For the past 5 days I have been on a calorie controlled diet and although the first 2 days were fine for the past 3 days I have been craving food like mad and started getting headaches etc. and this morning the first thing I ate was chocolate , the only part of the diet I have enjoyed is the exercising and the main meals so I was just wondering how successful I could be if done 1 hour of cycling everyday on my exercise bike and an hour or so using my exercise dvds (I have Slim and Salsacise which claims to burn 500calories in one session) whilst keeping the balanced meals in the evening and the breakfast in the morning controlled and only drink low calorie drinks?

You don't say what your total calorie intake is. You may be trying to keep it too low. Your body needs a base number of calories per day just to function- no less than 1100-1200. On top of that, it needs about 300 calories to do daily activities (housework, desk job, etc). If you add exercise on top of that, it needs enough to fuel the activity.

That being said, the only way to lose weight is to be in a calorie deficit- take in fewer calories than you expend. However, it is never a good idea to reduce your calories drastically. Reduce them by about 250 and let your body get used to that, then reduce them further. Slow and steady makes the day.

The other thing I read in your post is that you are eating breakfast and dinner only, with a few low cal drinks in between. Am I reading this correctly? If so, change the way you are eating. Divide your calories into 4-6 meals and eat a little every 3-4 hours. That way you are continually feeding your body and it doesn't get starved.

Plan, plan, plan. Have breakfast items handy so that you don't just grab the first thing you see. You may have to throw out the chocolate and junk for the first while, so it's out of temptation's way.

Don't go overboard on the exercising. Do the bike and the dvds at different times of day for no more than an hour each. Over-exercising eventually just defeats the purpose and your weight loss stalls. If you wear yourself out, you will just give up.

Hope this helps

Alot of us suffer from the days-long headaches when we clean up our eating. Weeding out sugar, caffeine, and chocolate (!) is a common headache causer. Did you feel better after the chocolate? Sometimes I find I do need a nip of something just to get the headache gone, and then I go clean again. Baby steps are fine as long as there's overall progress.

Eat every 3-4 hours. Definitely. I am never actually hungry now that I eat on a schedule. You want to eat smaller meals more frequently. A meal should contain 100-300 calories each, depennding on what you are trying to keep your calories at. Try it- it really works!

Here's the reason why it works. When your body eats less frequesntly, and at irregular times, it can actually store more fat b/c it does not know when it will eat again. This is called survival mode. By eating on a schedule, every 3-4 hours, your body knows when it will eat again. It is assured that it will get more energy, so it stores less fat. Eating this way also keeps your blood sugar stabilized, and you are less hungry.

Why doesn't it work then to eat bfast, lunch, and dinner at the same time every day?

It's great that you've found something that works for you but I don't think it's the only way. Americans are the fattest people on the earth, and we're the ones eating constantly.

You can eat 3 meals and an evening snack during the day, and not go into starvation mode. Starvation mode happens when you deplete your body of calories and nutrients over a period of time. What happens when you don't eat regularly is that you eat too much at the meal- much more than your body needs so it stores the extra as fat. The whole idea of eating more often is to eat less, just enough at a time to meet your energy needs for the 3-4 hours, so it all gets used up rather than stored.

Take your total calories and divide them into the number of meals you can realistically have for your schedule. 3 meals plus a snack at roughly 300 calories each would be 1200 for the day, or whatever combination works for you.

In the end, it's a matter of eating regularly, eating sensibly, and eating the right amount.

I'm a firm believer in the "big picture." I don't care if you eat three meals a day or eat a snack every hour, as long as your total caloric intake is less than the number of calories you burn, you're going to lose weight. You may hit plateaus because of weird things our bodies do from time to time, but creating that deficit seems to be the one big thing that causes weight loss (and it just makes sense, doesn't it?) Beyond that, I think it's mostly a matter of preference. Yes, there's science behind the idea of keeping your metabolism going by eating every 3 hours, and I believe that too, but if it doesn't work for your schedule, I think you can still lose weight on the good old 3-meal a day thing, as long as your total is still within the right calorie range for you. Some days I eat 3 meals and a snack, but that's rare. Most days, I probably eat something at least six or seven times. Each thing is fairly small, though, so I'm losing weight.

The exercise part means you're just burning more calories and creating more of a deficit (and also getting all the other ENORMOUS benefits of exercise, like having a healthier body in general, toning your muscles, gaining endurance, relieving stress, and on and on and on...)