How on earth did that happen??
 

Hi again,

Really need some help here,

August last year my scales hit 312lbs and that was it i'd had enough of constantly being "the biggest person" in any situation so it was time to do something about it - maybe 45 was a bit too late but hey when it's time it's time!

So I begin replacing one meal a day with a shake and eating healthy, the pounds soon started coming off but over Christmas and new year I started getting back into old habits.

So anyway, 5 weeks ago I decided that making small changes and trying to stick to them wasn't the way I needed to go so I ordered VLCD sachets for complete meal replacement. I have been doing really well on them, not sticking totally to what they say but my only snacks are plain popcorn and grapefruits.

So far since August last year I have lost over 60lbs and feeling pretty good. Last week however I had a couple of days where I was so busy with work I didn't have my sancks and I ate just 600 - 700 calories a day, overnight I lost 1.2lbs after the first day then dropped nothing the next. since then (after being told off by numerous people that 600- 700 calories a day is not enough and I could do more harm than good I have upped this a bit. But with healthy foods like a vegetable meal (roasted courgette, mushroom, carrot, sweet potato in passata and garlic totalling 105 calories) and things like poached eggs on spinach and been exercising more instead. Friday I went for a bike ride and yesterday I spent 2 hours in the pool swimming for at least half that time - to the point i could hardly walk.

All this to find I have put on 3 lbs in just a coupld of days. I really don't think it's muscle or fluid retention as I haven't done much to really build muscle and I have been drinking 3 - 4lts of water a day.

I just don't think it would be healthy to drop back down to 600 - 700 calories a day, although i really wasn't hungry for anything else those days I have been told that organs can begin shutting down and I already have missed periods by being on the VLCD so I don't wanna risk anymore.

Any advice would be great. What am I doing wrong?

:(

You didn't gain 3 or 4 lbs in a couple days, it's water retention.

It seems you're making huge drastic unsustainable and unhealthy changes which will lead you to failure and gaining.

I suggest you check out myfitnesspal.com and reddit.com/r/loseit and read about the proper amount of calories you should be eating and how to properly measure your food with a scale.

Any change you make to lose weight you have to keep up with for the rest of your life or YOU WILL gain it all back. Therefore you need to make slow, healthy and sustainable changes.

600-700 calories is not realistic or sustainable and you will fail. Find your proper calorie amount, buy a food scale to weigh your food and stay with it for a month and I promise you you will lose up to 2lbs a week in a healthy way.

Yes to ALL of this! You want to make sure you're eating at a reasonable calorie deficit by accurate logging (to me that means using a food scale for everything) and putting it into a tracker.

You may have gained that weight because you are retaining water - menses, sodium, increase in exercise are all things that cause it. I often plateau for 6-8 weeks when I start a new fitness plan and keep my logging exactly the same.

It doesn't have to be weight lifting to cause exercise water retention. If you did more than you are used to, your muscles will need to rebuild and that means water. If you are at all sore there will be water.

Drinking water actually REDUCES your fluid retention (although drinking to extremes can be very very dangerous).

Water weight fluctuations are normal and are likely to happen any time you make a shift in diet. They even out.

If you are going to weigh daily, you have to learn to separate "what you weigh today" from "what you did yesterday" You will never be able to find a solid correlation and trying to tweak tweak tweak to compensate will drive you crazy and put your heath in a bad place.

If you are trying to transition away from meal replacement packets, you will probably need to precisely calorie count for awhile to establish a stable baseline. Eventually you are going to want to practice this transitioning as it is unlikely you will want to live on MRP's for the rest of your life.

I will echo what others have said- if you are eating sensibly and exercising, you will be losing fat even if the scale shows you are up a few pounds. You need to stick to the plan for at least a few days to let the water fluctuations come and go.

The human body was designed via evolution to deal with food scarcity and periods without food, so I doubt that a few days or weeks of 700 calories will cause organs to shut down. The bigger issue is that you won't be able to sustain 700 calories for mental/psychological reasons for very long.