I've been doing Protein Power for a little over 2 weeks and I stalled at about a week and a half at only 7 pounds lost. I think I wasn't drinking enough water, so I REALLY increased my consumption and I think the scale is a pound down (hard to tell when it's only a pound here and a pound there).

Anyway, hopefully I have that worked out! My question today is about sweating. In PP, the Eades' mentioned that some people sweat a lot during the first weeks of the diet. Today I had what could only be described as very intense hot flashes. I could NOT get cool at all, even after standing in front of the fan with it on high, and I was actually getting hotter! The only way I began to cool down was by gulping ice water. My question is - is this to be expected? Or is this menopause???? I've never experienced anything like it.

Any help you can give will be most welcome. Thanks!

I've been on this board daily for several months now and never heard that complaint before. I'm no expert but I would be inclined to say that it's associated with menopause or perimenopause (but you didn't state your age?). Your body should have made the metabolic switch to lipolysis by now, so I don't think it would be associated with your diet.... unless you ate something particulary spicy. For instance, red pepper (ceyenne) will definitely give you hot flashes if you eat enough of it.

As for your "stall".... you haven't stalled. A period of no weight loss is very common in week 2-3. Just stick with your plan and the scale will move again! 7 lbs is great!! During the first two weeks you can expect to lose about 10% of your desired weight loss. After that, a rate of about 5% per month is average. You're doing fine.

Thanks, Teri - I e-mailed a friend that's been on PP for years and she said the same thing about the sweating - she's never heard of it. Well, I think it's menopausal symptoms. I'm 41 and I've been going through peri for a good seven or eight years now, and just lately things have gotten wacky again. Early menopause runs in my family also. Boy, if I thought I knew what a hot flash was before, I was just dreamin'!!

Thanks for telling me I haven't stalled. I think we newbies read about others' early success and get really hyper about losing lots of weight really fast. Then we start seeing the pounds drop off the scale - sometimes one or two pounds a day - and it's hard not to expect it to continue, even though we know that's unrealistic. So it's good to know that the weight loss can drop off or slow down in the second and third week. I've upped my water consumption considerably and I AM down a pound (yippee ), so maybe that was it. Also, I had sort of a crash in energy the second week and now it's better, so I'm walking every day. I think that has a lot to do with it too.

At any rate, I'm glad for your reassurance, I'm glad I found this forum, and I'm glad for the modest weight loss I've had so far. It is SO AWESOME to put on a piece of clothing that used to be tight, and wonder if I can wear it at all now because it's too loose! Whoo hoo!

Re the sweating and standing in front of a fat. My suggestion is to keep drinking and perhaps find some place air conditioned to hide out.

Your body's defence against overheating is to sweat, by standing in front of the fat you may 'feel' cooler, but you're evaporating the sweat and actually making yourself warmer and more dehydrated.

A cool/cold shower or bath might help - before we got AC here it was what I'd do when it got unbearable.

Nat

Right, well tahnks for bringing this up -- I thought it was just me! For one thing, it has been VERY hot in the American Northeast this July, so I thought maybe that was the issue. And I have a particularly virulent form of arthritis that causes me to sweat quite a bit. So I thought that might be it. But I have been sweating a LOT over the last few weeks.

Here is an example -- two weeks into the diet I went on a religious retreat to a monastery in West Virginia. All I did all day long for six and a half days was to meditate. That's right, sitting on the floor crosslegged for 12 or more hours a day. And every single day my my tee-shirt was sweat completely through by 10 AM. I'd change early in the afternoon and it would be sweat through within a few hours. No one else was sweating at all. Remember, we were sitting on the floor all day long -- not exactly chopping wood or running around the track!

The problem is that I have two mitigating possibilities, the heat and the arthritis, both of which would cause sweat -- so does the diet have anything to do with it? I am guessing so, but so far you are the only one to corraborate my experience -- anyone else out there experiencing sweating in the first few weeks of the diet? I'd be curious to know --

Cheers -- Vimala