Hi everyone,

I just wanted to take a moment and clarify something really quickly here. My wife and I were talking about my stats area on my bio info and what have you, and there was mention of it on some of the responses. So I thought I would explain a little more why the goals and stats are that way and give a little personal insight. Beyond the supportive issue with my wife, there is another reason. Yes, technically my weight goals have been more then met. Before I started my past employment with a shipping company called FSA I was at an all time high of 220. Through that employment I developed something called the "Sweat Shop Diet" which won't be marketed any time soon due to safety factors.

The "Sweat Shop Diet" is where you work for a company where for 12 hours or so you are involved in extremely labor intensive work to the point of exhaustion, very little break time (the most being a half hour lunch), and you end up loosing 40 pounds in a little more than a month. After that I kept working out and actually doing healthy things to stay around 180. Lots of running, lots of weight, lots of martial arts related workout material, it was lots of fun. Plus, my post "sweat shop diet" stuff was more safe and allowed me time to catch my breath.

So we come to now. The running is still here, the martial arts workout too, but I wasn't finding the results I wanted. My wife was doing Atkins, and contrary to popluar opinion, I did actually read some of the book. And from what I read it brought me to a decision to go Low Carb for a more personal reason, beyond the supportive reason.

From my understanding you need protein to build muscle mass, which was discussed a little from my readings. Given there is a lot of protein consumtion going on within Low Carb, I thought I'd give it a shot. From what I noticed there were huge results in a rather short time. My strength rate raised, I finally reached one of my physical goals, my running got better big time, and it lowered my fat rate. Thought I'd mention that specifically should anyone be doing low carb and working out, you are going to gain a lot of muscle really fast.

Anywho, thought I'd go into the confusing specs rate. Talk to you later.

Shawn

Thanks for the explanation -- it will save you a lot of well-meaning posts asking if you knew you'd made a typo in your stats

It sounds like you've grasped one of the central points of low carb -- that we need protein! If you haven't already found the weight training and Body for Life forums, you might want to look there. There are a lot of people here reshaping their bodies with protein and weights.

Congrats on being supportive to your wife, too. All best to the both of you Please post and let us know how you are doing.