I am about to start the 8 week Blood Sugar Diet. I am only 4’10” tall and am concerned that 800 calories may be too high for me. After all – there are 6′ tall men who are doing this diet who need a lot more calories than I do to maintain weight! Should I cut the 800 to 600 or just accept that my weight loss will be much slower than a taller person?

Even for smaller people 800 calories is low, so you should lose weight reasonably quickly.

Don’t go that low on cals or you may put your body into starvation mode and weight loss will be slow.
Given the fact that we are encouraged to eat fats via dairy, olive oil, etc means that no matter how small you are, it’s very easy to up the calories.
The initial losses will come from cutting out the simple carbs and keeping complex carbs around the 10g / day mark.
Best of luck for your 8 weeks and keep posting your progress, we are a bunch of nosey BSD’ers and love to share in others success.

Hi tobebien, welcome to the forums,

Follow Bill’s advice. This diet is based on the 11 years of clinical work performed by Professor Taylor. He didn’t just pull 800 calories out of the air. There is scientific work behind it being 800 calories for all – that way you get the body’s requirements for vitamins, minerals and proteins met whether you are 4’10” or 7’10”.

Starvation mode will damage you rather than heal you.

Wishing you lots of success on your 8 week BSD journey! 🙂

Thanks Patsy. Will do.

Thanks Bill. Grateful for the explanation. I have started a blog about my experiences undertaking the BSD – would you like the link or shall I post on this site too? I’m just in the final stages of preparation for the diet and should be starting Wednesday.

Thanks for your explanation and good wishes, hashimoto.

If I were you I’d start with 800kcals per day, but I’d email the people behind this site with your concerns, because I suspect that you are correct. I’d include your height, weight, gender, age and how active you are; perhaps they will suggest a lower total, or perhaps not, but they are the experts. It might take them a few days to reply, but no harm in the meantime getting used to the lower carbohydrate diet with 800kcal as your target. Good luck.

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Thanks FoFi, but I have been reassured in this post that 800 cals is the optimum for this diet so I will stick with this number. Ultimately I am more concerned about the health benefits of this diet than losing weight fast.