Originally Posted by fatburner77:
Am I reading your chart correctly: you're eating under 1,000 calories daily and weigh 225 pounds? No wonder you've stalled! Sorry, I don't follow WW PP but I'd be flabbergasted if you could be successful in dropping your desired 55 pounds on such a limited-calorie plan. I mean, I consumed 1200 calories daily - your apparent recommended amount - when trying to get from the 140s into the 130s...I just worry for you that the math won't work out in your favor.
Have you considered using some points to consume more nutrient-dense foods? Doing so would not only stoke your metabolism with more calories but would also serve to balance out your fats carbs a bit more.

My wife lost steadily on a 750-cal./day diet for months, losing about three pounds a week. But her meals (if you want to call them that) were carefully monitored for sufficient nutrients. If *eating less* kept a person from losing weight, then no one would ever starve. And if to lose weight one just needed to...eat more? Sign me up for that plan!

I have a feeling that uncounted calories are sneaking in here, or either the OP's metabolism is slower than she realizes, requiring less calories than originally thought to drop weight. I sit all day at my job, doing nothing, and if I don't exercise sometime during the day then I really can't eat much that day in order to lose.

How much alcohol do you usually drink, by the way?

Originally Posted by JohnP:
Two weeks is nothing for the scale to be stuck and the reason is stuck is not because you're not losing fat due to too few calories.

So - a person stops losing weight because they're eating less? Yet I read of people in places like Africa starving to death all the time due to lack of food. This is that whole "starvation mode" myth that says you're stuck because you're eating too little.....so eat more to lose. If I stall at 1400, go to 1600. If I stall there, go to 1800; if there, to 2000, etc. Oh, wait - I was gaining fat at that point, so that won't work.

My wife was on a 750 calorie a day diet for six months and lost weight just fine. I also broke out of my weeks-long plateau by fasting for two days. But the point of losing weight is to be healthier and to get our lives back. It's not to starve ourselves to the point of malnutrition and have so little energy we can't go out and do fun things.

Originally Posted by Esofia:
How much alcohol do you usually drink, by the way?

I can hold my own, lol. I measured it out last night and it was 582 calories worth :eek:...when I saw that I stopped drinking...I could have easily drank another couple hundred calories.

Originally Posted by tricon7:
So - a person stops losing weight because they're eating less? Yet I read of people in places like Africa starving to death all the time due to lack of food. This is that whole "starvation mode" myth that says you're stuck because you're eating too little.....so eat more to lose. If I stall at 1400, go to 1600. If I stall there, go to 1800; if there, to 2000, etc. Oh, wait - I was gaining fat at that point, so that won't work.

My wife was on a 750 calorie a day diet for six months and lost weight just fine. I also broke out of my weeks-long plateau by fasting for two days. But the point of losing weight is to be healthier and to get our lives back. It's not to starve ourselves to the point of malnutrition and have so little energy we can't go out and do fun things.

I agree with you completely. I should proof read my posts. It should have said "Two weeks is nothing for the scale to be stuck and the reason it is stuck has nothing to do with fat loss because too few calories will not stop you from losing fat".

Stavation mode is a myth. We agree on that point.

I don't agree on fasting for two days to break a plateau. That is fixating on what doesn't matter - the scale.

I actually meant how many units of alcohol are you drinking in a week? Though I'd be interested to know how many drinks and what sort of drinks the 582 calories' worth were, and how many you will usually drink in one sitting if you're not thinking about the calories.

One of the reasons why it's not encouraged to have such a low number of calories from food, and at your height that's very low, is because it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get enough nutrients from that small an amount of food. Considering the way your diet is balanced, and that drinking depletes vitamins, I'd expect you to be very low in vitamins and minerals. Weight loss is about calories in and calories out; health is about a lot more than that.

you know, if you really WERE consuming that little of calories, than i think its great that your protein intake is so high... it will help elliviate some of the inevitable muscle loss from the VLC diets

how could you NOT be counting alcohol? lol Seriously? i dont mean that in a mean way, but every gram of alcohol has 7 calories!!

it does, however, make me wonder what else youre not counting....... i dont mean that as in "youre lying" i mean that as in..... just sloppy tracking... hey, we ALL do it sometimes !!! :)

Whoa...let's pull the reigns in a bit everyone ;)...I didn't realize calorie counting was a hot button...

@ tricon7/johnp - you're both right, the fewer calories you eat the faster you lose weight, but I'd rather have a caloric intake that is similar to what would maintain my goal weight, and 750-1000 I don't see as being a realistic number for me...I gained the weight back because I didn't get into proper eating habits that I could maintain...but I certainly appreciate your help!!!!

@Esofia - I was drinking vodka...and too much of it apparently ;). I've been taking vitamins and calcium regularly before I decided to eat healthier. I can't possibly imagine what my energy level is going to be like now that the alcohol won't be depleting them, plus what I will be getting naturally!

@mkroyer - I started out measuring my alcohol, but then of course, I became extremely sloppy and tried to eyeball it...obviously the next drink became bigger than the last that way haha! I've even started counting my splenda and coffee in the morning now! No more eyeballing or trying to remember...

I feel you on the alcohol creep. I drink wine in the evening and switch to whiskey late at night. I wager that I've been putting away 1000 calories a day in alcohol for the last couple of years. (Think one box of wine and one 750ml bottle of bourbon per week, and that's not counting the 1 or 2 nights per week I go out for dinner and drinks...) I'm trying to cut way back and to count it diligently. I bought myself a small carafe and have taken to putting in my allotted amount of wine at the start of the evening (8 or 12 or 16 oz, depending) and regulating myself that way. Sometimes I have whiskey, sometimes I don't. It's hard! Especially since my hubby has at least 2 big whiskeys each night. Still, it has to be done. So many almost-empty calories!