I successfully lost 3 stone on the 800 calorie plan and achieves this at Christmas and have pretty much maintained that weight since. I still have another stone to lose but due to the current circumstances and some boredom I thought I would try only reducing my calories to 1000-1200 made up of the Mediterranean style foods.

I have done this for the last month and lost between 1-3 lbs only to gain them again (without ever going over 1200 calories) and I just yo-yo back and forth like this losing 1-3lbs then gaining them back every week.

It’s so frustrating as 1200 calories is still a reasonably low calorie intake I feel but it’s just not working. It’s like my body is determined to hold onto the weight unless I severely restrict my calories again?

I’m wondering if I have wrecked my metabolism doing 800 calories and losing weight that way?
I’m getting so disheartened, can anyone relate or advise please?

Hi,
To enable us to help you a little more, can you please give us some more information. All calories are not equal. How does this break down into carbs, fat and protein.

Also what is your pattern of eating, are you grazing during the day, or having just one or two or three meals a day.

Hi, so I’m having 2 meals a day and 2 snacks each day. It varies from day to day but roughly this is it.
I’ll have protein and salad for lunch and protein and vegetables for dinner, fruit for snacks. Thank you for your help.
100g carbs
50g sugar
20g fat
8g sat fat
16g fibre
50g protein
1g salt

Hope you don’t mind me posting here, peachcake, but looking at the macros you posted, I’m a little confused as to why you reported sugars separately to the carb level, which of itself seems on the high side. Does the carb level include the sugars?

Either way, overall carbs including sugars are best held down to 50g or lower, to be sure of consistent loss and even out any yoyoing. However, I’m not an expert on balancing macros, but I’m sure JGwen will advise in more detail.

Hope you will soon be seeing more rewarding results …. best wishes for every success.

I would agree with SunnyB, I would suggest having a look at some of the prodcasts listed on the take a look at this thread, I would strongly recommend one by Dr Bikman that I posted some time ago , but also podcasts from Dr Fung. –

Both sources will explain that if you have high insulin levels your body can not access your fat stores and will store any calories in excess of what you are burning as fat. – Insulin levels are controlled by your carb intake.

Some people on the forum have found that they need to set their daily target at 50g, some of us find that level is too high and the optimum is to stay under 20g of carbs.

Personally although I have been following this way of eating for over 2 years, I am still so sensitive to carbs that I have to stay under 25g of carbs a day to prevent an insulin spike. If you have eaten a high carb diet for a lot of your life it will take time for your body to heal enough to be able to cope with carbs.

That’s just how the Nutracheck app I use break down the composition of my food intake.

Do you eat more calories now in maintaining your weight but still keep the carbohydrates to 20g? I’m just wondering how that all works?

There are a number of members of the forum who have lost a lot of weight and then maintained by following the protocol of staying around 20 or 30g of carb a day and then increasing calories until they go to the point of maintaining their weight. You can increase calories by increasing the fat in your diet. So for example, adding melted butter to veg, or cream based sources to dishes.

Think of it this way, while you want to loose weight you keep your carbs low enough so that your body can access your own fat stores, to make up the difference between the calories eaten and those burnt.

Then when you have used up as much of your bodies fat as you want to you increase the amount of external fat so that the calories eaten equals the calories burnt each day.