Ch-ch-ch-Changes

So yesterday was a rather frustrating day. Well, yesterday evening, mostly. I mentioned in my last post that I'm trying to include more fresh veggies in my program, both because it's recommended by Atkins to have 12-15g of vegetable carbs daily and because veggies are, well...good for you. I had a salad for lunch, a tomato for my snack, and ended up with 7.24g left to try to squeeze dinner in. Considering that the dinner recipes - from the Atkins cookbooks! - that I've been cooking have 6-10g each before I even add a vegetable on the side, that made finding something I could eat last night a tad difficult. I ended up with another salad. Now, I like salads, I really do...but a small salad for two meals in a row was just a bit unsatisfying, and I still didn't even make 12g of veggies!

Breakfast: 1 egg, scrambled, 3 pieces bacon - 1.55g
Lunch: Salad - 6.99g
Snack: Tomato - 4.22g
Dinner: Salad - 6.92g
Dessert: None
Sodium: 1957mg
Veggies: 10.22g
Total: 19.68g

So what's the solution to this problem? The first thing that occurred to me was that perhaps I was piling too many things onto my salads. When I looked at the breakdown, however, 3g of the 7g in my salad was the lettuce itself, and 3g was the 2 tbsp. of salad dressing. The dressing carbs could be reduced to 2g if I used a different variety, and I sometimes do that, but the single carb gram freed up that way doesn't really help a whole lot.

As I was glaring in frustration at my carb tracker, I got a very timely email from Barry, who's given me a number of excellent suggestions already - thanks, Barry! He asked at what point I'll be able to add more carbs into my diet. My immediate mental response to that question was, "I won't be able to at all! When I was on Atkins before, I immediately stopped losing when I went off Phase 1!" However, as I really started considering the question, a couple of things occurred to me.

Firstly, I've had several people suggest that perhaps my weight loss is being slowed down by my not eating enough calories and sending my metabolism into starvation-mode. Although Atkins is not a calorie-based program, Fatsecret automatically tracks my calories consumed, and I'm averaging 900-1200 calories per day. Based on my weight, activity level, and so on, my recommended daily intake for weight loss is actually about double that. I haven't worried about it much since I'm eating every three hours and I'm rarely hungry unless I miss a meal or eat it late, but maybe I should actually be eating more. Interesting concept on a diet...

Secondly, when I was on Atkins before, my starting weight was about a hundred pounds less than my current weight. That's got to have an effect on my program, my weight loss, and everything else. It's entirely possible that I could move into Phase 2, in which I can add a few more carbs, without negative effects...it's also entirely possible that moving into Phase 2 could have positive effects if the starvation-mode speculation is correct, in fact. Anyway, the upshot of all this is that starting today, I'm going to move into Phase 2 and increase my daily carb limit to 25g. After all, if it doesn't work, there's no law that says I can't go right back to Phase 1 next week!