Original email for context: The first week I lost 5.7 lbs and the second week I lost only 1 pound. I know you said sometimes you do not lose every day but I feel that 1 pound is what you would regularly lose in a 1200 calorie diet. The doctor I currently see did not really say much about it but that I should lose 4 lbs this week or we will stop the diet.My menu is from the 800 calorie protocol and it is:
- Lunch: 115 grams of chicken with 2 cups of veggies cooked and 1 apple
- Snack: 1 apple
- Dinner: 2 eggs, 2 cups veggies, 1 pack miracle noodles and 1 apple.
I just need some guidance because i do want to do this properly and lose weight and not have to stop the diet. What would be your recommendation for this?
Hello! Okay let’s see what I might be able to add here. I did a check in MFP to show what your likely calorie consumption is with the food you mentioned- since I don’t know which veggies you used, I just tried out 4 cups total of cherry tomatoes. I’m getting a total of 700 calories without the miracle noodles.
There’s a few things, and these may or may not apply to you:
3 apples – too much fruit on the diet may be a problem– you might try eliminating 1 apple and replacing this with more vegetables.
I’m not sure how many pounds you have to lose. But if you have a slower metabolism it’s possible that on the 700 calories this is the normal fat loss you can expect- the first week everyone loses more weight because you are losing a lot of water weight- this is not all true fat.
Once you get to week 2 you will start to see just your actual fat loss.
To give you an example, let’s say you have a slower metabolism and your body burns about 1400 calories a day.
This means, when you eat 700 calories a day, you are in a 700 calorie food deficit.
Let’s see how long it will take with a 700 calorie daily deficit to lose 1 lb of true fat. 3500 calories in a pound of fat/700 calories deficit = 5 days. So 5 full days on the 700 calorie diet in order to wake up on the morning of the 6th day that week with 1 full lb of total weight loss in that period. So this is actually not too far off from what you experienced here, IF this was your situation. And if you were eating more like 800 calories some days, you can see then that would easily add up to another day before you had a full lb of weight loss as well.
This is why I find unless you are super close to your goal, and you are on the right dosage of hCG – that many really don’t need more than the 500 calories (I even found I ate less sometimes as I just wasn’t hungry) and that would of course increase the weight loss.
Check your sleep – please see my important article on sleep and the hCG Diet – no matter what you do or even if you fast, you can actually not lose weight if you are not getting proper sleep.
Ovulation or menstrual cycle coming- this is a common cause of a temporary slow down – give yourself a few days and see if things increase for you.
Water intake – I have found that if you don’t have sufficient water intake, this really seems to impede weight loss as well. hCG and Water intake article of mine to help you.
I have additional info in my stalls section of the blog.
