Hi, I’ve nearly completed 5 weeks of the 8 weeks. I had good weight loss to start with but for the last 8 days I haven’t lost anything and today I gained 200g. I just can’t see how this is possible when eating between 650 and 800 calories a day. We have absolutely rigidly stuck to the plan, we weigh and calculate everything we eat and record it. We are eating low carb foods. My husband has had steady weight loss throughout. I drink 2 litres of water a day and pee constantly still. We haven’t been at all hungry and I haven’t found it difficult and I plan to continue but finding the lack of weight loss very frustrating. I can’t find anything in the book regarding stalling, I understood that mostly it is be ause you don’t drink enough water.
I still have 30kg to lose. I exercise 3-4 times a week in a home gym using weights, treadmill and exercycle for an hour each time.
Also alarmingly my blood sugar level has gone up from 6.1 mmol/l to 7.1 mmol/l.
Any suggestions welcome or other peoples experiences. Thanks.

Hi

Many people have experienced the stalling – search for plateau at the top of the page. You’re drinking plenty of water – are you eating enough fat and protein?

Also such differences in blood sugars are common. Our bodies react to the changes we’re making.

Stay with it, you will see positive results.

If you are having some 650 calorie days you may not be having a high enough proportion of dietary fat. Try to make sure you are having the full 800 calories every day and have between 40% and 50% of the calories from healthy fats and maybe try adding a little more salt to food or try upping your level of exercise a little, all of these things have helped people get past stalls in weight loss.

Sally, I feel your pain, but stick with it. I lost 8lbs in my first week, then went 12 whole days without losing anything, but I stuck with it and, following advice from this forum, tried to up my water and fat intake – drinking 3 – 3.5 litres and my fat intake now makes up almost half my total food. Then, last Friday the Whoosh Fairy visited and I found 3.5lbs gone literally overnight. It is now Sunday, and another 2 have disappeared – the loss isn’t always linear, as I found out, and it WILL go. Good luck, I know from bitter experience how disheartening it can be when the scales read the same day after day, or worse, go up (mine did too on one day, by half a pound), but put your faith in BSD, it will come right.

Hi,

Stalling is something you would expect in the process. Your body will adapt and try to burn less as you get used to a low-calorie diet.

However, you might want to try to switch things up a bit. You can try to keep the fasting periods longer. For example, try to eat (the 800 cals or less) only between say 16:00 – 21:00 or eat only one meal a day. If you can do that, try to excercise before you eat, say at lunch-time (if it fits your shedule). The theory behind this is that you would train in a fasted state, so your body will not run on glucose and will have to burn fat. If you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, this may cause that you body will always run on the glucose that your body will produce after a meal. Of course, the 800 cals a day will give you less cals than your body needs each day, so you will eventually loose weight. But if you are not happy with the time it takes to loose, then I recommend that you go longer between meals as it would keep you longer in a fasted state, where the body has to use fat for energy.

Even a full water fast can be considered if you’re up to it. This can be done on alternating days or however you’d like, but of course remember to keep drinking water. Green tea might reduce your appetite and is allowed during fasting (no sugar in the tea of course).

During a full water fast you can expect to loose about 0,5lbs pr day, which is 3,5 pounds per week, not inclduing excercise losses. Keep that in mind when you calculate for how long you can expect to do this Losses higher than that is probably water-losses that would come back after you break your fast.

I would recommend reading the book “The complete guide to fasting:…” by Jason Fung. It’s 10 euros/usd on Amazon Kindle.
It explains a lot of how the body improves during (intermittent) fasting and also how the different intermittent fasting shemes (BSD, 5:2, alternate day fasting and prolonged fasting) works.
There are also several suggestions and recommendations for different schemes depending on your situation and what to do when results are not coming.

Personnally, I am now experimenting with doing complete fasting days and as I am able to overcome the hunger waves quite easily now considering doing a full fast for 7 days. For me, I do not see why not?

I wrote this to say that you have some options to change things up a bit if you’d like.
Of course you should find something that suits you.

Keep up the good work!

Keep on going it can be difficult to not see those scales move especially when you are being very good and following completely to plan!

One thing that did pop into my head was – if you are exercising don’t forget that you will probably be building up muscle and it weighs more than fat? I wonder whether you would benefit from doing weekly measurements and if you are able to do body fat/water analysis on your scales….. you might be pleasantly surprised rather than just weighing yourself.

You can weigh the same and look drastically different due to muscle/toning. Also if you build up muscle you burn fat more efficiently.

Also wonder if you are being so active on top of 800cal you are cancelling ending up under 800cal with the burn of calories through exercise?

Btw I am no nutrition/fitness expert – just the mere workings of my mind speaking here 😁

Good luck xx

Could I suggest you check your daily carb intake? If this is high even though the calories are low, it will hinder loss. When I stalled, it was recommended to me, that I look at my carb intake and I found it higher than the commonly recommended 50g per day. It is surprising where carbs hide – onions, tomatoes, carrots, apples, pears for instance – and these can sneakily up your intake almost without you realising. Dropping my carb intake and upping my fat intake, got my weight moving downwards again.

It’s frustrating when you don’t see good results after putting in the effort, but don’t be disheartened, stick with it and it will happen – at 800cals a day, it simply has to happen at some point!

OK so it’s frustrating – I would recommend sticking to the diet for now. fasting may be a little drastic so early on but you could definitely do a 16:8 days where you only have an 8 hour eating window.

i stalled in weeks 3, 4 and 5 and eventually I upped my water to 4 litres for two days and started losing again so you could try that but not recommended all the time (I settled at 3 litres per day in the end). In addition, when you work out hard (like it sounds like you’re doing) you are working at peak or cardio levels, not at fat burning so if you have a FITbit or something similar, check at what level you are working – if you don’t you can google your optimum heart rate for fat burning and check you don’t go above that. It’s a lot lower than you think! Also, (sorry to go on) when you work out your retain water afterwards as your muscles need it to repair – drinking more water (paradoxically) helps with that.

and lastly, read Theodora’s post further up!! she talks total sense – there is such a thing as the whoosh fairy. Disclaimer: these are things that have been recommended to me and things that I have tried that work. The combination will be a personal choice – these are just my opinions.
Oh and by the way, aren’t men annoying when the weight just drops off! 🙂

Just wanted to add to something NKR2407 mentioned about muscle – a few years ago I was going to the gym and following a diet plan. It took me
A couple of months to lose 4kg – yet although it was a “small” loss on the scales I actually dropped a clothes size and lost 14cm off my waist alone. My body fat % had decreased and my muscle mass increased.
Good luck 🙂

I just want to thank everyone for their thoughts and experiences and advice and for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it. I have read and digested all comments. I’m going to try and up my water intake and increase my healthy fat intake too. The whoosh fairy (love it!) has visited now two days in a row and I have lost .5 kg (1lb) on each of the last two days. Amazing what a difference it makes to my morale. Can’t wait to get into the gym this morning.
I hope this post helps other people in a similar situation. Week 6 starts today. Bring it on!

Has anyone made the Parmesan Crisps from the 8 week blood sugar diet recipe book. I’m doing something wrong, my mixture has to be in the oven for 20 minutes.

SallyNZ glad you’ve met the whoosh fairy!

Great to see another Kiwi on this trip LOL. I start my 4th week tomorrow. I have lost 10 kilos so far and am aimming to drop another 9 kilos to reach 15% of my body weight. My blood sugars are also now showing in the normal range.
I to am seeing a plateau / stall as I have only dropped 1 kilo in week 3 when I need to be averaging 2 kilos to hit my goal in 8 weeks. I am using all the recipes and getting lots of good fats etc.