Also I was wondering if anyone has tried the various low carb diets and found one works better than the other? (is there much difference between the atkins, ketogenic, anabolic and the other low carb diets?)

I've just started following the ketogenic diet and was wondering what day is usual for entering ketosis? I started monday and today (wed) the ketostix showed no signs of ketones. My carbs have been below 20g everyday. Is it okay to eat just under 20g or should you shoot for 0 or as low as possible?

Also, can you eat foods which contain splenda or other sugar substitutes instead of containing carbs, like sugar-free gum and sugar-free jelly?

And with the weekend carb-up, should you ingest complex carbs or can you eat some simple to replenish your glycogen stores without storing any as fat deposits?

Any help will be muchly appreciated....

entering ketosis depends on how much exercise your doing, you should know when you enter ketosis for the first time
its like being slightly high on weed if U ask me..
20g of carbs is ok.
I thought that aspartame was screwing up my ketosis, but now I think it might be dairy products, i still have to test it out some more.. but diet pop seems to not kick me out of ketosis..

for the carbup im not positive, but it should be hi GI at first, then moving to lower GI, since you are not overcompensating after a while..

2) don't worry too much about the ketostix. If you're drinking enough water (as you should be) or take the measurement at the wrong time of the day then it may be meaningless.

3) keep your carbs as low as you can, especially until you enter ketosis

4) How do you know if you're in ketosis? You can just FEEL it. Plus distinctive bad breath. If you're not sure, then you're probably not in ketosis.

5) Everybody is different, and this diet is no exception. Aspartame may stop you from entering ketosis, or not. 20 grams of carbs per day may be too much or too little for you. Basically you have to be a little in tune with your body to make this diet work well.

6) The carb-up period is also a personal experience that requires experimentation to make it just right for you. Some people (is MR BMJ out there?) can only go for a 24-36 hour carb-up without overdoing it, others can go 48 hours or longer on any sort of carbs and still lose fat.

Anyway, I agree with everything that MS said and I can't really add anything else that is much different. I still would use the ketostix to give you a rough estimate, but like MS said, don't take the results as absolute. I don't have any problems with artificial sweeteners. The only one I am not too sure on right now is Stevia just because when I use EAS's "Simply Protein", which contains stevia as a sweetener, it usually takes me about a day longer to reach ketosis than when I take Designer Protein. But this could also be because of the extra total amount of carbs that are in Simply Protein. It could just be me too, if any one has any experience with stevia directly, I would like to know your results. Again, this is probably just due to the extra sugar contained in the product.

As far as Lyle McDonalds book goes, I had it for a few days and lost it in a moving process along with some Duchaine e-mails, my "40 oz to Freedom" Cd, and some other old articles from Elite (and other boards, etc.)that I had printed out a couple of years ago when I used to post on here. However, I think Lyle's diet is truly effective. I have learned a lot from this guy, and admire his style of how he goes about doing things. There is only so many different ways you can do a CKD. The whole point is to enter ketosis as fast/efficiently as possible, then do some sort of whole body workout followed by a carb-up. That's it. Everything else is just fine tuning.