Hi Peg,

Yes, the 1200 calories sounds about right. Your goal is 135 pounds which would give a lean body mass of about 105 pounds. So, you can see that my 1600 calories is very low for my 160 pound lean body mass.

Avoid extra fats in the diet. I like chicken thighs and hate the lean breast. On very lean meats you can add a little low-carb dressing. Eating lean meat without any fat is not recommended by some of the LC book authors. Be cautious because fats and oils run up the calories very fast and must be watched as closely as the carbs.

My energy level is great, but I pulled a couple of other tricks to give the metabolism a boost.

1. Contrary to Atkins. I drank more regular coffee with caffeine, say three cups a day. I sometimes substitute a high caffeine tea called "Fast Lane" by Celestial Seasons. They have discontinued this tea to the displeasure of the local college students who used it for late night study before final exams. I still have three boxes because I stocked up on it. The factory is near my house.

2. Medical Malpractice. I malpractice a lot. The low metabolism that develops on LC also results in a thyroid drop for many people. This is easily detected by having very cold feet at night during cooler seasons. My feet were like icicles even though my previous thyroid test was normal. Therefore, I started taking 0.025 mg of Syntroid. That is the smallest dosage available, and I doubt that it would cause me any problem. This is one area where you may need a doctor to write the prescription and even then he may refuse. My source is about out so I will see what happens when I go off the Syntroid.

A neat book is The Ketogenic Diet which has good information about boosting low metabolism. The bad news is that it is out of print, and neither amazon nor other book stores could fill my order. I finally got a copy from inter-library loan after a long wait. The library could only find six copies in the USA system and they had long waiting lists to get a copy. This author needs to get some copies of this book published again.

Let me know how it works,

Kent