what just happened?

[conqueso]

Hello all!
I'm am soo mad at myself! I have been trying to do a clean induction since Nov. 13, but something ends up coming up (birthday, thanksgiving, birthday, and soon Christmas then New Years!) I started of on Nov. 13 at 144. Messed up and ended up gaining up to 146. I was doing great and at one point I got down to 139!!!! Woohoo! But then TOM arrived in the same week as my birthday. I began eating very liberal amounts of "legal" induction food, especially cream cheese. The weekend of my birthday I ate carbs, not a whole bunch, and drank liberal amounts of alcohol....
I hadn't weighed myself in about a week...well, ever since TOM had arrived I was avoiding the scales. I remember the last time I had weighed myself I was at 144 pounds. But then I weighed myself on 12/17 and I was at 156.5 pounds!!!!! What the ****?!?!?!? Had I gained 12.5 pounds in a week? My husband told me that he had noticed that I had put on weight since starting this WOE. He wants me to get off it because he thinks a lowfat/low cal diet is best for me. I keep telling him, I was always sooo hungry and moody on that diet, and I had been happy and not worried about food since starting this WOE.
So here I am doing induction all over again. I started on 12/17 again. Today I am at 148.5. Was this all water weight? The only thing that I changed with my diet before was the extra cheese and flax meal muffins. I was eating at least 3 a day! It kept me regular, but could they have contributed to my weight gain? I need some advice. Can a person put on that much weight so quickly? Or was it a combination of everything I had done? And will I ever be able to eat a flax meal muffin again? They are sooo good!

Thanks for your help!!!

[not2late]

You need to eat 1500 calories more than your AMR (Active Metabolic Rate) in order to gain 1 pound of fat.

Cheese is limited for a reason: it's calorie dense. Typically 1 ounce of cheese is about 1-- calories. So if you eat the Induction limit of cheese, that's already 400 calories--not a big deal so long as you don't overindulge. Start eating 5 ounces or 6 ounces daily, that's 500 to 600 calories. Visually, 1 ounce of cheese is roughly a 1 inch cube. So it's very easy to overeat it, if you don't carefully measure your foods.

Now some of you might wonder why I mention calories when Dr. Atkins said don't count them. It's true we don't count them (that is follow our daily caloric intake), but they do matter (Chapter 11 DANDR 2002, Frequently Asked Questions subsection). So if you overeat your Atkins foods, it's quite possible to not lose or gain weight.

As for the flax you are eating...again, watch it. Flaxmeal, psyllium husks, and wheat bran are acceptable fiber supplements but these things are limited during Induction. As a fiber supplement, they are limited to 1 tablespoon daily. The Rules of Induction state if you are constipated you may use 1 tablespoon of these fiber supplements or more. Reading further into the book about constipation in Chapter 23, Dr. Atkins says to start with 1 tablespoon and 'increase or decrease the dose until the desired results occurs". Then he gives the dose of 1-2 tablespoons. By the way, Dr. Atkins fiber supplement of choice is psyllium husk, according to Chapter 23. I know that some old timers here have stated he preferred flax. That's not entirely true---that idea is based on a paragraph in Dr. Atkin's VitaNutrient Solution book that was taken out of context by some of our members.

So make sure those flax muffins are within the allowable amounts of the fiber supplements. The other thing about flax is that it's a seed. From my experience as the moderator for the On-Going Weight Loss (OWL) Forum, nuts and seeds are the most problematic OWL food among Atkineers.

[conqueso]

Thank you for the help! I will cut back on the cheese and flax and see what happens. I just wonder if anyone else has had the same problem or has ever gained weight like how I did?