Wow.  I was sifting through my inbox and found this one from Binnie Betten.
 I meant to reply to it, but got busy and...

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that four weeks probably isn't a "plateau",
especially if you lost 6lbs right after it.  Maybe you were eating
something with enough carbs in it to stop your weight loss, like fruit?
 Getting back to a more low-carb aspect of Neanderthin seems to have helped
you.

Since one doesn't count carb grams on Neanderthin as opposed to Atkins or
some of the other weight-loss oriented low-carb plans, it's very easy for
those of us trying to use Neanderthin to lose weight to shoot ourselves in
the foot with allowable carbs.  It's important to remember that before we
can use this diet for maintenance, it's probably necessary for us to use it
like a low-carb plan to lose the weight and get back to where we belong.
 When I switched from Atkins to Neanderthin, I had not lost any weight for
a month already.  What I found was that I really wanted to eat fruit, which
has two problems.  One, it ends ketosis, which isn't good for weight loss
and two, modern fruit bears little resemblance to the fruit available to
our ancestors.  (Sadly, the same could be said for the meat, but that's
another ramble...)

So fruit is out, right?  I don't know.  I had to take a three-week business
trip recently where I basically subsisted on grapefruits and rotisserie
chicken.  I chose grapefruits on a hunch that they might be lower in sugar
than other fruits since they don't seem to taste as sweet.  (If anybody can
verify that for me I'd be obliged.)  I lost 6lbs while I was there (in the
middle of this long plateau), which I subsequently gained right back as
soon as I got home and started eating three meals a day again.  (It was no
breakfast, no lunch, some chicken for dinner and a grapefruit at night.)
 Now, when I got home, I mostly stopped eating the grapefruits and started
eating lots of meat again.  So I don't really know; perhaps the weight loss
was muscle and I put it back on once I started getting the enough of
whatever I wasn't getting on the trip.

Now, when you say "I ate a large steak each day", do you mean that you ONLY
ate a large steak every day?  If so, you might be losing muscle as well as
fat.  Depends on your activity level and your definition of "large", I
guess.

As for calories not being important, this is one of the most intriguing
aspects of this whole diet.  On the whole, I would have to agree with it;
how much you eat has far less to do with your weight than what you eat.  In
fact, I'm not sure it's possible to eat enough meat to gain any weight
except muscle weight (or the weight of your gut being full!).  For
instance, before I stopped losing weight altogether, I went nuts one day
and ate about twice what I normally would have (all low-carb stuff).  I
hadn't lost any weight in about two weeks or so.  The next day, I was down
two pounds, and those pounds stayed off.  According to calorie theory,
that's impossible.  Now if you're at your correct weight, and you go easy
on the fruit, I don't think you're going to gain weight whether you eat one
steak a day or ten.  If you do, it'll probably be muscle weight that you're
losing now by restricting calories so much.  The only time I would say that
you might have to worry about calories is that it would seem that you need
to randomize caloric intake somewhat.  I'm just starting to understand
this.  In other words, I find it very easy to get into a routine where I
eat basically the same stuff everyday, or at least the same portions.
 Recently I've tried eating much more some days, much less on others, and
in the past week I managed to drop three of the five pounds I'd regained.
 I'm also lifting weights, as hard as I can, but only two times a week, so
it "seems" random to my body.  I guess where I'm going with this is that
the body adapts.  If you let it adapt, you'll have a much better chance of
hitting the wall.  I made the mistake (because I didn't understand this) of
letting my body adapt.  You might keep your weight loss going much longer
than I did simply by not letting your body adapt.

Are you still losing?  What are you eating now?

Take care,
John Pavao

----------
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.