<snip>
 but if

Low carbing works.

I have really just given myself  3 rules to follow.
I just treat starches, flour and sugar as if they were poison. I've lost
50 lbs since april.

Rule 1. No more than 20 grams of carb per day
Rule 2. Lotta water.

(My third rule is no more than 1000 cal per day, but that really
wouldn't apply to anyone else.  It  just helps keep me from overdoing it
on the protein or the fat.)

You may also want to look into the supplement 5-HTP, some people find it
helpful for insomnia and anxiety.  It may also be useful if you're using
food for comfort.  Google it.

brigid

I don't agree with everything here.  I don't agree with avoiding coffee
and flavored drinks--unless they are SHOWN to be responsible for a lack
of weight loss. At 350 lbs, you're likely to lose quite a lot with
minimal sense of deprivation as long as you stay away from carbs:

sugar, starches (including pasta, bread, potatoes, flour, etc) and
sugary drinks.

You mention peas and carrots. I avoid those--carrots are pretty high in
sugar; and peas are very starchy.

A cup of raw carrots is 11.69 grams of carbs (minus 3.4 fiber)  5.78 of
those grams are sugar.  (12.82-4.3 cooked)

A cup of cooked peas is 22.82 grams (minus 8.8 fiber).  On Atkins,
either of these veggies alone is half a days carbs during induction.
Very bad choices. Not smart.  Better to go with lower glycemic veggies.

(I was about to refer to a site but it has onions on an unlimited list,
so I know that's not correct...

Get an Atkins book and read it. (One by Dr. Atkins)

Count your carbs.  The first couple weeks, limit your carbs to 20 grams.
You will lose a huge amount of water weight as your body releases
glycogen. It helps to keep track of carbs on Fitday.com. (You don't have
to make your diary public!)  You will also have to manually subtract the
fiber grams, since fitday does not do that for you.

Here's a basic list:

More or less unlimted quantities of  Meats, Poultry, Seafood and Eggs,
cheese, butter, fats (aim for healthy ones rather than saturated fats
but they DO help you keep satisfied and feel less deprived. Cheese has
some carb, so do eggs.

salad veggies:
Sprouts, mushrooms, arugula, endive, parsley, bok choy, escarole,
peppers, celery, fennel, chicory, radicchio, radishes, lettuces such as
iceberg, romaine, Boston, Bibb and green leaf, cucumbers, sorrel and chives.

(Just think of little sandwiches you can make of roast beef rolled up in
lettuce leaves, or cream cheese on cucumber slies, and you have a
glimmer of the possibilities here.

Secondary list:  (limited quantities)
artichokes    Eggplant    Tomato           Collard Greens
Celery           Spinach    Leeks    Scallions
Pumpkin           Broccoli    Cabbage           Turnips
Rhubarb           String Beans    Wax Beans    Brussel Sprouts
Bamboo Shoots    Kale           Sauerkraut    Chard
Cauliflower    Kohlrabi    Beet Greens    Zucchini
Summer Squash    Water Chestnuts    Spaghetti Squash

Hi Louie and Fred,

Louie, Great Post. Lemme take it a bit farther.

Fred,
I would like to share with you, and anyone else on the book, a couple
of the techniques I have developed to maintain focus and goals. I read
a book while doing my masters degree (the interssection of business
strategy, economics, and business psychology) that really changed how I
look at things, called Committment by Professor Pankaj Ghemawat.
(http://tinyurl.com/p5n8q) The book is about business strategy and case
examples that Dr. Ghemawat found in business to support his theory. The
secret of long term success is being fully commited to your goals while
remaining flexible enough to redefine them as you go along.

So, without going too deep into Dr. Ghemawat's book (because it's a
business book, not about people, really), the central thing is you have
to decide what you want. Then you have to decide how to get there. That
will entail some things that you will focus on and some things that you
won't do at all. In adopting Low Carb, you have some idea about your
goals. It may be as vague as I would like to lose some weight. You have
some idea of the strategy (Atkins, Protein Power, whatever). You may
know a little bit of what that entails doing (eat more fat and protein)
and what it entails doing without (sugar, starch, bread, pasta, corn,
etc).

In line with Ghemawat, I think the keys are like this:
1- Firm up your goals. Decide exactly what they are, how you are going
to measure progress, why you want them. I have a list of ten reasons
why I am doing LC. They range from better clothes and looking better to
dodging diabetes and lowering my cholesterol. It's important to know
the why as much as the what. My goals are a range of weight numbers, a
range of measurement numbers, a ceiling body fat % #, and target total,
LDL, HDL and Triglyceride ranges. The measurement of progress on those
are pretty easy.

2- Make the commitment to your strategy. If this is your first go with
LC, buy one of the books (Atkins, Protein Power Life Plan, whatever)
and really work the plan. You might get a few out of the library and
compare and contrast, but at their core, they are not terribly
different. But make sure that you know what you are getting into, that
you know why you are getting into it and that you can actually work the
program. That probably means adding exercise. It also probably means
cutting some of the alcohol. The benefits from the future have to be
worth what you are commiting to. That's how it works in corporate
america and that's how it needs to work for you.

3- Be extremely clear on the things you are going to do and aren't. For
an example with this, I currently work at a company that has a lot of
overweight people around. I am going to be clear with my peer group
about the commitment to eliminate sugar and starch from my diet (a
public commitment is helpful to maintaining your motivation... really).
I am NOT going to get evangelical about the diet. I feel that LC is the
best way to lose weight and be healthy, but I am not going to approach
people. I will let my results speak for themselves and if anyone is
curious, I will tell them how I have done it. Some other things I am
doing: walking the halls of the building on my breaks (a full lap of
the building is 1/2 mile), taking the stairs instead of the elevator
and logging my stairs climbed. Trying new LC foods and working to
incorporate them into my diet (I have a LOT of trouble with this and
probably need cognitive behavioral therapy to fix it, but my HMO is an
HMO, so I need to have some good conversations to get it). Some stuff
I'm not doing: eating with my peer more than once a week (they eat all
kinds of junk which is getting easier to watch with each week), going
to meetings that I don't have to (frequently they will turn into cake
or cookie fests, or a pizza ordering thing... also easier with passing
time, but still, trouble lurks there).

4- Maintain your vigil. I fully believe that carbohydrates,
particularly cereal grains and sugar, are addictive. I also fully
believe that the first bit of bad carb that I get could be the ramp up
back to a full on addiction. If I maintain the rest and stay focused on
my goals, it's beatable, but I have eaten absurd amounts of carbs for
pretty much my entire life, save about 9 months over the last few years
when I haven't been eating them. To paraphrase Chicago, "That's a hard
habit to break."

I hope that you pick and plan and have all the success you could want
from it. If you create some level of commitment, I am sure it will
REALLY work. And I mean it will work a lot.

-Hollywood. optimistic realist.