I'm just curious what actual moment (or moments) made each of you decide that you had to start your low-carb way of life?

The first time I started low-carbing, I was having some difficult personal issues with my boyfriend, and was having problems eating anyways. I wasn't able to keep food down for about 2 days, and then when I finally was able to eat, I had some rotisserie chicken. My mom (knowing that I've had a problem with my weight for a long time) told me that since I had already gone a couple days without eating carbs, maybe I should try the diet. Well...I lost 75 lbs. the first time!!! It was amazing!

I've been off the diet for a long time, and I'm starting over this week. My friend went into the hospital with kidney problems (relating to different things), but it really made me take a step back, think about my health, and actually scare me into starting the diet again. Hopefully this time things will go as well (hopefully better) than the last time! :-D (Oh...and the friend is getting better...he should be out of the hospital in a couple days! :-D YAY!)

Please share your stories with me...I'm curious to know.

Not being able to fit into any of the clothes I want to wear in my closet. Not one single item! That was it...the final straw.

When I took my baby in for her 4 week check-up, and I had GAINED 2 pounds since her 2 week check-up, even though I was breastfeeding her and eating what I thought was a healthy diet.

Jen

When I went to the doctors complaining of chest pains...He said"Bottom line, lose the weight or you will be in trouble!"

PCOS. It wasn't acutally a defining moment but a crescendo. I had been having increasing problems with my PCOS. I had gone many years with having a period every 2 or 3 years and then all of a sudden I had one that wouldn't stop.

After about a year of constant bleeding and getting sicker and sicker, I finally went to the doctor about it. She had me take some tests and while I was waiting for the results, I finally read TSP, which my aunt had given me over a year before. I had read on many sites that low-carbing was good for PCOS. So when I finally read the book and I fit so many of the profiles, I started. It's the best and easiest change in my life I have ever made.

I just have one comment to Soon2BSlim: It's not a diet. Diets end. If you are going to get thin and stay there, you are going to have to low-carb for the rest of your life. That's where I am. And the health benefits are so incredible that I'm not even tempted (yet ) to stray back into a high-carb diet. I am a low-carber. That is one of the ways I define myself now.

;-Deb

When I noticed stretch marks on my arms! Then the scale said 200, then I noticed I had "back fat", and not being able to wear my favorite shirt. The stretch marks and back fat did it the most lol.

In January I decided to go on a "diet". For breakfast the first day, I ate Special K, skim milk and a banana. An hour later, I was violently ill and had to take the day off of work. While doing my 'thing' in the bathroom, I noticed I had an old copy of Protein Power on the book shelf in there. [yes, we have an entire book case in one of our bathrooms ] So, half bent over in pain and suffering thanks to my poisonous low fat meal, I starting rereading PP. Thus began my low carb journey.

I lost a bunch in the 1970's when Atkins Diet first came out. But I treated it as a temporary diet. So I gained back the 45 pounds and each one of them brought along a friend!

In the fall of 1998, I had been trying to stick to low fat and low calorie diets for years and failing repeatedly because of hunger and cravings. I was at my highest and about to up to another size in clothes. I had been hearing a lot of Protein power Plan ads and remembered that ONLY on Atkins had I ever lost weight. I decided that I would rather die from this "fad diet" than keep on getting fatter. So I started Atkins.

I lost 40 pounds in the next 8 months. Since then (for reasons of medicines and surgeries) I have been sort of stuck. But now I am off all meds and able to exercise, so I hope that I can resume losing - even "New pounds".

The main thing is that now, low carbing is my way of eating for the rest of my life, not just a temporary diet until I lose the weight. So when I DO get to my goal, I will be able to stay there and not regain.

I'm changing my lifestyle and living la vida lowcarb!

While training for the Kona Marathon I did not lose one once of weight. Here I was exercising and not losing any weight, something had to change. Then I hurt my lower back while walking, and I knew the weight had to come off. None of the other diets worked for me, so I decided on LC. I lost 12 lbs before the marathon, and my back is better.

That would have to be when

1. i realized i weighed the same as my 6'1" boyfriend, and i'm 7 inches shorter, and I ate less than he did

2. I'd eat and eat carbo foods for energy and still get dizzy and weak and tired

3. my stomach was always bloated-i looked 5 months pregnant if I didn't suck it in

4. I researched all the above and the common cure was a high protein plan

Low carbing is just the better way. I constantly dealt with water retention, fatigue and cravings on the LOW FAT WOE. I got soo frustrated. I excersied intensely , watched eveyhting that went past my lips, and STILL couldn't lose those last 15 pounds GRRRRRRRRRR. Aggravated and fed up i researched and really looked at the LOW carb WOE.

WITH LOW carbing--- i feel soo much better, my workouts have imporved, i've LEARNED soo much about my body and how it works!! I've lost the water retention problem and NOW you can see my 6 pack!! Man i couldn't stand it before, i w ould do crunches and some pretty hardcore ab workouts--but never see the definition. NOW they just seem to have popped out LOL. MY boyfriend is now encouraging me to train and enter a fitness competition.... and I am truly considering this

Piera

The very first diet I was ever on was the original Atkins back in the mid-70's. I was 16. I lost weight and kept it off until my early 20's, when I went off to college and nursing school .. and the fear of fat and the horrors of cholesterol were hammered into my brain. For the next 20 yrs, I did the yo-yo diet thing with low calories and low fat, over and over ... even tried macrobiotic and veganism in the belief that I'd be restored to good health. Hmmm ...

I became totally disillusioned about "diets" and vowed I'd never go on a diet ever again! I turned a blind eye to my exploding girth and just wore loose baggy clothing. Two years ago, with summer on its way ... I discovered that my loose baggy clothing was no longer loose or baggy. I went shopping, and nothing fit properly. I had 2 chins, rolls of flab oozing out of the armholes of the dresses and shirts I tried on .. and knees so big, I couldn't get XL pants or shorts pulled up over them.

It just happened that my experience with veganism, and high-grains and starch-based diets taught me that A) I was allergic/ intolerant to most grains ... and B) I needed a lot of protein with my fibromyalgia and muscle pain. I knew that a low fat, low calorie diet based on fruit and wheat would be disastrous. Yet, as a nurse, I believed the mythology that a diet like the old Atkins would be the end of me, especially with a strong family history of heart disease, stroke and high cholesterol. My own cholesterol and blood pressure were already high.

Then a colleague told me that a large group of doctors and nurses at the hospital where I used to work were having good success at weight loss with a plan called Protein Power. That was it for me -- I zoomed out, bought the book ....... and haven't looked back.

That was May 2000. Like BarB (tofi) I'm having some struggles right now with health issues. Even so, I weigh 40 lbs less than 2 yrs ago, my cholesterol and blood pressure are way down, I have more energy and only one chin

Doreen

I don't know if I had a defining moment, but it was really the sugar addiction that finally got to me.

I found myself going to the store every day, buying a 2-liter coke, some white flour baked thing for breakfast, and a dessert for later on...eating it all in a day (and little else of nutritional value), swearing I wouldn't do it again tomorrow. By 6:00 p.m., I couldn't get out of bed. I'd wake, be insanely craving sugar, would drive to the store again, hating myself, buy the coke...etc. I was getting tired by 5:00 p.m. My urine was starting to smell odd, and I thought, "I bet I'm alreadly a diabetic and just don't have the official news yet." My weight crept up to over 200 again, too, and my size 20 XLs were getting tight, which was no fun at all.

I was so tired, I felt like I was 90 years old, not 45. I knew I was sugar addicted and I knew I had to do something about it. I typed the words "sugar addiction" into an internet search engine...and began learning a lot!

I can't tell you how happy I am I did that search.

Sugar still calls to me (dang it!) but for most drugs addicts, recovery is a lifelong process. I'm no different.

I didn't have a specific moment. I was raised on a pretty high refined carb diet. When I was 23 or so, it started catching up to me. That's when I started noticing heart palpitations after eating carby stuff. The doctor said there was nothing wrong with me, so I just ignored it.

I was notorious at work for being a sugar addict. When I left that job, they all pitched in and bought me a giant jar of chocolate bars.

I was also a professional dieter. If you want to keep your weight down *and* be a sugar junky, you can't eat much else. I survived on coffee, vitamins, candy and beer - it's fat free, after all. Though my (adult) weight has never fluctuated more than about 50 lbs, I've yo-yo dieted away hundreds of pounds repeatedly.

Well, the carb-related symptoms got unbearable after I stopped taking depo-provera last year. Not just the sugar shakes, but PMS, acne, insomnia, mood swings, weight gain... everything. I felt like crap and I was at my wit's end. Low carbing seemed to help, and now I feel better than I have in years. I don't want to get on the merry-go-round of junk/diet/junk/diet ever again.

Krisitine

i found your reponse quite the story! i been through it too. and i have learned that low carbing coupled with regular excercise is the key to better health and a better looking body. I ws looking at your stats and they are similar to mine. I don't have much to lose either. I started out at 150lbs at 5'7 and now am at 144 11 days later!! not bad eh? my goal is to reach 128, but even 130 would be awesome. I do have alot of muscle on me so its basically sheding the fat that low fat high carb diets have created for me that i now am working on.

are u done with induction? how much have you lost? I expected to lose less in my first week, but instead i lost alot more. Do you work out? I'm originally from Toronto, living in montreal right now. BUt Ia m moving back to toronto by the end of the summer. Ia m planning to organize a low carb lifestlyes group. If your intested and are close to TO , then let me know. Hey also have you heard of the CKD plan, its a variation of the standard atkins ketogenic diet.

Piera