Hey all!

I was just after a bit of advice. I have completed the 8 weeks of 800 calories, successfully. I didn’t lose as much weight as I initially wanted, but I didn’t have a huge amount to lose anyway. I found it surprisingly easier than I thought it would be, although my bed times moved from 10:30pm to 8pm! Just so I couldn’t see the beckoning pantry!

Anyway, I’ve now been on pretty conservative maintenance for only 6 days or so, and I’ve put on just over 1kg. My maintenance has been extremely conservative, around 1000 calories a day and one fasting day. I am doing my first fasting day today.

The reason I wanted to create the forum, is because I’m so disheartened to see an increase on the scales even with 1000 calories a day 🙁 This better not be the new normal – I would have just expected the weight loss to slow down, not increase!

Anyone in a similar situation, or would know what is happening here?

PS. Not diabetic – however diabetes runs in both sides of my family, hence why I’m doing this as a preventative.

Live to eat – it possibly sounds as though it could be water weight. Were the calories you added carb calories or fat and protein calories?

How high was your carb intake? An increase in carbs can result in a jump in water retention.
Some of the successful maintainers report that they went to maintenance by increasing cals by just 50 per day for a week at a time to gradually change back to eating more.

Hmmm… that’s interesting. Yes, I did add carbs. I got so excited about the extra few calories, I ate bread and tacos 😀

So, carbs retain water? I did not know this. Adding 50 cals a day to begin maintenance is a good idea! Thanks guys!
Will see how my weight is tomorrow after my fasting day too. No carbs today 🙂

Out of interest do you know approx. how many grammes of carbs you had per day during the 8 weeks?

Hi Live to Eat,
Just to be clear, the long term maintainers said they increased from 800 to 850 cals, and stuck at 850 for a week, then if they went up to 900 cals a day for the next week etc etc, until they built up to the point where they start gaining weight and then dropped down on calories or started incorporating fasting days to maintain their weight.
Those of us who are fortunate enough to have a fair amount of weight to loose have the advantage over those who can loose enough over just one round of 8 weeks of BSD, that we will stick to being low carb long enough for the cravings for bread to ease. So its easier for us to avoid going back to the same WoE that got us over weight in the first place. When I first started out some guests left some bread behind and I couldn’t resist having some toast, now bread left out doesn’t tempt me (4 slices left from the weekend went to the chickens after a couple of days of testing my will power.) but I still have a sweet tooth and any chocolate left behind would have not produced the same result :-}. According to the research quoted in Why we get fat by Gary Taubes it takes 12 to 18 months too lose the sweet tooth.

Hi Maid 2 Measure,

I never really counted my carb grams to be honest. I didn’t want to be obsessive about it because I know I’m the type of person that would turn into a total food nazi if I followed each macronutrient to the gram. I’m impressed that some people could do this, but I just did my best to avoid refined and starchy carbs and that was that. But this week was the first time I ate refined carbs again.

Hi JGwen,

Thanks for clearing that up re: 50 cals a day for a week etc… I did misunderstand the first time. I guess I got a little too overexcited about the end of the 8-weeks, but need to perhaps pull back my enthusiasm a little. 12-18 months to lose the sweet tooth? Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit… I’m a sweet tooth too… that’s devastating!

Hi Live to Eat,
I know my tastes have changed just over the last 6 months, natural greek style yoghurt used to taste sour without honey or lots of fruit. Now it doesn’t taste sour and some mints I had at Easter tasted very sweet, but I still craved more. – Apparently people reported they could specify the week when they lost their sweet tooth when talking about it taking at least 12 months of low carb to lose the sweet tooth.
I tried the other week to go cold turkey on stevia in drinks, I found that I was drinking a lot less water and coffee because I just didn’t like the taste and my weight started to increase for some reason. I went back to soda water with a couple of teaspoons of powered stevia per pint and the weight dropped back within 24 hours. So I have decided to gradually reduce the amount in drinks instead.

Hello, lovetoeat! Congratulations for reaching your weight loss objective in 1 8wk round. You must not have
had much to lose 🙂 Maintenance is a different process altogether, and it is only with trial and error in
measuring calories, and inparticular carbs, that we arrive at our TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). Online
calculators are readily available that will take into account weight, height, gender and energy expended,
which gives you a quantity of calories not to be exceeded each day. Part 2 is counting carbs as you’ve been expected
to do over the 8 wk period. Keep track of how increasing carbs affects your weight in maintenance. You
will soon discover where your tipping point occurs, and where you have to pull back to avoid weight regain.
I would suggest that you reconstruct diet meals that you haven’t counted previously to establish a baseline.
Increase calories on wk 1 of maintenance to 850/day, week 2 900/day, etc. til you come close to your TDEE.
Then start to increase carbs over 20g on week 1, 25g wk 2, etc, to find out how many you can manage without
seeing the sort of gain that you’ve had this week. Keep up with fluid intake, also. I think you will find the
greatest experience from many successful maintainers on a thread called “After reaching your target,,,what’s
next”. Have a complete read thru there, and if you still have questions, come on back to your thread here
and we’ll do our best to help 🙂
Best wishes,
Allie

Wow! Thanks alliecat! That’s really comprehensive. And thank you for the link to the other forum; I had been looking for another discussion regarding maintenance.
I really appreciate all your advice and will take it all on board. Thanks guys!