Orlistat

SD0907 wrote: »

I've already changed all carbs to wholemeal, cut out dairy and use low fat meats etc. Most cooking is in the oven or cooked with low cal spray. I've been calorie counting for 6 weeks, 2 weeks incorporating fasting too and I've only lost 3lb. That's with low fat eating and I don't know where I'm going wrong.

All those changes are fine and dandy (personally I think they're horrible, except maybe for the fasting, is that IF? - which protocol? - but it's your choice and completely up to you - I bet I eat lots of things that others find outright gross, lol), but if you aren't losing weight as expected,
something went wrong in setup (have you entered your stats correctly, picked weight loss as a goal?),
your expectations are too big (losing more than 1% of your bodyweight per week),
you're not tracking correctly (using a food scale, for everything, logging the amounts you're actually eating of each item, using the rcipe builder, correctly),
not hitting your calorie target consistently, either consciously, or by forgetting something, cheating, guesstimating.

So I can do low fat, my body just doesn't want to lose weight

Your body has no will of its own. It stores fat in a calorie surplus, uses up fat stores in a calorie deficit.

SD0907 wrote: »

Sorry if i sound impatient i dont mean to be.

Everybody gets impatient and frustrated at some point, no worry

The 3lb weight loss may sound 0.5 a week but I didn't clarify, that only came from a combination of 16:8/18:6 fasting with 12-1400 calories in the last 2 weeks. So I suppose saying my body won't is an exaggeration however it only will with low cal, daily fasting, low dairy and low fat.

So you did lose 3 pounds in 2 weeks? Taking in 12-1400 calories and losing 1.5 pounds per week means that your maintenance calories are somewhere around 1950-2150. This means that you can lose 1 pound per week by eating 1450-1650 calories per day (which sounds a lot less stressful).
Intermittent fasting would only have an effect on adherence to calorie deficit, but it looks like that worked for you.

As im overweight I expected to lose more in the beginning (fully aware this would slow down) but with cal counting etc I didn't lose a thing over 4 weeks. It was actually longer but I only started cal counting at the start of that time frame. Before was healthier eating and cutting out snacks etc. In total i stuck at the same weight for 2 months or so.

That's because healthy eating and cutting out snacks makes no difference, it's a calorie deficit that makes you lose weight.

I will say I have my cheat day a week and I do add it on, I'll never live a life I can't enjoy food, I'm just happy to control when and what I'll enjoy at my own pace.

But then I hope you realize that the cheat day can easily wipe out all your effort. And that's particularly the case if you feel deprived through the rest of the week.
People who truly and trustingly enjoy food, usually don't "cheat", because they know that they can't cheat on their bodies; instead they allow themselves freely to eat what, when and how much they want. This just happens to be more in line with what they need, and then just a small amount of willpower is enough to not go overboard - as opposed to people who struggle with weight and relationship with food, who tend to keep "wanting what they can't have", and then blowing it, which is the result of random, self-imposed restrictions.

I'll try to continue this current combination and see how I get on. Maybe I'll continue to lose this way.

I want to encourage you to not "try", but also to not undereat, or cut out foods randomly. There is no "maybe" in losing at a true calorie deficit.

I'll hold off on the tablets until I get my bloods back really. The above description if the toilet bowl is enough to put me off

That's good. You can actually throw the tablets/prescription in the garbage, they won't do anything (good) for you, no matter what the blood tests say. You'll still lose with a consistent calorie deficit, you'll still not lose if you don't have a consistent calorie deficit.

How I know these things? I struggled with my weight for over 20 years, lost and regained several times with random food restrictions - until I hit "obese" in 2013 - which made my relationship with food and my body horrible. Converting to trusting the process of calorie deficit, and just eat the food I like, allowed me to not only lose all the weight I wanted (I had done that several times before), but to keep it off, and heal my relationship with food. I've been in maintenance for three years now, and I eat, move, think and feel like a normal weight person.

Maths can lower stress levels - who'd believe that! Yes, understanding the process really makes an enormous difference.

One day of normally trying to stay below 1700 calories does not mean that you really, never, go over 1700 calories. Unless you're weighing and logging everything, you can't know for sure. If you feel "entitled" to a "cheat day", you'll be prone to not pay attention/forget/guesstimate. 1700 non-accounted for calories can easily be the double.

For balance, I believe it's important to not label foods good and bad. The "bad" label doesn't make us not want it, it just makes us read it as "forbidden fruit" in huge bold neon types. And those fruits really taste the sweetest.

When it comes to taste, in my experience, fat is an important part of the equation. A little goes a long way; and a really tasty and satisfying meal makes me more willing to wait for it, and to not eat too much, at the meal, and between meals. Feeling like I'm missing out on something, that I just can't put my finger on, and at the same time thinking about what I should/shouldn't eat, always made me want to rebel, and I did, hard - even though I'm a patient and obedient nature. Now there's nothing to rebel against, because I make all my decisions myself - for real.