I really hope im not sounding completely ignorant, but Ive struggled with my weight my entire life, and IP is the first and ONLY diet ive ever had ANY type of success on. My first round i was on it for about two and a half months and lost 31 pounds.. (155 to 124.. im 5'0). Anyways, I went on a three week vacation to vegas, gained 6 pounds there, then ended up gaining an additional 10 pounds since. I have a HUGE binge eating problem, and Im completely to the extreme. If im not extremely strict.. im extremely out of control. Anyways, like I had mentioned, I need to lose 15 by the end of the month, then after that, I dont mind losing slowly.

If i eat a restricted before my workout, and a more nutritional shake such as ********** afterwords would that help??

I am quite surprised a coach supports this level of activity and high caloric expenditure with only the addition of extra egg whites!

Are you also aware that exercise typically slows your losses?

I guess you will have to review what is being shared and what your coach is telling you but most of all what your body is feeling. I also would STRONGLY suggest visiting your medical dr and be completely up front with your caloric intake per day, your extreme workouts every day along with calories burned, and see what s/he thinks.

I was eating around 800 cal. last week and attempting 45 km bike rides (with plenty of hills) under the hot sun. Not a good idea. I felt dizzy and weak. My blood pressure got low and my weight loss stalled. I suffered from insomnia at night and had all the unpleasant ketosis symptoms.

I feel much better now that I eat around 1 200 cal. and I started losing again.

I agree with John and everyone else. Do NOT attempt very low calorie diets with plenty of exercise. Even the girls on Biggest Loser get 1 200 cal. a day.

I was told to continue exercising on this diet. Where have you read you're not supposed to? Now I'm freaked. I do 45 mins a day of cardio and add 30 mins every other day of weight training. Am I not supposed to and can you tell me how you know this? Thanks.

This is taken from the book explaining The Rapid Fat Loss diet which is a protein sparing modified diet like IP (with a similar calorie range). The author is Lyle McDonald.

I do 30 minutes of cardio (usually the elliptical) several times a Week. Although exercise is generally discouraged on IP due to the low calorie intake, my doctor encouraged me to continue the 30 min of cardio and just add an extra protein pack to the days I exercise (I do half a quest bar before and the other half after each workout).

Hope this helps!

On a ketogenic diet, you should limit cardio to 65% of your maximal heart rate. If you go consistently over, you risk loosing muscle as your body will break up muscle protein for gluconeogenesis. You can do strength training, though I would still limit it and add extra protein. You will retain existing muscle, but not really build much new muscle. I did 30 min 5x a week, when I did IP and it worked fine after an initial rest period of 6 weeks where your body adjusts to ketosis. I ate 1200 cal/day, not the 800.

Phinney and Volek published a book on "Low carbohydrate performance". It is mostly discussing research on low carb, high fat diets (Atkins). It gives some good starters. JohnP has some other sources for which I forgot the names. Also discussing ketosis. In general, exercise is for toning and keeping muscle, not really weight loss. I found I kept my muscles that I gained through previous exercise during my IP stint. In that regard, continuing is fine.

The effects of low calorie diets are not well researched and ketosis adds some more complexity because the levels of many hormones are regulated by carbs. Putting too much stress on your body by overexercising can do permanent harm. I am perfectly lazy and just do 30 min of Jillian Michaels. It is sufficient to see great results.