Nothing is working...
 

Ok...so before I go intot his I just want people to understand that I have had THREE different doctors approve this diet...so I'm not going just off of a quick fix.

I am at 800 calories a day. I've been doing it for 2 weeks and at first it was ok...now it seems like I retain water, and gain, and the next day I'm down beyond what I was the first day.

What's frustrating me is I am NOT cheating. At all. I know today I ate a little bit later than normal...7...but because of that I guarantee I will have a gain in the morning.

As for weighing in weekly, it isn`t going to happen. I hold myself more accountable if I do it daily.

People are telling me to increase me calorie intake, which a few months ago I did, to 1200, and then 1400, and I still never lost....gain gain gain. So my body hates that number for some reason.

I`ve heard of the HCG diet but wanted to ask others what they thought in regards to it.

Help!:mad:

What is your weight at? I am not going to tell you that eating 800 calories isn't okay, because as long as you feel okay and you're getting enough of what you need I don't see a problem with it... are you working out? What are you eating on a normal day?

Normally on a given day, for breakfast I have egg whites, pita, and a fruit --usually apple.

For lunch I usually have a shake.

For supper I usually have a chicken breast and a small salad.

I feel fine...not sick or light headed.

I work out, but more or less walking and running for an hour with the fiance. Did you notice that you had days that you lost nothing?

I tried the HCG diet and didn't notice any difference in weight loss than when I ate healthy and hit the gym. It also made me extremely moody and I broke out in acne like a teenager. Maybe try a different exercise routine?

I'm not going to tell you to NOT eat 800 calories, but my opinion- and that of 1000's of doctors- is that 800 isn't enough even to sustain your body to live, let alone allow it to lose excess weight. Your body is in starvation-mode, at anything especially below 1200 cals.. so it's going to hold onto everything it can so you can SURVIVE. I was eating 1200 cals for months and my loss stalled in a big way, plus I was always ravenously hungry.. I decided to follow the "Olivia Method" about a month ago, and I lost 4 lbs the first week, and 2 additional lbs the next. The scale loss is slowing because I've added weight lifting, but I can tell my inches are rapidly decreasing, and I'm officially now the lowest weight I've been in over a decade. From INCREASING my cals to 1500.

I'm sorry you're having a rough time. If you're ever interested in hearing more about that method, feel free to talk to me.

have you checked with the doctors who put you on this diet?

how much weight have you lost in the 2 whole weeks you've been doing it?

what are you expecting as a "normal" weight loss from it?

There are days and weeks where I lose nothing. Just because you start drastically reducing your calories doesn't mean you'll wake up every day to a lower number. Weight loss is not linear. Your diet looks very low in nutrition, so while 2 weeks in you may feel fine - 2 months in you may notice hair loss, mood changes from lack of fat, low energy, getting sick more.

Is this a plan you intend to stick with for the rest of your life, or some short term fix recommended by your doctors for some health reason?

In the two weeks I am down 7.9 pounds.

I'm only expecting two pounds a week, so I am getting past that, but there are days where it makes absolutely no sense why I am gaining.

What exactly isthe Olivia method?

re:
 

Almost 8lbs in two weeks is fantastic!

You can't look at the daily gains and losses at all -really. You have to look at the long term and how it works out. Recently there have been weeks where I have lost nothing at all and bam a week where I lose 5. Overall I've averaged about 9lbs a month.

Thanks! The last two days were hard, but this morning when I stepped on the scale I felt a lot better. It was down .7, so it was finally a good sign. I find it so much easier to stay on track when I am at home, and not at work.

Originally Posted by natalie062913:
What exactly isthe Olivia method?

It's a method that utilizes your BMR, and is very personalized to your needs. I haven't forgotten about you, it was just a very busy weekend- I will explain in more detail when I get home from work tonight. :)

Don't expect a clear line of being .1 or whatever of a lb lower each day. Weight loss doesn't work that way. Even if you're eating at a calorie deficit, the weight of food and water in your body changes constantly. Overall, if you stick with a calorie deficit, you will lose weight month to month. Just not necessarily day to day or even week to week all the time thanks to hormonal fluctuations.

Yes, this morning I was down another .2. It's going slower, but it's going. Some days it's 1 pound, others it's .1 or .2 It's been two weeks today and total I am down 8.1 pounds...so not bad!

Let me tell you from experience that you are causing your body harm. I was eating more calories than you, but I work out A LOT ...burning about 1000 calories or more a day and my hair was falling out, etc. You do need to up your calories. I am now doing the Olivia method as well, thanks to girlsenberry, and I finally feel better. I was exhausted and feeling weak after 15 months of starving my body. I have been doing it only a few days and went down 2lbs by also raising my calories. When you eat that little you are only hurting your metabolism and creating problems later. If you hit a plateau and stop losing, you cannot lower your calories anymore. This was something I didn't understand either. Your body needs fuel to burn more fat.

Could someone please explain the olivia method?

The "olivia method" is simply creating a calorie deficit, apparently named after someone using My Fitness Pal to do the calculation. It's a mathematical approach that factors in your BMR, your calorie intake, and how many calories you burn through exercise.

I use Lose it and do something similar: set a calorie budget for the day and "eat back" some of my exercise calories. Determining one's exercise calories is notoriously difficult, though, so that number is really just a guess. And even if, by some miracle, someone managed to create a deficit of exactly 1000 calories per day, it's unlikely that person would lose exactly 2 pounds per week. It just doesn't work that way, especially if you don't have much to lose. And if you have a lot to lose, like me, you'd be better off finding a longer-term solution than eating only 800 calories a day.

So basically it's creating a defecit? Is that not what dieting is about period? When it coems down to it, you have to make sure you burn more calories than you intake otherwise the body stores it.

Originally Posted by natalie062913:
So basically it's creating a defecit? Is that not what dieting is about period? When it coems down to it, you have to make sure you burn more calories than you intake otherwise the body stores it.

Yes, but it tells you what your healthy numbers are. So, for example: I'm 168 lbs, 5'4", 35 years old. Using those stats, my BMR is 1442 calories (otherwise, what my body needs just to survive.. when laying down in bed all day).

You're supposed to eat up to 100 cals over your BMR for "losing weight purposes" and creating a deficit, but no less than 1442.

I've chosen to eat a flat 1500 calories each day.

I take my BMR x (times) 1.3 (for light activity level) and come up with 1909 for "maintenance" calories (which pertains to myfitnesspal.com).

Then, using the calculation 1442+1000-1874= 332 I've determined that when exercising, if I earn LESS than 332 calories thru exercise, I DON'T have to eat the exercise cals back... if I eat MORE than 332, I only eat the difference. So, if I worked out and earned 200 calories, I don't eat them back, and only eat my 1500. If I worked out and earned 500 calories, then (500-332=168) I only eat 168 calories ON TOP of my 1500.

There's a bit more that pertains to myfitnesspal.com and those maintenance cals up above, that helps you visually see your deficit- but I'll only explain those, if needed.

I lost 4 lbs the first week, 2 the next, and can't wait to see the numbers continue dropping. I was stuck between 172 and 178 for MONTHS, losing my hair, and constantly hungry .. now I get some extra calories to enjoy, and I'm finally in my 160's! It seems complicated, but I promise it gets easier to understand the more you work with it, and I'm totally willing to walk people through it until it makes sense. :)

Originally Posted by girlsenberry:
I'm not going to tell you to NOT eat 800 calories, but my opinion- and that of 1000's of doctors- is that 800 isn't enough even to sustain your body to live, let alone allow it to lose excess weight. Your body is in starvation-mode, at anything especially below 1200 cals.. so it's going to hold onto everything it can so you can SURVIVE. I was eating 1200 cals for months and my loss stalled in a big way, plus I was always ravenously hungry.. I decided to follow the "Olivia Method" about a month ago, and I lost 4 lbs the first week, and 2 additional lbs the next. The scale loss is slowing because I've added weight lifting, but I can tell my inches are rapidly decreasing, and I'm officially now the lowest weight I've been in over a decade. From INCREASING my cals to 1500.

I'm sorry you're having a rough time. If you're ever interested in hearing more about that method, feel free to talk to me.

I'm going to try this, I'm slightly confused by it but I'm sure it's not that complicated

Originally Posted by Thedollylala:
I'm going to try this, I'm slightly confused by it but I'm sure it's not that complicated

You're on my friends list at MFP (chitanoni)- if you want help with the numbers I def don't mind helping out. There's a cool feature re: the maintenance cals that I can explain in more detail (you plug it into your "goals" instead of the MFP generated number).

Ok. This is starting to drive me mad. I ate yogurt, fibre cereal and drank a litre of water and still NOTHING. ugh

Losing weight happens over a period of time...not just over night. I wouldn't weigh yourself so much. If you are going up and down in a 1 or 2 day span, its likely due to water weight changes and not real fat. I have lost 55+ lbs and I only weighed myself once a month or less. I consistently went down as long as I stuck to my plan. Now I slowed because I am very close to my goal weight, so I weigh more often, but I wouldn't expect changes to happen in one day or in a few hours.

I know I post this chart a lot, but maybe it'll put things in perspective for you. This is my weight loss chart from May 2011 to December 2011. My weight was actually 10lb lower than on the chart because my scale was borked, but you get the idea.

I weighed in every day:

http://healthplusfifty.files.wordpre...2-09-16-pm.png

There's a general downward trend, but day to day my weight was all over the place! Stop looking at the day to day and worry about your overall trend :)

Originally Posted by sontaikle:
I know I post this chart a lot, but maybe it'll put things in perspective for you. This is my weight loss chart from May 2011 to December 2011. My weight was actually 10lb lower than on the chart because my scale was borked, but you get the idea.

I weighed in every day:

http://healthplusfifty.files.wordpre...2-09-16-pm.png

There's a general downward trend, but day to day my weight was all over the place! Stop looking at the day to day and worry about your overall trend :)

I love that! Look at all the plateaus, and gains following a plateau and then losses and ups and downs. I'm searing that into my memory!

Thank you sooooooooooo much for the visual!

Originally Posted by sontaikle:
I know I post this chart a lot, but maybe it'll put things in perspective for you. This is my weight loss chart from May 2011 to December 2011. My weight was actually 10lb lower than on the chart because my scale was borked, but you get the idea.

I weighed in every day:

http://healthplusfifty.files.wordpre...2-09-16-pm.png

There's a general downward trend, but day to day my weight was all over the place! Stop looking at the day to day and worry about your overall trend :)

What did do your chart on?

Originally Posted by seagirl:
I love that! Look at all the plateaus, and gains following a plateau and then losses and ups and downs. I'm searing that into my memory!

Originally Posted by natalie062913:
Thank you sooooooooooo much for the visual!

I'm glad it helped! :) Making that chart really helped me during my journey. There were times when my weight loss felt like it was taking forever. I just pulled up the chart and it really put things into perspective.

Originally Posted by Thedollylala:
What did do your chart on?

Microsoft Excel 2008 :) I kept a log in a spreadsheet and from there turned it into a graph whenever I wanted.

I second that the graph by sontaikle is just so helpful.

I keep reading that daily weigh-ins are the way to go, but I've always been afraid of them because my weight fluctuates so much, and I get discouraged.

sontaikle thank you so much for posting that graph. It really did make me look at the "big picture" - it's the downward trend that really matters.

That said, what are the advantages of weighing daily vs. once a week like I do, if we are mainly interested in the downward trend?

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

Originally Posted by coffeebrain:
That said, what are the advantages of weighing daily vs. once a week like I do, if we are mainly interested in the downward trend?

For me, the advantage of daily weighing is that it allows me to reverse small gains before they become larger ones. If I've eaten on plan for the past few days and the scale shows a gain, I don't worry about it or make any adjustments as I'm confident the number reflects just random fluctuations. However, if I've overeaten and the scale shows a gain, I can take compensatory steps that very day, rather than living in denial until my next weekly weigh-in.

F.

Originally Posted by coffeebrain:
That said, what are the advantages of weighing daily vs. once a week like I do, if we are mainly interested in the downward trend?

For me, one of the advantages of daily weighing is that I can better see the longer trend. If I'm the same or up a bit on my weekly weigh in, I won't know whether that's a temporary, one day blip or something that's been happening all week. Plus there's less/no disappointment when I'm the same today as I was yesterday. I don't expect to lose overnight. If I'm up, I know why (late night meal, hormones, salty meal, off plan meal, whatever) day to day. I'd be more discouraged to feel like I'm doing well all week only to see the same number as the week before, when it really could be temporary water weight masking a 1-2lb loss, that I would see if I'd stepped on the scale the day before or the day after.

Originally Posted by Only Me:
For me, one of the advantages of daily weighing is that I can better see the longer trend. If I'm the same or up a bit on my weekly weigh in, I won't know whether that's a temporary, one day blip or something that's been happening all week. Plus there's less/no disappointment when I'm the same today as I was yesterday. I don't expect to lose overnight. If I'm up, I know why (late night meal, hormones, salty meal, off plan meal, whatever) day to day. I'd be more discouraged to feel like I'm doing well all week only to see the same number as the week before, when it really could be temporary water weight masking a 1-2lb loss, that I would see if I'd stepped on the scale the day before or the day after.

I completely agree. I also find it holds me more accountable to what I am actually doing daily. I can't cheat today, because tomorrow I will know about it versus Monday.

Thanks for your input. I can see how daily weighing can make you even more accountable!