Hi,
Seaduck!
I don't think I saw your first post, but it sounds like our Beachies did a
great job (as usual) of giving you advice.
Oh, hon...first of all, if
you were eating under 1,000 calories, your body DEFINITELY went into starvation mode. It's going to take a while (I'm not a nutritionist, so I don't know how long...) for your body to believe that you will keep feeding it before it lets go of some of your weight. Please, please keep entering your food into Fitday until you have a handle on what's going on. If you keep bouncing up and down on how many cals you're eating, you're going to end up with health issues.
1200-1300 calories is the smallest amount of calories you can eat without going into starvation mode. Most people eat at least 1500, though every body is different. I read an article in Real Simple this month about diet myths and they said that studies have found that people who lose weight on very low calorie (1200-1300) diets are
much more likely to gain the weight back in the next 3 years.
Please make sure you're getting protein with
every meal/snack, and include veggies too for fiber and fullness. Note that even though milk and yogurt have protein in them, your body processes them as a carb, so don't include them as your only source of protein. Soft and hard cheeses (i.e. cheddar, cottage cheese, cream cheese, Laughing Cow Light, etc.) are processed as protein, so you can have them alone with veggies for a meal and count them as protein.
Are you vegetarian? If so, you can definitely make SBD work for you, but you have to be very careful to make sure you're getting enough protein. Let us know if that's the case for you and we can help with suggestions, okay?
Okay--first of all, the 110-120g of protein is my sig, and it's something my nutritionist has asked me to do, not an SBD thing. I went through a bunch of testing at my nutritionist's office after nearly a year of not losing anything, and they found that my metabolism is messed up (think it's called hypometabolism?). Basically, while I should be burning about 1800 cals if I just sit still all day, I'm burning 1350.
The extra protein is to help raise my metabolism back to normal. It does seem to be working, because I've been losing again since August.
: I have a really big body (big bones--no joke--and I'm 5'11), so even though I don't know what the protein amount would be for a smaller person, I'd assume most people would be eating less. However, my nutritionist assures me that the excess protein should be fine, even for a couple of years. Please do check with a doctor or at least a nutritionist/endocrinologist before changing your diet, though. Excess protein
can cause harm to your body--especially your kidneys.
I visited with a different nutritionist several years ago (she was fabulous) and she gave me the following advice about protein:
Quote:
One thing I forgot to post that I thought might be helpful for everyone is the calculation for amount of protein you need. She said for a healthy person, you need 0.8 g for each kilogram you weigh. So to figure out how much you need a day, just multiply 0.8 by your weight in kilograms (find your kilograms here: http://www.123easyaspie.com/converter.html )and that tells you how many grams of protein you need. . Mine is 73g, which is 10 and a half ounces, approximately (7g in an ounce).
I hope that helps!
A couple other things--
- You didn't gain a pound from the oatmeal and wine. Like Stephanie said, the scale is a tool--don't let it make you make crazy decisions, okay? I know the urge, but please fight it!
- When you make a change in P2, do it for a week and wait until the end of the week to decide how your body deals with it. One day is not nearly enough time to decide if your body can handle oatmeal or wine. If you try them both at the same time, you won't know which one (or if it's both) is affecting you. So do one at a time, okay?
- You'll find guidelines for adding things to P2 in the How to Add Things Slowly in Phase 2 thread. There's also some basic guidelines in the What's Your P2 Combo? thread, along with tons of great advice on how the Beachies have decided upon what works for them in P2!
- I know that it can be hard to get rid of this kind of thinking, but please be cautious in setting goals with specific dates that you feel very anxious about. If you decide that you have to lose a certain amount of pounds by a special event, you're not likely to set yourself up for success. You're far more likely to pick how much you think you should lose rather than how much you think you could lose. When you don't lose it, you'll feel bad and are more likely to binge or go off plan. So, set yourself up for success--don't set any goals until you have P2 down. Like I said in some of the threads above, many of us (including me) gained while figuring out P2. But we all lost that weight quickly once we had our combo down, and then continued to lose. I gained some weight in P2, but lost over 100 pounds after I had it down!
- Once you have P2 down, figure out how many pounds you are sure you can lose in the given amount of time for your goal, then add a couple pounds to make it a challenge. You're almost guaranteed to lose it as long as you stick to the plan, and that's much more likely to keep you on plan!
- As for your vacation in March, losing a certain amount by that point isn't going to make you any less likely to gain or lose during your vacation. But figuring out how you can eat and avoid cravings will help you. Make plans for success on your vacation--bring food with you, figure out how you can eat healthy (look up restaurants on the web and check out menus and nut'l info, etc.), and talk with the people who are going with you so that they support your work to eat healthy and stay on plan. I've gone on dozens of vacations on SBD without going off plan. Of course, you could plan to go off plan for that week and do Phase 1 when you get back. But I think that this early in a new WOE, you might really damage what you're learning by doing that. Just my $0.02.
- When it comes down to it, your goal needs to be to make a change in your eating habits for life. If you follow SBD only until you lose the weight, then go back to your old habits, you're just going to gain the weight back. We all lose a combination of fat and muscle when losing weight (how much strength training you do during your loss will affect how much muscle is lost, but you'll lose some no matter what), but when we gain back, we usually gain just fat. Fat only burns 2-3 calories while muscle is burning 14! If you replace muscle with fat, you burn less calories. It's just one of the many reasons why "yo-yo dieting" is bad for your health.
- Losing 1.1 pounds a week is GREAT!!!! Seriously! You want to lose 1-2 pounds a week and no more, especially when you've got a small amount to lose, like you do. (I lost 3-4/week when I started because I was severaly overweight and had over 150 pounds to lose...it slowed down a lot after a while) Slow weight loss is much more permanent. It allows you to truly make a habit of your new WOE. It gives your skin time to ease back into place so you don't end up with sagging skin. Best of all, you're less likely to gain it back when you lose it slowly. So please be patient and kind to yourself. You're doing GREAT!!!
I know this post is already really long...so I'll stop here. Please continue to post if you have any concerns or need help. I know you can do this, hon!