The OP isn't losing at her stated 1500-1800 calorie diet and your suggestion is she should eat more. The reason is because your n=1 sample size (you) lost at higher calories and a lower weight.

This is my problem with your advice. It is completely and utterly wrong. Please don't misunderstand what I am saying. You are wrong.

Apparently you think the OP has entered famine mode. Famine mode as your own diet guru says in the very article you linked does not say what you seem to think.

I don't post here for your benefit. I post here so people like the OP don't read your wrong advice and think that you are right. You are spreading bad information not because Dr Amanda is wrong but because you take what she says and filter it through your own experience and think everyone is you. They aren't.

For what it is worth a lot of what you have to say is extremely solid advice. If you simply were open to new information you could help a lot of people but as of right now you are confused and therefore confusing others.

Sorry, I wasn't completely specific - I was referring to knockout mice for isolating various peptides. Illegal in humans in most countries in the world participating in such research. And isolating and tracking particular reactions is the bulk of her research. I agree the human study would be interesting, though I have a sneaking suspicion I may have already read it, I'd have to also hunt it down to verify.

You are almost entirely missing my point. I was not saying that anyone else eating what I was eating would gain weight or lose weight.
My point was that for me when I eat more calories I gain weight and when I eat fewer calories I lose weight. Where that point is for the OP I don't know except for the fact that she says she wasn't losing much weight eating between 1500 and 1800 calories a day. So I'm not saying that she should eat the exact same calories as me.

What I was taking issue with was the flat statement by you

You didn't tell her that she might not be eating enough. You told her she could eat "heaps" more and would still lose weight, when she isn't losing weight eating what she is eating.

Also, despite your objecting to my description of my personal experience because I don't say what I weighed then (in the 190s, FWIW, which isn't much), you use your personal experience of eating 1650 calories and not exercising to somehow extrapolate and flat out tell her that she can eat "heaps" more and will lose weight.

I absolutely believe that you could eat 1650 calories a day and lose weight. For me weighing in the 190s at the time, I gained weight on 1588 calories a day.

I do think the OP can probably eat more calories than me and lose weight (note that to lose about .8 pounds a week I have been eating just over 1200 calories a day), because she weighs more and is probably younger than I am.

But, I also think she is probably closer to me in her experience of calories than she is to you since she says she wasn't losing when eating 1500 to 1800 calories a day.

In short, I was taking issue with the idea that you just flatly told her to eat more calories and stated as a declarative fact that she could eat "heaps" more and would lose weight. You can't possibly know that. I was suggesting that for in my experience that worked better for my weight loss was eating less calories rather than eating more calories.

Wouldn't it be nice if, just occasionally, a new poster to this site could get specific answers to her question? I also enjoy following the "spirited" discussions here, but they do a real disservice to novice dieters that come here seeking advice.

Emberrise, if you're still here - best of luck, I trust you will figure out what works for you! Try tweaking things as others have suggested (changing out toast, for example) and experiment to see what works for you. Just give it some time -- it can take weeks for fat loss to register on your scale. Make sure you're accurately counting your intake and try to be patient. Remember, none of us are immune to the laws of thermodynamics (you can't create something from nothing, so no, it's literally impossible to gain weight from eating less. You might see swings in water weight retention on the scale, but something like stopping exercise will not cause fat to come back over night.)

Edit - you also might find helpful the really excellent thread stickied at the top of the forum that helps explain many, many reasons that water weight could be masking fat loss, here's the link: http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/weig...er-weight.html

deleted.

I'm just curious about Dr. Amanda's study - if she says that somehow the overweight data gets hard-wired into the brain making it impossible to maintain a lower weight for long, then what does she have to say to those who have been morbidly obese most of their young life and suddenly lose weight (> 100 lbs) and maintain it also?

^This.

Luckily, the OP did get some constructive suggestions before the drama ensued. I would add the suggestion that the OP try to stick with her basic plan but add an eating window which shrinks over time, moving the the meals closer together then combining them. I find that now that I have adjusted to a small eating window, I can enjoy a large meal and I can adjust my caloric intake by eating more of the salad/veggies while still feeling satisfied.

Pattience, you are very helpful and super supportive to many posters on this site and much of your advice is sound, especially for newbies. I don't even aspire to contribute as much as you do. I'm too selfish with my time and too uninterested in rehashing diet basics. If you can avoid projecting your own experience, you could be one of the most outstanding contributors on 3fc of all time.

JohnP, I'm forever grateful to you for helping provide the mental nudge to try eating fewer times a day. I took other factors into account in the decision, but your info was definitely part of the mix.

I do think she is getting answers. The "spirited discussions" contribute to that, IMHO (I'm not talking about internecine bickering; I'm talking about the discussions that bring up studies, others' experiences, etc.). In fact, when I first came on this board, I learned a ton from the offshoots that developed in the threads. They may not directly address the specific question of the OP, but they indirectly do address it by providing more good information that may ultimately help her. I would find threads far less enlightening if they did not take off on such paths. To each her own, though.

Well, even if it's true that "feeding behaviour is regulated by neuropeptides," that doesn't make willpower irrelevant. We humans have the capacity to override many of our physiological promptings. We can stay up and finish a project when we feel sleepy, we can choose not to "take care of it" when we feel horny, and we can say no to dessert even if we still feel hungry. It's precisely when our neuropeptides are leading us to the fridge that we need our willpower the most.

F.

I just think there's a time and place, lin. From the details Emberrise gave, it sounds like she might be new to dieting and just getting a hang of the ropes. Education is great, but if I had just joined and posted a pretty fundamental quandary, getting a deluge of incredibly nuanced and frankly not relevant-at-that-stage info would do nothing but send me screaming from the site.

I generally love the exchange of views and info. And I think it's extremely important that other posters step in when incorrect information is being doled out, and sure, that leads to bickering. But man, do we ever come off badly to a new poster. :)

Ah yes, but willpower fails if that is the only functioning strategy, because the signaling in the body and brain is often stronger, deeper, and more persistent than willpower, alone. It's a component, but far from central. The more severe the weight loss from baseline, the more time has passed, the bigger hurdle this will present.

Willpower inevitably fails without a core that is sustainable and comfortable. My willpower isn't magically better on low carb than it was on just calorie counting, for example - it just so happens I am much more obesity resistant at a higher calorie amount on a plan that controls for insulinogenic agents. On one there was no losing past a certain point without the physiological response to weight loss becoming unbearable (sleep disturbances, basal body temperature dropping over a degree, compulsions and irritability, lethargy, and a stalled scale, to boot). Not so with the other, where I lost significantly more body weight with less hunger, less down regulating of my metabolism, and have kept it off.

The specifics of what is and isn't sustainable for individuals vary pretty wildly, but anyone claiming adipocytes don't exert a massive hormonal influence on the body, even in their emaciated state, is dreaming. More and more we're seeing it backed up in data that those who have entrenched, long term, obesity of the sort where new fat cells were grown (hyperplasia) instead of just distending the existing fat mass (hypertrophia) have bodies that function differently on a biochemical level than those who have never been obese, or never displayed that type of obesity. And ignoring the causes of such obesity is to a researcher's peril. If anyone is actually interested I have a great presentation hanging out in my links on the aetiology of obesity. Very educational on the topic.

It's a defense mechanism against the deluge of newbies who post twice and then disappear :dizzy:

Truly for the OP, though, it seems fairly straightforward to me that she knows she does well controlling carbs (me too, friend!) but isn't seeing much scale movement. My best advice for this is to up calories (16-1800 as a baseline), focus on whole foods, don't be fat phobic, and keep carbs at 25-35 net for about three months. If the scale still doesn't move and inches aren't gone I'll eat my hat. This is a slow process and I agree that the link about the scale and water weight is really helpful here.

But truly. It seems more a matter of patience than education. Patient slow losses instead of more extreme cutting and bouncing because it isn't sustainable, may be a smarter move for her. But basic, consistent low carb for an extended period of time, with simple controls on calories (not going hog wild but not cutting deeply, either) should show longer term results if the time is put in and there are no cheats. But there's this unspoken understanding implicit in that - whereby the idea that you can diet hard for a week, exercise your brains out, drop ten pounds, and expect them to stay gone when you go back go prior habits - is pure fantasy.

^This.

Your experience is a good example of why it's so important to get to know what works for each of us. It's a cliche by now, but one size does not fit all. I find that, for me, habit is key. When I've been able to develop a good habit, it is SO much easier for me to keep the weight off. For instance, I've been trying to stay away from eating dessert unless I go out to dinner. I was chewing my nails the first few days, but after two weeks, it's easy. In fact, last night I defrosted a chocolate ganache torte I had bought a few weeks ago at Trader Joe's. My husband enjoys it, and because it was the weekend, I figured I would make an exception and have a slice. As it turns out, though, I had a satisfying dinner, and I realized that I had no desire for that cake---a truly rare experience for me. At times in the past, I would have eaten it anyway just because I had given myself "permission" to and allotted room for it in my calorie count. This time, though, I decided that I wasn't going to eat it because I didn't want it. I attribute this to the fact that I had formed that habit of not eating after dinner, so it felt much easier not to eat that cake.

So, for me, probably a CBT approach would be ideal.