Your diet doesn't look too bad to me.  I do see you're eating cheese
with every meal and depending on amounts, that could be a problem -
cheese has carbs that can add up if you overindulge.  Also, I'd add
more veggies, and a wider variety of them, than just the romaine salad
- cabbage an broccoli and cauliflower and spinach and okra and
peppers; more variety = more nutrients.  I'd also take a good
multivitamin as you really are eating a limited variety of veggies.

You might want to calculate exactly what you're getting so you know
and can make judgements about that.  Measure everything and add it up
for the day to find out what your protein, carb and calorie levels
are.  A lot of folks here seem to use Fitday.  I just calculate with
the USDA food counts and/or a food count book I have.  Putting the
actual amounts of everything you eat in will give you more information
to work with... and allow you to track what works best for you over
the long run.

The main heavy weight loss on induction is primarily water.  But if
you had little glycogen stored when you go start, that loss is not
going to occur.  So if you didn't have a lot of glycogen stored when
you started induciton, you wouldn't see this large loss.

Also, weight fluctuates with water gain and losses throughout your
cycle.  So if you happened to start at the low-water time of your
cycle and end at the high-water time of your cycle, you'd see a lot
less scale movement than the other way around.

In any event, while it's exciting to see the scale go down a bunch of
pounds at once, it is little indicator of success as losing water
isn't the goal anyway - we're trying to lose *fat*.  Water weight will
cause fluctuations when you're at goal too... but there's a big
difference between fluctuating around your start weight versus your
goal weight... and that's what matters.

As for normal fat loss... if you follow the link in Jenny's posts and
read her site, you'll find she did an analysis of the folks who do the
monthly challenge here and found that weight loss  after induction
tends to run 2-6 lbs/month.  Some months tend to be better, some
worse, and some have stalls where they don't lose or several months at
a time.

One reads this and thinks, "OK, I can expect 6 lbs loss per month."
Why?  Because we're all optimists about taking the weight off.  We're
all "above average".  Heh.  Doesn't seem like anyone reads that sort
of thing and thinks "I can only expect to lose 2 lbs per month."

Losing 4 lbs in 6 weeks is approximately 3 lbs/month, well within the
expected range.  You may have higher or lower numbers at various
times, but it takes a lot of months to find out what average weight
loss you can expect individually.  It may end up significantly higher
or lower, but it will tkae a lot of time to find out.

But why does it really matter if we're doing this as a way of life?
If I have 50 years of life ahead of me, whether it takes me 6 months
or 6 years to get to goal is pretty irrelevant - in either case, I'll
have way over 40 years to be at goal and be healthy!  4 decades is a
*long* time comapred to months or years.

And if it's *not* a way of life, but simply another short-term diet,
I'm going to weigh more than I do today down the line anyway.  Now
*that* is something to be discouraged about - a much more discouraging
thought than a slower weight loss than I might hope for in the short
run.

The point is... maximizing weight loss is not the point!  Working for
the long-term is the point.  Getting off the diet treadmill and
adopting a new way of living is the point.

I posted this message previously and didn't get much feedback, so I
thought I would try again.  I'm still trying desperately to lose
weight.  Someone gave me the notion that maybe my calorie intake is
still too high for me to lose weight, despite the fact that my carbs
are <20g daily.  Does this menu seem too high in calories?  And just
how many calories should I be shooting for anyways?  Could some of you
please give me examples of the food you eat during induction to lose
weight?  I'm so very frustrated at not having lost much weight.
Thanks so much!

Michelle
202 lbs., goal = 150 lbs.