Help!
 

I have been on Ideal Protein for 10 months and lost about 70lbs, now i am very close to my goal I am having trouble sticking to Ideal protein as it is so strict and I am unable to workout. So now I would like to switch things up and try low calories and hitting the gym. My question.. on Ideal protein, I was taking in usually to more than 1000 calories a day, now switching t low calorie I am supposed to take in 1400 to lose 1 lb a week. Is this going to cause me to gain since I have been on even lower than that for a very long time... I do not want to gain!! Any other tips ??

Hi Carrie!

You shouldn't gain weight at 1400 cals, especially if you're hitting the gym. The switchover might give you a gain of one or two pounds initially, but it will mostly be water weight, and your body should drop it within a few days.

Good luck, and congrats on your weight loss! :)

oh ya, youre going to gain, no doubt about it.
youre going to gain weight in food.
youre going to gain weight in glycogen (IP is VERY low carb?)
along with the glycogen (carbs) you are going to gain 3 grams water per 1 gram of stored glycogen
you are going to gain waer due to alot of electrolyte imbalances from all of the "restricted" foods on IP
and, seeing as youve been on it for almost a year, it entirely likely that youve had some sever metabolic adaptation (although, the fact that you were NOT training hard in the gym works in your favor) meaning, what USED to be your maintenance cals are no longer your maintenance cals, and they COULD be drastically lower in fact. IN other words, your body has learned how to function on ~1000 cals a day. 1400 is going to be a surplus, for a little while.

And id be willing to bet the TEMPORARY gain will be more like in the 10 pound range~ ESPECIALLY from the low carbing

it is what it is

Its going to take more than a few days for your body to sort it all out. give it a few WEEKS and stay off the scale. Yure going to be experiencing some mad rebound weight gain (once again, *mostly* WATER weight) but it will show up on the scales, ya know?

"Severe metabolic adaptation" is mostly a myth. People who have been literally starving for months at a time only have a decreased metabolic rate of 15 percent at maximum (as shown by a very famous study of human starvation), barring some other kind of health problem. So if your maintenance level was 2000 calories at rest without having dieted, the lowest it could possibly be would be 1775. Providing you are healthy in every other way, you will not gain fat eating 1400 calories a day. Replenished glycogen, water weight, etc...sure. But not fat. No matter how severe your diet was before.

When I went from eating in the 500 calorie range for years to eating about 1400 with my nutritionist, I gained 15lbs. It took about a year for it to start coming back down.

Thumbs up
 

Ah, the voice of reason... rated up!

F.

Im sorry, "starvation mode" is a myth. metabolic adaptation is a very real thing, and begins to happen to every dieter the moment they begin dieting down. See peer reviewed studies cited below. I can also offer personal anecdotal evidence (stunted pituitary functioning, resulting in numerous tests, MRI's, etc, seareching for the "tumor" the endo believed caused it)
And to clarify, i very specifically cited water/glycogen, electrolyte and food weight gain. i never mentioned fat gain

Symptoms of metabolic adaptation include:
reduced ambient HR
stundted reproductive processes
slowed growth of hair and nails
reduced basal body temperature

to name a few. the human body is smart, and learns, ESPECIALLY over a long period of time of reduced caloric intake, to SURVIVE off of said reduced intake. It survives by slowing down/stopping the above mentioned processes, basically anything it can do to burn less calories. Small, chronically dieting women have metabolically adaptehttp://jcem.endojournals.org/content/85/3/1087.fulld themselves into maintenance amoutns of 1200 calories. this does not go against your "15%" study, given that a small woman could easily have an Rmr of 14-1500 cals.
RMR significantly decreased 22% (p less than 0.01) with initiation of the modified fast. RMR values during the modified fast and during the maintenance diet at stable reduced weight were not different and all were significantly lower than the prediet RMR. Loss of lean tissue could not account for the decrease because changes in RMR per fat-free mass paralleled the total RMR reduction." Entire astudy in the Journal of clinical Nutrition here http://www.ajcn.org/content/49/1/93....e2=tf_ipsecsha

24hr EE increase/decrease by aprrox 250 cals on average on top of Fat oxidation calories increasing/ decreasing by approx 150 cals on avg
http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/85/3/1087.full Journal of Endrocrinolgy
Formerely obese patients were found to have, on average, an entire SD less RMR (15.5% of them) as compared to control grouphttp://www.ajcn.org/content/69/6/111...e2=tf_ipsecsha American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

A million more could be cited. One study does not a scientific theory make/break

Hi Munchy,
You went to. A nutritionalist? Smart thing! I too feel going to nutrition expert rather than doing some diet.
When you put on 15 lb, how did you cope with it?
Pl write details about your experience and your age pl as I am 60 years old and wish to reduce 15-20 lbs. I did 17 day diet for almost 1 year.