Russell Beattie

Alright! I'm at 101.5 kilos!!! (That's what my scale says anyways, I don't know how exact it is.) For those of you counting at home, that's 2.5 kilos or 5.5 pounds in 5 days. Woohoo!

Now I understand that much or all of this is "water weight" but I don't care. It's nice to see the scale moving in the right direction. I've even convinced one of my coworkers and maybe my sister-in-law to try the diet too. It's always nice to have someone around who doesn't roll their eyes when you talk about how difficult it is to find sugar-free Jello...

Here's a bit from the Atkins page - partly why I'm doing THIS diet as opposed to trying (and failing) moderation in what I eat/excercise is that I'm a serious sugar junkey.

Induction kick-starts your body into lipolysis/ketosis, switching your metabolism to one that primarily burns fat for energy.

The name Induction signifies that its purpose is to induce weight loss by changing your body's chemistry so that you will achieve lipolysis and the secondary process of ketosis. Induction is designed to do all of the following for you:

• Efficiently switch your body from a carbohydrate-burning metabolism to a primarily fat-burning (your fat!) metabolism.
• Stabilize your blood sugar and abruptly halt a myriad of symptoms indicative of unstable blood sugar, such as fatigue, mood swings, brain fog and an inability to function at your best.
• Curb your cravings by stabilizing your blood sugar.
• Break addictions to foods such as sugar, wheat or corn derivatives, alcohol, caffeine, grain or any other food. For people addicted to sugary, high-carb or high-glycemic foods�just as for alcoholics�moderation simply does not work.
• Demonstrate how much body fat you can burn, while eating liberally, even luxuriously, off the fat of the land.

The Induction phase is not going to be your lifelong way of eating. It will last a minimum of 14 days, after which you should see significant results. (See The Rules of Induction for specifics of how to do this important phase.) Later you will learn a series of steps that will enable you to craft your own personalized eating plan. This plan will be geared to create the best possible balance between your metabolic responses, your tastes and lifestyle and your total health profile.

Now, yes, that's filled with a lot of BS, but most of what this diet is talking about is controlling blood sugar as opposed to losing weight - which is sort of a great side effect.

Personally, so far so good. I'm sorta getting sick of meat already, but I guess I can keep it up, I just need to get creative with what I eat. There are storm clouds on the horizon though, we're spending the weekend at my in-laws for my father-in-law's birthday and my mother-in-law loves to feed us like crazy. Explaining this diet is going to be met with a lot of eye-rolling and guffaws... Another weird American thing. We'll see if I can get through the weekend without gaining weight like normal.

-Russ