[JJascaxal]

The Cambridge diet restricts your calories quite a bit and your body may have switched to a more efficient metabolism popularly called "starvation mode." It's when your body starts to adapt to a very low calorie intake by lowering the heart rate, slowing respiration, and burning calories very efficiently (meaning you use up fewer calories doing the same level of activity). It takes at least a few days of am extremely low calorie diet (less than 800 or so) to move into starvation mode, but it is not a good place to be when you're trying to lose weight.

Atkins is very different, because you're training your body to burn your body fat quickly rather than becoming an efficient calorie-burner or burning primarily carbohydrates or your own muscle for fuel. That's why we don't restrict our calories much and we eat plenty of protein and fat, along with our veggies. You want to burn off your body fat.

For these reasons and the reasons others have mentioned, I recommend doing Induction for at least two weeks.

Stick to the Acceptable Foods list religiously and exercise almost every day of the week, drink plenty of water, and take the recommended vitamin and mineral supplements.

Then, you can gradually go through the phases of Atkins until you lose all your excess weight and are able to maintain your healthy weight for the rest of your life. (I've lost 91 lbs this year on Atkins, following the rules carefully.)

You really need the book, too. You can get a used copy for under $5 on Amazon.