----- [log in to unmask] wrote: 
> Huh? No weight lost in two weeks? 
> 
> I am not at all discouraged. Maybe I've replaced lost fat weight with 
> muscle. But it is slightly curious. 
> 
> Thoughts? 

As I mentioned some time back, I started experimenting with a high-fat "Optimal Diet" approach back in August. I readily lost 35 lbs., but need to lose 20 or so more. My weight loss came to a screeching halt around the end of November. Since then, I've been able to drop a few pounds, but they come back, so I've made no real headway. I've experimented with lots of things, including fat fasts, zero carb, carb cycling, etc. I got a kettlebell and added those exercises. 

During this whole time, I've used FatSecret to record just about everything I'm eating. I have it on my BlackBerry and I'm pretty obsessive about keeping track of things. This gives me a pretty good record of what's going on. 

I've made the banal discovery that if I want to lose weight, I have to cut calories. Furthermore, I've discovered that the various online BMR calculators for estimating daily caloric expenditure are pretty accurate. According to them, at my age and weight, I use about 2,100 kcals/day to maintain body weight. I'm finding that if I eat that much per day of anything , I don't lose weight. If I include a lot of carbs in the mix, I'll gain a bit, but no low- or zero- carb plan will cause me to lose weight unless I simply eat less than 2,100 cals. 

The problem is, when I started on the diet, I was 35 lbs heavier, and my BMR was of course higher. Eating low-carb ad libitum, paleo or non-paleo, I would reach satiety before I reached BMR, so I lost weight "effortlessly." When I got to the point where satiety and BMR coincided, weight loss stopped. If things worked the way they are supposed to, that wouldn't happen until I was at a health weight. But that's not how it is. This means that further weight loss will involve not eating to satiety or, to use the old-fashioned term, going hungry. 

Todd Moody