who would have thought it would work?!!

Yes...... I'm wondering the same thing. Maybe I'm not eating calories! :noway:

If you aren't consuming enough calories to fuel your body properly, your body won't want to lose weight. It goes into "starvation mode" and it begins to store fat instead of burning it. The key to proper, long term weight loss is to eat enough that your body knows it will get the proper fuel it needs and it'll burn the fat instead of storing it.

I see a lot of women eating only 1200 calories, working out and not losing. If you're working out and burning a bunch of calories and only consuming 1200, you're netting too few calories. Yes, you have to have a deficit to lose weight, but not so large of a deficit that your body fears it is starving to death.

I've always lost weight when I upped my calories (heck, I can STILL do it and I'm in maintenance - if I up them, I lose again). I currently consume 2200-2500 NET calories a day! When I started, I was only consuming around 1700, so I've upped mine quite a bit.

I think, as I have gathered from reading the forums on here, that when you stay low on calories for a while, such as with the 1200 calories women have, your body holds on to fat because it thinks you may be going into starvation mode, and your metabolism slows down, making it harder to lose weight. Increasing your caloric intake for a short period of time boosts the metabolism and thus the pounds start dropping faster.

(sorry for adding this as a new message, I can't edit my other post for some reason...)

Also, long term severe calorie restriction will slow your metabolism down. You don't want to slow it down, you want to get it moving. When you're eating enough, it is functioning normally - but when you start cutting calories too much it slows WAY down because you are starving yourself.

I have heard this too. That if you find you are in a plateau take 2-3 days to INcrease your calorie intake and DO Less for that time. I guess it helps to reset your system. It seems if you keep doing the same thing your body gets used to how to use it, so you need to change it just for a bit then go back to what was working before.

Wow! That's very interesting and makes sense. I started here about 3 weeks ago and can't complain because I've lost 6 lbs., but I'm sticking to 1200 calories or less per day. Maybe I need to up my calories too so I'm not starving my body, so to speak! Thanks everyone for the info!

so how long should you up your claorie intake a couple of days or a week ??? Then go back down to 1200 calories??

Increasing calories has helped me lose weight too. I haven't hit any major plateaus, luckily. But once I had a couple of days of minor "indulgence" and suddenly dropped 2-3 lbs a day or so later. I did some reading, and based on that I increased my calorie allowance each day to be just above my BMR. After a couple of days at my new goal, I suddenly dropped 2-3 lbs again. Evidence so far indicates that you do, indeed, need to eat enough. Enjoy

Hi sorry this is so long winded I copied it from a blog I did while at a fitness retreat this a way to find out just how many calories you need a day

I think that I talked about ones resting metabolic rate before, thats the number of calories your body burns just to stay alive. So if you layed in bed for 24 hours and figured the calories you burned doing that . That is your resting metabolic rate(rmr). I am sure most of have heard or will be surprised to hear that you have to eat to lose weight. What I have learned here is that if you don't eat at least your rmr in calories a day your metabolism will slow down to compensate and try to hold on to what you are eating even more.
You lose weight by creating a calorie deficit. So you should eat your rmr calories everyday and be physically active to create that deficit. One might ask can I exercise too much and the answer is yes and that will show up in performance. If you are exercising so much that you start feeling weak or rundown you either need to cut back on the exercise or up your calories. You have to listen to your body and act accordingly.

Now you are probably thinking OK that is all well and good but how do I know what my rmr is. Well it just so happens there are two ways to find this out. You can go to a gym that has a rmr machine and pay 50-100 dollars to be tested or you can use this formula and the results will be very close to the same. Ok figuring this out takes a few steps. First here are a few conversions for you.

Weight in kilograms=weight in lbs divided by 2.2
height in centimeters =height in inches times 2.54

here is the formula.
(9.99 x weight in kilograms) + (6.25 x height in cetimeters) -(4.92 x age in years) + 5 or -161=rmr.
At the end the formula is different depending on your gender if you are male add 5. if you are female subtract 161. Be sure when you calculate this that you do what is in the ( ) first.

Hope it helps

Eating more is working for me too. More food = More weight loss = Amazing!!