Another Eat More to Weigh Less win

Hi All, I am posting this for my sister since she doesn't use the boards.

She is an active mother of two that has been stuck at 170 for 5 months. Her goal is 150. In the previous year she had lost 35 pounds through Weight Watchers but gave it up when it stopped working. She consulted her doctor who put her on a 1200 calorie diet without eating any exercise back. This was very close to where Weight Watchers had her also.

I started my journey January 22 and have had very good results. Slow and easy was my goal and I am happy with my progress. Anyway, I am a hard numbers kind of guy. I like to research things and learn all I can. When she saw my results she asked me for some help. Ok, maybe I pushed my help on her but she was receptive.

First I had her log for a week. Don't change anything else, just log. Turns out some days she wasn't even getting to her 1200 let alone the exercise she was doing.

I explained the science of not eating enough as best I could and we calculated her TDEE on numerous sites. We were going for TDEE-15%. I explained the difference between calculating it with exercise included and not eating her exercise back or calculating it without exercise and then eating them back. She chose the latter as she is all about the reward for extra work. (I like this approach as well) We put her at 1600 and I urged her to eat back all her exercise. She agreed to eat back 2/3 of it. Close enough.

For about 25 days nothing happened but she agreed to stick it out for 6 weeks. And then... 2 lbs off in a week.! The first loss she saw in almost 6 months. Since then she is steadily losing 1/2- 1 lb a week and she is thrilled!

I'm not saying this will work for everybody but it sure did for her. I should also mention that she is very honest with her logging. Good or bad, it gets logged.

Yeah, she is only down 5 lbs so far but after being stuck for so long we both see this as a huge victory!