I do understand, Lisa...I was not saying the Atkins diet was not working...only that I was frustrated by my own body's apparent genius at holding on to weight, LOL!

My calories may seem too low -perhaps they are - but please understand that I have a thyroid problem (borderline hypothyroid at 2.95 - if I were 3.04 I would be given medications, but my thyroid is just half a speck not sluggish enough - but certainly I have all the symptoms such as sluggish metabolism, etc.)

A person who has thyroid problems - especially if not corrected by medications - is not going to burn as many calories each day as part of basal metabolism as a person with a healthy thyroid.

That is a proven fact! And most endocrinologists say that any reading above 2 on the TSH indicates hypothyroidism. Since I am nearly 3, that is certainly above 2, LOL!

When I look back on my life, the only times I have been able to keep my weight in the healthy range was by either cutting my calories to below 1,000 a day or by upping my exercise (running 5 to 6 miles per day for instance as well as other excercises.) If I ran 5-6 miles per day, I found that I could eat as much as 1,600 calories per day without gaining weight. For most of my teen years and 20's and 30's, I limited myself to one meal per day. The one meal was a generous one, and I usually allowed myself some candy, plus I had a couple of cokes during the day, but the total number of calories was still pretty low.

(Edited to add: There have been times when I pigged out, gained weight like mad and then lost it by...running 5-6 miles and "fasting" on nothing but diet Cokes. No food. For two weeks at a time - then I would have to eat again for a few days because I would become too weak.)

My mother always ate only one meal per day, although even still she struggled with her weight. She had borderline hypothyroidism most of her life (like I do now) and when her numbers finally got "bad" enough the docs gave her medicine. Amazing! She stopped sleeping all day long and dropped the 50 lbs. she struggled with all her life, within one year, with no effort.

Hey, life with a sick thyroid isn't fun, what can I say? But it's not QUITE sick enough for the Army docs to let me have medicine.

I am thinking of going to a civilian doc - just read a post yesterday by a lady in the thyroid section of this site, whose doc was very alarmed by her reading of 2.09 or something (remember, mine is 2.95 - quite a bit worse) and wanted to put her on meds right away for hypothyroidism.

Why is her doc treating her and my doc is not treating me, although my numbers indicate a worse hypothyroid situation?

Well...Army docs do NOT do anything they are not FORCED to do, let's put it that way.

I might just pay the money out of my own pocket to go see a civilian doc, just to get the help my thyroid (and metabolism) desperately needs.

Anyway, that is the main reason I distrust that the plan of eating until you are full will work for me.

I have no doubt that for a person with a healthy thyroid, this plan will work beautifully.

But I think for those of us with untreated hypothyroidism, any weight loss is an especial uphill battle.

In fact, in his book, Dr. Atkins talks about how difficult hypothyroid patients find it to lose weight, even on his diet, until their thyroid problems are addressed and they are brought to the healthy TSH level of about 1.0.

I am eating more today, and will continue to eat more like 1,200 to 1,500 calories per day as an experiment, but I have good reason given my hypothyroidism to believe that eating 800 to 1,000 calories might actually be too high a number for me.

Didn't mean to piss you off so badly.

Leora

(Edited to add - you know, actually, although I did not intentionally piss you off, I do not really care that I did - I consider it more YOUR problem than mine. You do not know the details of my situation, and different bodies certainly do have different basal metabolisms. )