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Success Stories
Anne from Tennessee is 54 years old and 5′ 4″ tall. She has been following the Atkins program for six years.
“I started in February of 1996,” Anne told me, “and by October I had lost 55 pounds! I joined a local diet program which has a low carb Atkins-type program. I left the program in July of 1996 and continued to lose and maintain on my own.”
“I started weighing 218 and wearing a size 22. I lost 55 pounds and then maintained the loss (fluctuating within a 5-pound range) until I quit smoking last August. I gained back 37 pounds and shot up to 200 pounds, which was very frustrating!”
“My doctor says that it has been documented that your metabolism slows down when you quit smoking. So I now am working on getting my metabolism boosted up, and I refuse to give up! Low carb is what works for me. I am now down to 197 pounds and wearing a size 16.”
“My mother started telling me I needed to watch what I ate when I was 10 years old, so weight has been an issue most of my life. (When I look back at pictures of me at 10, I now realize I was not overweight!)”
“I believe that years of yo-yo dieting have made me very overweight. I weighed 160 pounds when I graduated high school, 180 pounds when I graduated college, and shot up to 218 pounds after having 2 children. I have lost the same 40 pounds more times than I can count using every diet program that came along. They all worked – for a while – until I got tired of them and quit.”
“I have tried low fat dieting, Weight Watchers (several times), the Dolly Parton diet, the grapefruit diet, counting calories, and I was been successful with all of them – as long as I followed them.”
“However, I was always told that I had to eat breakfast because it is the most important meal of the day. I found that when I ate breakfast, I was hungry by the middle of the morning. But if I did not eat breakfast, I wasn’t hungry until lunchtime! I would try to explain this to people at weight programs and to my doctor but, no one seemed to listen to what my body was saying.
It wasn’t until I got started on Atkins that I realized that the carbohydrates from a ‘typical’ breakfast made my blood sugar drop, causing me to get hungry. Most of my attempts at other weight loss diets lasted 4-5 months. None of them gave me ill effects and I felt good while losing. Many of them required figuring and counting or exchanges, and that made them hard to follow for an extended period of time. They all worked; I just didn’t stick with them long term because I was always hungry and frustrated when I was trying to follow them.”
“When I started low carbing in 1996, I had more energy than EVER before. I never felt hungry, and some people who hadn’t seen me for a while, didn’t even recognize me! I started with a local program, then continued on my own.”
“The only bad part of low carbing is that I sometimes miss bread and potatoes. However, there is very little figuring and it does not require a lot of time to decide what to eat. I know what to stay away from, and have learned how to order in restaurants. I will be low carbing forever.”
“My cholesterol dropped 43 points in the first 10 weeks of the program. I am not sure what it is now, but my doctor says it is just fine.”
“Most of the feedback I have gotten from people has been positive. There are always the ignorant ones that talk about ‘that NO CARB diet,’ and I try to politely correct them.”
“My husband is very supportive and eats low carb at home without complaint. My oldest daughter, who is very overweight, is not ready yet to give up her bread and potatoes. My youngest daughter watches her weight and does a lot of working out.”
“I belong to a support group online for low carbing, the Atkins Challengers, and that helps me a lot. ”
“Quitting smoking after 39 years was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I always said I would quit after I reached my goal weight, and I believe that this is why I never reached my goal,” Anne grinned. “But now that I have quit and even though I regained some of the weight, I truly believe that when I lose it this time, I will get to goal and stay there!”
We will be updating you all on Anne’s progress making it to her goal weight in the coming months! We’re rooting for you Anne!
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Atkins Challengers is Anne’s online support group and can be found at:
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