss of induction, but I gained the ability to stick with Atkins. Now, I've cut back to 1,750 calories per day, not because I forced myself but because I just couldn't keep up with all that food and I didn't feel as hungry. Now I've lost four pounds in the last week.

Not everyone needs to do this, but I have a psychological attachment to food and this helped me ease into the diet without feeling like I was dieting. It took away the anxiety about food and now I feel like I just don't want to eat any other way. I could make the good tasting low carb cinnamon rolls or banana bread or chocolate mousse, but I don't even feel like eating that right now.