"Doug Freyburger" wrote in message
...
Tony S. wrote:

Atkins since 9/25/10, (181, 173, 160), started with OWL

This is my 2nd time doing low carb. The last time was about 10 years
ago.

Restarting directly in OWL makes some amount of sense. If you
followed
the process as written in the book the first time you discovered your
CCLL so you know what carb count to target to be in ketosis. If you
know you should target a typical count like 50 then it can work to go
directly there from the gate.

Often it takes some pressure to get into or out of ketosis. Think of
the snaps on a winter coat. You touch them together and they do not
stick. You push them. They snap together and the do stick. You pull
thhem gentlely and the stay together. You tug them. Theysnap apart
and
they no longer stick. This process is called hysteresis and for many
ketosis follows the pattern. There's some resistance to entering
ketosis, there's a snap into it. There's some resistance to exitting
ketosis, there's a snap out of it. Anyways, the fact that it works
like
that for a lot of people but not for everyone is in the list of
reasons
the first time through the process starts as low as 20. It pushes the
snap into ketosis. It's a deliberate undershoot big enough to have
that
pressure like pushing a snap together.

That makes good sense. My CCLL is about 60, but I'm targeting about 40
for now, just to keep discipline from the start. I wanted to start in
OWL because I don't have a huge amount to lose and I mainly switched to
low carb again to feel better.

Counting carbs is difficult by hand with a food journal,

It does get easier with practice. I ended up memorizing the foods I
eat
most of the time and as that happened I looked up fewer and fewer
foods.
I went from weighing foods to learning the size of a weighed portion
to
being able to judge by the size. It's a learning curve that gets
easier
as the weeks pass.

Memorizing could work well, and my be less trouble in the end than
trying to enter everything in an online journal. Not sure what others
do, or what is truly the easiest.

so I'm
wondering what online carb / macronutrient counters people are using.
I'm looking for one that's accurate, quick, and flexible.

www.fitday.com was a very popular one for a lot of years. It's not
low
carb focused so it offers more types of counts and statistics than
most
folks ever need. Low carbing tends to focus on gram counts with a
secondary interest in total calories and that means percentages are a
distraction. Fitday gives percentages because there are other types
of
plans that do focus on percentages. More numbers than you need can be
confusing until you learn which ones apply and which ones don't.
Focus
on the useful ones.

Thanks for the advice. I saw fitday, and do think it would be
interesting to know other stats, but just focusing on the carb count.
FitDay PC looks really good too, but I like using both Macs and PCs so
would want anything to be compatible. Probably the most flexible is to
use a spreadsheet and roll my own.

-Tony