Hi.
Atkins is a
low carb diet, not a no carb diet. Eating cucumbers and other veggies specified on the list are completely appropriate and necessary to this diet. The majority of your daily carbs should be vegetable carbs.
Also, sausages and bacon are fine but you might want to limit them due to the sodium content. Sodium can cause water retention in some folks, which leads to an appearance of "no weight loss". See, the initial pounds lost on
any diet is water weight.
As for the water, Atkins is a ketogenic diet. Ketogenic diets are diuretic, so you ought to be losing water. Drinking water will help prevent any type of dehydration. It will also help your body to get rid of by products of weight loss.
In terms of exercise, you do what you are able to do. If that means you can only walk for 15 minutes before tiring out, then that's what you do. Nobody expects you to get up and run a marathon on Day 1 or 2 of beginning this diet. But if you look in the exercise chapter of the book, Dr. Atkins gives a list of 150 calorie exercises.
