[pselias]

I'd say you're not eating enough. Your body needs it to keep burning fat efficiently. Otherwise you end up in starvation mode (holding on to fat stores) instead of ketosis. If you're exercising, you could consider adding a 4th packet to your day to compensate.

Stick with it!

[serendipityberry]

Originally Posted by Bickel83

Some people on this board might not agree with me, but I speak from experience. CHEAT! Blow your diet for a weekend. You will go up in weight, but I cheated all weekend, really bad, and I only went up .6 lbs. After that my losses started again. I was losing like it was my first week again. Two of my friends did the same thing and they encouraged me to do it too. Both of them have hit their goal weight so I trust their wisdom!
It really kick starts the program. The only thing you have to watch out for is letting one cheat weekend turn into cheating every day. DON'T LOOSE FOCUS! Good luck!

You know, there is some truth to this. Fact is, our bodies do everything, hormonally, to keep us from losing weight and metabolic slow down is one way. It is a fact that eating more one day/wk can help speed up metabolism and trick your body into not thinking it is starving. It is a way to regulate those hormones that drastically fall with a calorie depleted diet such as IP.

Although I believe in IP and it has helped me lose weight, I do think it is a flaw in the diet. Metabolic slow down is going to occur if you only eat 900 cals/day for months with no planned weekly cheats.

I'm not totally advocating that you cheat, the diet will work fine without it. Just expect weight loss to naturally slow, particularly as you get leaner. Being only 160 lbs, you are going to naturally see less weight loss than someone with more fat if you are both consuming 900 cals.

Read up on PSMF (protein sparing modified fast) diets, which is what IP is, on the web if you are interested in metabolic slow down. It has really helped me understand what is happening to my body as I lose weight.

[wuv2bloved]

I had a small gain this week and the first thing I thought about was I did not cheat and its not worth cheating for. I have committed to this program to see it through til the end. It may take me over a year, and I know I will have small, no loss at all or even a small gain like this week even though I am following the program to a tee. Any loss or staying the same is better than cheating and gaining it back even if it is a few pounds. You have lost some weight already is cheating once worth putting all that hard work to waste? Not for me it isn't....but that is just my opinion!