Here I am, in my sixth day of my Atkins Diet, so far I've lost 5 lbs (that's about 2.27 kg for you metric people). My wife put me on this diet to make dieting easier for her (so she can make the same things for both of us), not that I don't need to lose a few pounds. In fact, I am hoping to lose 54 lbs.

This isn't the 1^st time my wife put me on this diet. The 1^st time was about 2 years ago, when she was done breast feeding our daughter (Alana), and we were losing weight pretty good. But then Andrea, my wife, got pregnant and we got off of the diet (for the health of the baby).

Now that Andrea is almost done breast feeding our new son (Owen), she's ready to start losing weight again.

We are also coming up on our 10 year wedding anniversary!

10 years! That's a long time for a marriage to last in today's society. Although, being Jehovah's Witnesses, we have a lot of friends who have gone far beyond the 10 year mark and are still going strong.

The worst thing about the diet is not being able to eat as much pasta as I would like, I'm half Italian (and half Greek). The next worst thing is staying away from sweets (I love chocolate). But it's not as bad this time as it was the last time: we knew what we were in for and planned a little better, even getting low carb sweets (some of which is very good).

A few tips for anybody who wants to go on a low carb diet:

• Get rid of the foods you can't eat any more
  
• Do research to find out what you can eat (you may be surprised)
  
• Check out a few health food stores and WalMart to find good prices on some of the things (low carb bars, candy, vitamins, etc.) you'll need.
  
• Use Splenda for a sweetener (it's made from sucralose and tastes better than the others, plus there's no aspartame)
  
• Get Diet Rite and Crystal Light bottled (not mix) to drink (it satisfies your sweet tooth)
  
• Get lots of different meats to eat, the variety helps to hide the fact that you're on a diet.
  

Just a side note: The Atkins bars are great!