NHS very low calorie diet help

"3 meal replacement milkshakes, smoothies or bars (for example Slimfast, Cambridge diet, Supermarket own brand meal replacements) (approx 220kcals each)

Find a new dietician.
With 65lbs to lose, there is no reason to eat that little.

Find a new dietician.
With 65lbs to lose, there is no reason to eat that little.

THis^^ x1000

Responses like this always amaze me. Did you read the thread? If the OP swears she's not losing at 1200 calories per day over a sufficiently lengthy period of time such that fat loss could not be masked by water retention, why would eating more ever produce better results in terms of weight loss? That's just illogical. What's more likely is that due to inaccuracy in logging, the OP's 1200 calories is not truly 1200 calories. Just because I log 1200 calories doesn't mean that I didn't eat 1600 or 1800 calories, and telling me to start eating more just exacerbates this problem (e.g., I log 1600 and eat 2200). What's also a very real possibility is that all of these diets the OP has tried haven't lasted long enough for the OP to see results. Yoyo'ing between various diets with breaks of uncontrolled eating in between and not sticking with any of them long enough to see results is a great recipe for getting bigger over time. But if that's the case, eating more during the diet phase of the yoyo will just make things worse. And there's always the possibility that the OP is 100% accurate and is dealing with an undiagnosed medical issue or a side-effect of a drug she's taking, but if that's the case, telling her to eat more is again just going to exacerbate the problem. In short, there's almost never a situation where eating more will break a long-term plateau or will stop long-term weight gain as we're seeing here.

This is a bit of a rant on my part at this point, but weight loss goes beyond just plugging numbers into a calculator and getting a calorie target. That simply gives you a rough estimate for your starting point and going forward you should be adjusting your targets around the results you're seeing. If you're not losing at the rate you should be over a lengthy period of time, drop the calories ~10%. If you're losing too fast over a lengthy period of time, up the calories. But it needs to be based on results, not just ballpark estimates based on someone's stats.

Just my $0.02, but the OP's doctor is probably putting her on "meal replacement" products because it's a controlled environment. I can log 1200 calories but that doesn't mean I actually ate 1200 calories, and if I'm not weighing my foods and/or preparing my own foods, it can be difficult to get a very accurate estimate. On the other hand, "meal replacement" products are fairly well controlled. A shake is always going to be around X calories, a prepackaged meal will always be around Y calories, and so on. I suspect they're recommending that sort of diet plan to see whether the OP truly can't lose at 1000 calories or if perhaps the reason for the lack of loss was inaccurate tracking. But in any event, I just can't understand all the posts saying "your doctor is a quack, eat more!"

Is this pre bariatric surgery? That is the only ONLY reason for something like this-coming from an RD...I cannot see any reason to go this low on calories unless you are pre op...and even then 12 weeks seems WAY too long for something like this.

No it isn't, my doctor has told me despite my referral from another GP that I will not receive bariatric surgery as my BMI isn't high enough at 43.

I've lost 3.8 kg is less than 1 week according to the scales, I should be happy but this isn't a healthy loss is it?