Welcome back, Jan. I think Atkins is great but he misses the importance of
food allergies/intolerances. A lot of people, esp. women, plateau on Atkins
and I think it has a lot to do with food intolerances (or whatever you want
to call them.) Common ones seem to be:

1. aspartame, Splenda etc.
2. dairy
3. wheat and corn (of course I presume you are not eating that much)
4. peanuts and even other paleo nuts, the "true nuts" like almonds, in that
they seem to stall a lot of people.

In the old Atkins book, the original, he counseled against eating much
cheese, but in the New Diet Revolution that warning is gone.

There are two things going on here, potentially. One is too many calories in
general. Contrary to Atkins, it is safe to say that calories do matter, esp.
when you are closer to your goal weight, and fat calories may be an issue.

Second, you could have a food intolerance (very, very common) to proteins in
dairy. Of all dairy products, the one that does least harm is butter, as its
protein content is low. According to Ray, "foreign proteins" are an issue
and that is a basis of Ray's version of the paleo diet, and you might be
hurting your weight loss efforts by eating dairy, esp. cottage cheese. If
you are going to eat dairy, I'd stick to small amounts of hard cheese and a
little butter. But first I'd can all the dairy and see how that works for
you.

I had allergies that got much better after I basically axed the dairy. I can
tolerate a bit of butter now and then and a bit of cheese occasionally, but
doing without made a major impact. And it has for many others too,
weight-loss-wise.

Best of luck

--Richard




Jan Harkness wrote:
I have been lurking for a couple of weeks looking for inspiration to quit
dairy.
<snip>
Will eliminating cream help me lose fat?