Personal Experience

You can't always get what you want. And, it seems to me, that even if you try, sometimes you can't get what you need, Mick Jagger's opinion not withstanding.

Terry was born and raised in Kentucky, and now lives in northeastern Michigan. She is 45 years old, and has been following the Atkins program since March 16, l998. To date, Terry has lost a total of 132 pounds and she has dropped from a size 26 to a 12!

Lisa is 35, and has been on the Atkins program since January 10, 2000. She has lost 87 pounds and gone from a size 30/32 to a 16! She is still going strong on the way to her goal size of a 10.

If we're so sure we want to be thinner, why do we so often do things that are counterproductive to that? Why do we cheat? Why do we refuse further tweaking of our low carb way of eating when we suspect it would help us get thinner?

Many of you have written me recently, asking all sorts of questions about a recent news item involving me and how my involvement in this bizarre episode has prevented me from writing more frequent articles for CarbSmart.

Carol from California is 42 years old, and has been on the Atkins program for 16 months. She has lost a total of 84 pounds, 51 inches, and has dropped from a size 26 pants to a size 16!

If you are like me, you have been overweight for longer than you can remember. Personally, I have never been anywhere near skinny. Rumor has it I was born weighing 47 pounds, and my mother washed down several bottles of painkillers with two bottles of tequila when she went into labor due to the intense pain.

In a cloud of utter boredom, I drag my feet to the school cafeteria. It's chaos, as usual. I blink in a slow, salamander-like motion and head toward my table, resigned. All around me are the wonderful smells of empty carbohydrates: soup, garlic bread, macaroni, French fries.... The list goes on, but it doesn't really matter, because I can't eat any of it. I'm a low carber.

Cinshad, from Michigan, is 39, has been married for 21 years. She is the mother of four children. Cinshad has been low carbing for a year, and recently reached her goal weight of 145. In fact she has dipped below her goal weight and now weighs 138!! That is 35% of me gone through low carbing!" she declares proudly.

Marilyn, 57, is from Edmonton Alberta, Canada. She started out following Protein Power in October of 1999, and switched over to Atkins since January of 2000. She now tries to limit her carbohydrate intake to between 20 to 30 grams a day.