So what was your defining moment when you decided enough is enough and embarked on this WOL. Is it going the way you thought? Are you happy with the results? Does the book make sense?

Also, do you exercise? If so, how much?

I've been doing Atkins for a couple of weeks, and exercising for about a month, I wouldn't say it's a struggle but I'm not losing as quickly as I'd hoped. I know I need to be patient and I'm doing the right things, but I'm having trouble seeing long-term any difference in how I look.........

Have a great day all

LL

Lucy according to your stats, you lost 23 pounds in a month? That's awesome! As for me, I started in August 2003 and I've lost 45 pounds. I didn't have a defining moment per se...I was just heavy and uncomfortable and I decided to give it a try. This has been pretty painless, and I feel great. I read the Atkins website to get started and then read the book when I was about one month into it. The book is fine...it filled out the info I got from the website and helped me understand why low-carbing works. Just stick it out...if you've lost 23 pounds already, this WOE is obviously working for you! You'll probably be like me...you'll look up one day and magically be 30 pounds lighter! The first 30 pounds fell of with virtually no effort, it was great. The last 15 have been slower, but I still love eating this way. I think I'll be low-carbing for life.

My defining moment was somewhen in 2002 when I read "the Schwarzbein Principle" and discovered that the earth was roun... I mean, learned all that stuff about insulin and carbs and BG and fat storage... AND learned I could rid myself of PCOS.

Those promises were real, and I haven't looked back. My weightloss has been slow too but I feel great. It is taking longer than I anticipated but overall I'm very satisfied with the results!

My defining moment was a combination of things. My Uncle died from Hypertension/Diabetes in early 2002, and then a few months later my Grandmother had a stroke. Shortly after that a friend told about his success with Atkins. So, I decided to go on it. I was already experiencing some of the problems my Uncle had had...If I didn't go on this diet, I would have probably been the next person they put in the ground.

I also wanted to get back together with an old Girlfriend, who I knew in school. She hadn't seen me since I'd gained most of the weight. I was only about 10-20 pounds overweight when we first met. Her Dad moved her to a Religious HS, so thats why we hadn't seen each other in person since then, though I have emailed her a few times.

My defining moment was last Easter. I had taken my son to visit my inlaws over the holidays and my father inlaw video taped us coloring Easter eggs. When I saw the tape and did not recognize myself - how could that be me? I knew I was fat, just not THAT large. I looked at me sweet son and thought how he must feel to have a cow for a mom. Would he be teased because his mom was the largest parent? Would I start to have health problems and not even see him grow up? It is about a 5 or 6 hour drive back home from inlaws house and by the time I got home I had decided that I was going to make a change.

I had recently heard a description of the Atkins diet and when I got home I told my husband (disgustingly healthy, active and in shape) I wanted to give it a try. He was supportive and said he would change his eatting too and go lc with me. The next day went to bookstore and got the book. We agreed we would do the 2 week induction by the book and see if it worked, it sounded too easy. The rest as they say is history. I have lost about 80 pounds and feel great. I have gone from a size 2 or 3X to a size 12. Had my blood work done a while back with great results. Now I get to shoot hoops with ds and go bike riding with him. As a family we go hiking or do more fun stuff together. Life is good.

Marie

Lets see....lots of contributing factors.

1) Father diagnosed with Diabetes.
2) Skipped 5-year high school reunion, because I didn't want people to see how big I'd gotten.
3) Just plain tired of not being able to do the things I want to, because of a lack of energy or prohibitive size.
4) Broke the driver's seat of my car, when I leaned back, trying to get the wallet out of my back pocket.
5) Stepping on the scale and seeing I'd gotten to over 300lbs.
6) Finding out that a girl I knew (and 'liked') told her friend I was 'fun to be around, but really out of shape.')

Here goes one that's going to make me look like a jerk, but I'm just being 100% honest.

I thought of myself at 300lbs. Then I considered what my female equivalent would be. That's a woman of about 250lbs. And to put it plainly, I don't want a 250lb wife. At the same time, I know the kind of women I like don't want a 300lb husband, so I had to lose the weight.

I could go on and on, but it all just added up and finally made me force this change.

Last July, my 11 year old daughter was involved in a special summer enrichment program at the local jr college. For her birthday, I brought cake for all 120 kids. The program director emailed me a picture she had taken of me behind my daughter as she blew out the candles on the cake. I saw how bad I was looking and began that same day.

I am looking at my 50th birthday this year and have to say this WOL has not been as successful as it has been for some of the younger people. I walk 6-7 days a week and use a stepper a couple of days a week. I have not cheated in the entire time. I don't eat bars at all, do indulge in a sugar-free candy maybe once a month. I have tried going up the carb ladder and found I stall out rather quickly on fruit and nuts and dairy.

I have lost 40 pounds in 9 months. I am proud of that accomplishment. I may not be the fastest loser, but I'm like the hare...plodding along.

I am/was an avid runner walker, I have to stay physical or I gain weight that simple. Well I injured my foot and could no longer do cardio. I stopped doing any form of exercise, even though I had no reason too, so instead I just ate and ate and ate. I was gaining weight without even thinking what I was doing to my body. When my husband came back from Iraq we got on our bathing suits to get into the hot tub and I happened to glance into the mirror and was disgusted with what I saw. When I met my husband for the first time I was wearing a size 5 jeans and here I was 4 years later wearing a tight 12. I knew at that rate I had to do something. I guess it is vanity but I also knew it wasn't good for my health. I guess that was my defining moment. I was losing weight at a pretty good rate, but twice I have gotten off track. As soon as I get back on track the weight melts right off. This time I am staying on track. I have never had more energy and I am not even doing cardio yet.
Next week I should be able to start doing cardio again and I plan on always LCing. It is nice not to always want to eat. I eat only 3 times a day now and have never felt fuller.

I have been heavy all my life, always gaining weight and never losing it. My size slowly worked its way up to a 24 and at that time that was mostly the highest size you could get, and I started to get nervous about what I would do when I could no longer fit into the largest size at stores. Luckily (I guess?) I maintained a 24 for several years throughout college and throughout teaching but again the trend began and the 24s began to get tight and now they had 26s in the store and I even bought a couple of those but I started to think that things were getting out of control. My husband tried the Slimfast diet and asked me if I wanted to go on that too so I gave that a try but I was starving all the time and lost hardly anything so I knew I could not live my life like that. I had known about Atkins and knew about it for a few years and always known it was for me but I didn't look into it until trying Slimfast and when I thought about it, I thought that yes, I could do it vegetarian and then I started and I haven't looked back since. The first 80 lbs went fairly easily but the last 50 are real tough to get off.

I have always exercised since the first day I started. I started doing a 25 min beginning tae bo workout where I couldn't even kick barely past my ankle. Now I can do the advanced tae bo workouts with few problems.

The closer I get I am starting to think that maybe I can make it there to my goal one of these days.

I was very active. I injured myself and then moved and sunk into a deep depression. I gained over 100 lbs in one year and avoided everyone, because I was so ashamed of how big I have gotten. I refused to even see my family since they are highly critical of things like that. That entire year I was trying to lose weight and the more I tried the more I gained it seemed.

Atkins seemed like the stupidest thing anyone could ever do. I thought it would make me worse and damage my health and I knew it all. While I was struggling on starvation diets and living on bags of popcorn and fat free turnkey breast and mustard my good friend who was just diagnosed with epilepsy when he turned 31 was reading about it and telling me about the ketogenic diet and his mother wanted to help him along and so she decided to do atkins and he decided to do it with her. He kept praising it and I kept saying you are nuts, I cant give up popcorn and bread and ketchup and pasta. I didnt want to go near fat. If I ate 10g of fat a day it was a lot.

He would read to me clips from the book or send me to the website. He finally got me a copy of the book and made me a list of all the foods that I liked (fruits and veggies) and the carb counts. I finally did some research of my own and decided it was worth a shot.

The more I began to research the more I began to really understand and the more I realized how much it was helping my health! How much better I began to feel and how much I began to enjoy life more!

I know I have lost tons of weight and feel better and everyone comments but since I look at myself every day, I dont look any different to me. Its weird. I took a before picture but it was taken with a real cam, not a digi one and I am too ashamed to get the film developed and I dont want to know what I looked like.

Maybe when I reach goal.

A friend of mine was having good success with Atkins and he kept telling me about it, so I requested the book from the library - long wait list. He kept saying it wasn't just about losing weight, it was about feeling better. I've been dealing with injuries, and had been unable to exercise. For the first summer (2003) I could remember, I couldn't ride my bicycle. I was starting to get desperate!

I finally got the book, and read it in a day and a half! I bookmarked the Atkins site and prepared my kitchen before I started. I check the site regularly when I have questions. It's a great resource.

By the time the first two weeks were done I was feeling more energetic. It may not take the pain away, but I fully believe I can deal with everything better now.

I started walking about 3 weeks after I started and have been walking almost every day since. A friend at work also started LCing around the same time and she's a great support for me.

I lost quicker than I'd expected to in the beginning, but now I've slowed down to a more regular 1 to 2 pounds per week. I'll take it slow and get to goal whenever I get there - I'm hooked on feeling better.

I had gone through every doctor to find out why I had this unbearable pain...nobody could do anything...I was taking 1-2 lortabs a day!! we finally attributed it to mold!! which is a fungas, a friend of mine told me about an anti-fungal diet similar to atkins....I put it off forever untill one day I looked in the mirror and saw a very fat old lady, who couldn't even play with her son because she was to tired!!

And so january I decided that was it it was time to go...and so I started.........I was only going to do a four month cleanse, but after seeing how good I felt, I decided this was a life long change and that is my goal!!

I feel so good, I know my weight loss is slow, but I think my body had a lot of healing to do after being sick for so long, so I don't mind too much. I feel so good, and I know eventually I will look as good as I feel LOL.

I think the best thing besides feeling good, is I do not get shaky any more!! this was becoming a problem...I was probably hypoglycemic!! but now my blood sugars have leveled I think and I feel the best I have in five years!! maybe longer...

love this WOL

I went to see my dad who had suffered a massive stroke. He was still able to talk and communicate, but it was as though there was no "filter" to his thoughts. He pretty much told me he had never seen me so big. Kept calling me a big girl. I vowed then and there to do something about it.

I was always in denial about my weight until then. I never saw myself as fat, even in pictures. That was my turning point.

First off I'm neither conceited nor vein, but I was always considered the pretty one in my family (cousins). My defining moment came when I was at a reunion with my cousins and they were talking clothes and style. I hadn't bought anything new in over a year and they noticed but never said anything. We'd go out to eat and I'd be the one picking off their plates. We'd go shopping and I'd get annoyed with the time we spent in stores because I wasn't browsing through the racks, simply put, they weren't asking for my advice on things. The final moment came when we were getting ready to leave the house and my cousin and I were kidding around. She said "Well, I'm the pretty one now!" I know she wasn't kidding then. This is the cousin that was always bigger than me, and had bad eyebrows and a moustache and frumpy hair. I sort of changed her into a "Pretty Girl" over the years. This was my defining moment. By the way, they are coming down in two weeks, and I so psyched to go shopping!!!