Hi innani and welcome to the board!

1. I believe Protein Power gives the recommended doses for potassium, I believe it is about 400 mg per day. You can buy a potassium supplement that has 99 per pill. Or, you can buy half salt or Nu-salt to drink in water or sprinkle on food. I tend to pour a bit in my hand and lick it off and then drink a lot of water until I can't taste it anymore. I also take one chromium piccolinate pill a day. I found chromium to be extremely helpful in staving off cravings.

2. Joint pain and arthritis may indeed be caused by flour and sugar consumption. I never had any problems with either but I've heard from a lot of people about how much better they feel when they avoid flour and sugar.

3. Buy full fat cottage cheese, it tastes better and probably has less carbs. Always go by the label of what you bought unless you suspect that it is wrong. Then you can use the handy hidden carb inspector here on this site to the right to find out the scoop.

4. I would assume that real cheese would have the same carb count as packaged cheese, less than 1 carb per oz. You just need to find out if there are any fillers or flavorings added which would throw the count off.

5. I haven't heard of these beans but if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. Some packages will presubtract the fiber for you. That is probably the case here. It would have 10 carbs, 5 grams fiber to subtract to 5 net carbs which is what you have to count it as.

6. Eggs are .6 carbs each.

7. Planning meals in advance is one way to go. You can go to www.fitday.com to put in your foods and it will do all the math for you. Just check your portion size because it does rediculous things sometimes. Or you can plan your meals around your meat and supplement with known grams of carbs from a list. Such as I can have 30 carbs today, I choose to have 10 at each meal so I will have a broccoli cheese omelet for breakfast, a salad with tuna for lunch, and steak, salad and spinich for supper, half an apple for a snack with peanut butter. (Note I didn't count the carbs here, I'm just giving examples.)

8. I've only seen vague commercials for Meridia. I got the impression that they suppressed your appetite. If that is the case then you won't need them. Also, if they block the absorbsion (sp) of fat they won't help you because it takes the consumption of fat to burn fat on this Way Of Eating.

Hope some of this helps,

Beth