FOOD INTOLERANCES
I believe that food allergies( more properly called individual food intolerances) to substances other than yeast can be a major roadblock to weight loss. Without knowing it you may have added to your meal plan a food to which you are allergic. Wheat and wheat products are frequently culprits. Other common problem foods include milk, cheese, eggs and soy. Eating a food to which you ' re allergic may cause symptoms such as gastrointestinal or respiratory problems, joint pain and skin eruptions. From the point of view of someone trying to slim down, the most damaging aspect of eating a food to which you ' re allergic is its tendency tc cause cravings, which, if indulged, can lead to unstable blood sugar. Your real challenge will be to discover that you have a food intolerance in the first place and then to determine which food is the culprit. Please read Chapter 26 carefully.
THYROID PROBLEMS
The other diet-related disorder that can cause a weight loss plateau concerns the thyroid gland. This remarkable little butterfly-shaped organ regulates the production of energy in our cells. If it becomes underactive-a condition called hypothyroidism, which is not uncommon as you age or develop hormonal imbalances-you will become sluggish and overweight. Whenever a person is incapable of losing weight on the best weight loss program available( namely, this one), my first suspicion is a thyroid problem.
If nothing I tell you here or elsewhere works for you, then turn directly to Chapter 20 and follow the detailed advice it contains on how to diagnose and treat an underactive thyroid( see pages 269-271). This is one problem for which you ' ll certainly need a doctor ' s assistance. Fortunately, treatments for hypothyroidism are straightforward and generally quite effective.
If you lost weight initially doing Atkins but now have plateaued, that does not necessarily exclude a thyroid explanation. Prolonged dieting( of any type) will sometimes cause reduction in thyroid function.' Your body, feeling a little disturbed at all the pounds you ' re taking off, is playing with your " set point," the weight level it thinks it ought to keep you at to prevent starvation. Heed the thyroid discussion in Chapter 20 and you ' ll get things back on track.
If you have any one of these three diet-related disorders-yeast, food intolerances or thyroid problems-you must seriously address it or in time it will make your life an utter misery.
Of course, I hope that your problems are simpler ones. Many of you, in fact, will find that your plateau is easily solved in the next section.
Carb Creep?
Could it be that you ' ve gotten sloppy? Are you doing whatever weight loss phase of Atkins you are now in with the same rigor with which you began it? Or has success gone to your head?
Perhaps you ' re the victim of an innocent error. It may be that those 5-gram increases in your carbohydrate intake have gotten out of hand and you ' ve done a lot more of them than you think you did. Search your memory, examine exactly what you ' ve been eating over the past five or six days, and compare it to what you were eating a few weeks ago. I ' ve seen people who, once they really put their noses to the carb counter, discovered that it was 30 grams and not 5 or 10 that
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