Lisa, may i may one quick point?
You say you were eating 1200 cals of all veggies and meat, and you werent losing....
As far as calories and its effect on body mass goes, only THREE possible combinations of things can happen, according to the laws of physics and thermodynamics....
1) You eat a surplus of calories (ie; more cals than your body burns) and you gain weight
2) you eat EXACTLY the number of calories that your body burns in a day, and you maintain weight
3) you eat LESS calories than your body burns in a day, and you lose weight
Thats its. Its as simple as that. No point in overcomplicating things!
If you were NOT losing weight on "1200" cals a day, then there are one of 2 possibilities-- 1) your body only burns 1200 a day, you were therefor in equilibrium, and would have to lower cals more, OR
2) you are underestimating the amount of calories you are eating, and actually ARE eating at a maintenance level...maybe 1500 or 1700 cals, or whatever. This is the more likely scenario. Even if you weigh and measure every bite, lick and tast, to the GRAM with a digital scale, calorie counts can still be off by a couple hundred a day....enough to bump you up to maintenance easily. By far, the vast VAST majority of humans under-estimate how much they eat everyday. And thats ok, if you are maintaing your weight, or still able to lose weight. BUT when weight loss stops, its time to hunker down and get really anal about your diet tracking.
After i go through fat loss and slip into maintenance mode, i get a slittle sloppy after a while, and just start eyeballing portions of foods that im used to eating all the time. No big deal, i dont really gain and fat-- assuming that im bumping my cals up by a hundred or two over what theywere. When i then go BACK to weigh and measure again, i find that instead of comsuming 1500 to 1600 a day, which is what my best guess estmiates were, i was ACTUALLY eating closer to 2000 a day. Once again, no big deal when i am maintaining, but thats a big difference when you are trying to lose weight. You CAN get fat off of broccolli,and Icant believe its not butter spray and splenda and handfuls of almonds out of the receptionist desks, because a calorie is a calorie, and it all adds up! People have a tendency to selectively forget about the small handful of m&ms they had, because hey, it was only like 6 of them. ANd you know what? i can cram a LOT of penut butter into that tablespoon (because it says a table spoon is a serving!) but when i actually measure what the weight is suposed to be (14 grams) i find that ive been able to cram over 2.5 servings of PB into that tablespoon! Thats an extra 250 cals that i wasnt counting
Its so easy to eyeball and overestimate.We
ALL do it.
I will get off my soap box now. I am in no way saying this is your problem, but i am just trying to point out that sometimes overcomplicating things like using different traiing strategies of intervals mixed with steady state to deplete glycogen stores, etc only makes things MORE complicated.
Remember to Keep it simple--
IF YOU ARENT LOSING FAT, YOU ARENT IN A CALORIC DEFICIT simple as that.
food for thought
Keep up the great work with the exercising!