I've heard it's generally safe to lose about two pounds a week, but a pound a week is safer. My dad lost weight way too fast. But he's doing better now, and it wasn't just the diet but decades of poor eating habits.

I haven't read the original book myself, but my understanding is that patients who interpret "low-carb" to mean "bacon cheeseburger hold the bun for every meal, woot!" are operating under a very liberal interpretation of the text.

I have read the book. I consider myself better-than-average at being able to take nutrition/diet instructions and turn them into food. Yet it was not until I had read a few other low-carb type diet books that I really *got* what Atkins had intended for his readers to actually be eating. I'm not entirely certain if people reading Atkins' Diet Revolution have so many expectations and prejudices that the actual nuts and bolts of it do not actually click, or if his ability to communicate his ideas effectively was not as strong as he might have thought.

Yeah, new Atkins is very big on protein + lots of vegetables. I think it's a lot healthier than it used to be. Still-after 6 weeks, I miss carbs a lot--esp. fruit and starchy vegetables.

I was coming in to say, that I am having the sweetest snuggle with Harvey. He's in the cat sling I made for him, purring so gently. I'm sending some of that love on to those who need it.

awwww Harvey. Pictures?

Sorry, Laga, no pictures of that particular snuggle. I would not have been able to reach my camera phone without disturbing him. Plus, I'm not sure I could have gotten a good picture - him in his sling snuggling on my tummy.

Ah well, my mental picture is very cute.

I never did Atkins per se, but while eating low-carb low-glycemic, my triglycerides and cholesterol levels went down quite a bit so I wonder what the heart guy could be talking about. I kept it all off for 3 years and really thought I'd kicked it by that point. Yeah, I gained it all back over the next 2 but that's happened with more diets than low-carb ones.

Scrappy, I know what that's like. I found it actually helped me in a way. I became so bored of what I was eating that I no longer spent time thinking about food. (I'm a picky eater anyway so when a diet limits me from eating foods I actually *like*, it's a small array of stuff I'm left with.)

Tep, I defended kink the other day. My editor over at B&S(sometimes I'm so tempted to remove the punctuation...you have no idea) sent me a bondage story, all tittery.It was pretty hot, I suppose, but more PWP-y than we generally publish...he was right to reject, but then he said he was into more "normal" things. I Bitchslapped him for being so judgemental, and corrected him to "He likes more *vanilla* things." Sometimes I think he is such an asshole. But he's got a sad little blind married-guy crush on me...that sounds like the set-up to a joke, right? And he's not even the first one. I do very well with unattainable people who can't see what I look like. You know you're jealous.

I love that erika capitalized "Bitchslapped." It is, in fact, different than "bitchslapping."