Hi folks, I've been lurking in this group for several months now--just trying to get to know a little about the subject matter and the participants. You all really do give each other a lot of support and for that I commend you. First a little background. I am a 47 year old woman who has lost 20 - 40 lb. at least half a dozen times in my life, and totally crippled my metabolism in the process ( the old yo-yo diet syndrome). For the last 4 years I've sworn off dieting all together for fear of ending up morbidly obese. My body weight does tend to stabilize after a diet at somewhere around 10 lb. heavier than before I started. When my sister-in-law had good results losing weight this year on Neanderthin, I decided to give it a try. I began on July 5th, faced with the task of losing 80 lb. So far I have lost about 40 lb. To John: I've read your most recent theory about doing unrepairable damage to your body. I guess I can be your test case since I seem to fit all your criteria ( over 40 years old, must lose about 80 lb.) Just recently after losing about 33 lb., I hit a plateau and didn't lose another pound for 4 weeks (my weight loss had been pretty regular up until this point). Since I had been following your post, I was getting pretty nervous. I decided to try eating nothing but meat for several days, but not enough to overload on calories (I still don't buy the fact that calories aren't important). I ate a large steak each day, and one morning I had bacon and eggs as well. On the third day I weighed myself and I was 6 lb. lighter. Early on I ate a lot of fruit, but did find that I had to give that up to keep the weight loss progressing after about minus 20 lb. I hope I can keep this up. Wish me luck. Moria: I find your son's improvement most interesting. Before I began this way of eating, I had a lot of aches and pains in my elbows and feet. My doctor put me on Nepralan for several months but it did no good. After 3 months on Neanderthin I have absolutely no aches or pains. I was also experiencing a lot of pain from gall balder disease and this has also disappeared ( funny since this is completely opposite of how the doctors tell you to eat with this illness). Another improvement is that my gums don't bleed as easily as they use to. I'm waiting to see if my eyesight will improve since it seems to get a little worse each year. I wish you luck with your son. Keep us all posted of his progress. Things I'm most concerned about: 1). How will this way of eating affect my cholesterol profile? 2). The fact that most research shows eating animal fat is not healthy. 3). What's this stuff about trans fats staying with you? I'd like to hear more on this--can anyone point me to any literature that supports this fact? And finally, what I would really like to see discussed in this group: Several people have commented on how bored they get eating this way, and I find that I often feel that way too. I would find it most useful if several of you would post what you eat in a typical week (several days if you don't feel like writing that much). Also has anyone experimented with recipes that would fit within Neanderthin? I've tried many of the recipes in Ray's book, but I could use a few more. I make a dish in which I fry cabbage and ham in olive oil and season it with fresh lemon juice and hot sauce. I know the hot sauce isn't legal, but I think I could make a type of hot sauce with V-8 juice and cayenne pepper that would work. Also I've found some beef broth and chicken broth in the store (Kitchen Basics) which list real chicken or beef stock, salt, natural flavors, carrots, onion, celery, bay leaf, thyme, and peppercorn as it's ingredients. This if wonderful for taking all your leftover meat and veggies at the end of the week and making soup. Try adding some V-8 juice to it. Yummy!! Tip: I don't really care for fish but I think that its important to include it in my diet. Guess what? If I sneak cooked fish into this vegetable soup, I really don't mind eating it. Well, I guess this has gotten awfully long because I've been holding back all these months. I'm looking forward to contributing more to this group. Please some of you share with me what you eat in a typical week (include the illegal stuff). Binnie