Need advice if possible

[danerik]

Here is an email i sent to Barry, but wondered if some here have any experience that can help me. I am really afraid that my wife prefers starving with a certain result, than a healthy eating that makes her stay at her present weight. So if any advice will help, i will be eternally grateful.

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Back in january we first read your site and blog and got very interested. We did not really follow it, but through starving she lost weight. Through december she did not eat almost at all, and from january slowly started adding up food until april / may when she started eating normally. Her weight went from 64 kg til 56 in january and continued down to 46 in april. And stabilised at 46-50 kg up to mid july with normal eating, some candy, regularly bread and so on. Not super-healthy but she did not gain weight.

Then it went wrong and after some months of overeating she was much heavier. We went back to normal eating at mid september, and on the 11th october she was 63,3 kg. 1st of November it was 62,4 kg. We wanted it to go faster as it was very important to her, so we changed things:

* No more than 60g of carbs a day, focus on eating fat
* She is walking 2 time 10 km a day at a brisk pace
* She rides a training bike 4 days a week for half an hour
* The total energy she eats is 1100-1500 calories
* With old-fashioned counting she should lose 1 kg a week

Result: after 11 days 62,1 kg. Now she is in panic and want to go back to starving. I do not want that as i believe what she is doing is the best, but i also know what her body means to her. She will not be really happy or self-content before she is back at 50 kg. At present speed it will take more than a year.

From what your write and logicaly thinking, the weight loss should got faster, not slower. No matter how vain i might be, it is very important to get her shape back, and so she can fit into her clothes.

Do you have any idea of where we are going wrong? I might make her go on for a week or two, but if there is no results, then i'm lost.

[danerik]

And just to answer myself:
We have one cup of coffee in the morning. Have had that for more than a year now.

I follow our diet on ******.com to also see the if it adds up right, and over the past week it has been 64% fat, 17% carbs, 18% protein on a 1.400 calorie diet. Her activity level is pretty high with all the walking, yoga/BodyFlex in the morning and in general being active. Actually back in february when she started doing yoga/BodyFlex we saw very fast result. This time nothing. Can her metabolism be broken or something?

She have been maintaining her weight while eating half a baguette with cheese, have candy, ice-cream, jams and in general we probably had like 150+ gram of carbs a day. Now we have cut it more than we like, are more careful than we like, and still nothing.

Is there a good explanation for a stand still? How certain can i be that weight loss will come? I would expect at least a kilo a week on her current diet and activity level.

What scares me is that any suggestions to be more active or to cut more on food (which is very low already) will probably lead her to just want to starve and be sure. Right now she does not care about her health, just want to get her body back.

[CarolynF]

This is my opinion and from what I have gathered..When you starve yourself, you lose muscle because the body wants to get rid of the big calorie eaters..and that is muscle.
So, after a period of starvation, you start eating normally or more than normally and you will gain weight. Your body has lost some of it's lean body weight which is in control of
our metabolism..More muscle you have the more you can eat.

There are 2 basic ways to lose weight..Lowfat/highcarb/moderate protein or lowcarb/
highfat/moderate protein. We cannot mix the two very easily. When you hit carbs over
60+, you had better lower your fat because you will start to gain weight. It's like a seesaw.

It's all about choices, I have found. If you want to eat more carbs, then that is where you will get your energy from..the carbs. You won't be in ketosis at this point, which is the key to a LC diet. If you are willing to give up the breads, etc.., then you should eat more fat (60 percent or so), because that is where you get your energy from.

Plus, you both need adequate amounts of protein to keep the muscle you have..Most women need 70-80 grams a day and men need more, of course.

Just my 2 cents..HTH.