[airspirit]

Okay, first, you need to get yourself a water bottle. I have a 24 oz Aquafina bottle with a "squirt mod" (hold your applause!) on the top (oh god, please shoot me ... I just took it off a generic sport drink and screwed it on the water bottle ... I told you I was hard core!!!). I drink anywhere from six to ten of those per day on average. Low carb diets are diuretic in nature, so you will lose alot more water than normal. The reason is that your body, once it starts ketosis, will be constantly flushing any excess ketone bodies out through sweat and urine. Sounds bad? It is actually good, because that means you're literally pissing your fat away. If you don't drink enough water then your body can't burn the fat away properly and you will be extrememly fuggered due to lack of energy, headaches, etc. If you want visual confirmation of this then go down to the drug store and pick up some ketone detection strips (in the diabetes care section) and see if you're registering ketones yet. If anything it will verify your progress. If it shows ketones present, then you know you're burning fat (and that is a good feeling, let me tell you).

The reason that you're having headaches is primarily due to the fact that the hardest organ to convert to a fat metabolism is your brain. While much of it can live happily off of ketone bodies, there are still parts that require glucose to run properly. When you aren't taking it in through simple carbs, your body converts to burning dietary protiens through glucogenesis to provide the necessary glucose to your brain. The headaches go away after a maximum of one week. Try some Naproxen Sodium (aleve) to take care of the headaches ... works wonders and doesn't screw up your stomach.

You will find that your sleep schedule will change, though you will shortly find that the sleep you get will be much more efficient than the sleep you used to get. Again, that takes about a week. If you need snacks, try to find a store that sells sugar free hershey's bars (bite size), sugar free russell stover's candy (chocolates, etc), or anything with splenda. Many of those candies have less than .5 NET carbs per serving and are made with sugar alcohols and sucralose (splenda) so they are still good for you in induction. Don't eat too much of them, though, because one out of three people get a serious case of the shits from the sugar alcohols if they do so. Luckily, neither my wife or I have THAT lovely little problem.

As for food shopping, make sure you're getting enough greens (2-3 cups of vegetables per day) and that will help the headaches quite a bit, get good meat (you'll appreciate it and it really doesn't cost that much since you're not buying the junk food with it), and as a rule try to stay to the outer walls of the store ... for some reason all the low carb stuff is kept there while the inner isles are pretty much off limits.

If you stay strict with not eating any off-limits foods (for some people a single M&M can send them out of ketosis for days) you'll learn that you really don't miss that junk too much. As much as you may feel horrible this first week (I only did for a day, whereas my wife was in hell for the whole week), just know this: the moment you get weak and go off plan you will feel sicker than all hell ... let that be a warning to you! I once accidentally ate piece of ice cream cake about three weeks in (I wasn't thinking ... and didn't realize what I was doing until I was looking for a place to chuck the plate at) and I was one sick mofo the rest of the night.

On the positive side, though, have you noticed any lack of hunger yet? Soon you will need to start reminding yourself to eat, hehe .... And just think, one you're done with the first couple of weeks, then you can start adding some good stuff into your diet (if you choose ... I stayed on my homebrew induction method for around a month) like ice cream and fruit and low carb breads and ... you get the picture.