Cireena's Journal, 14 Dec 09

I can't attest as to how many of carbs vs. protein you should have. I just know that my body hangs on to carbs tooth and nail, even if I'm under my calorie count. So I just try to weight my dietary intake towards protein. As for the weight gain, that happens to me. I've gained as much as .9 kg over night. But I just stayed on track and dropped that much plus a little in a couple of days. Sometimes I wonder if it's just the bulk of the food backing up in your system that causes the weight gain. I really don't know. I just know that if you hang with it and you'renot cheating, you'll get there. 

Remember that your body is made up of 60% water and if you are eating a lot of protein, the smallest things can change that weight easily. It could be too much sodium yesterday, a hard workout that makes you retain water in your muscles, medications, hormones, etc. If you were eating too little calories and just started adding more, your body needs time to readjust to the new calories. That is why people who try to lose weight on very low calories usually end up gaining the weight back. Give your body to time to adjust. Stay on plan and drink extra water. It will work itself out. Fluctuations can happen hourly with our bodies, it's perfectly normal to go up and down all week. As long as your chart has a mostly downward spiral, I wouldn't worry too much. 

I will give you my meal plan. No calorie counting. NO carb counting. NO COUNTING!!! :D It works. I've lost, I've been holding my weight now but I haven't exercised at all in the last 2 months. So I'm glad I'm holding the weight! SO this is what I eat! For Breakfast I have a 3 egg omelet with veggies in it, like bell peppers, onions or you could put salsa. OR you can have a protein shake(if you have this only use half the scoop of protein powder) AND a small piece of fruit. A couple hours later you have half a protein bar. A couple hours late lunch. Salad with veggies, meat(tuna,salmon, chicken, or turkey) and veggies(cucumber tomoatoe....etc) You can have a small amount of dressing if you like but keep it an oil/vinegar type like Italian. Snack is a small handful of unsalted nuts and 3-5 whole wheat crackers. dinner is plain white rice about 1/2 a cup, veggies(any kind) and a palm size or deck of card size amount of meat! then you can have a yogurt for snack before bed. Try to keep the sauce and things off the food. Thats one of the keys to this eating plan. No soya sauce, butter, extra salt, bbq sauce. If you do have this stuff limit it. If you add in a min of 15 mins of exercise it will be great! I was losing about 2-4lbs a week!!! Good luck! 

Our bodies tend to fluxate about 2#s a day. No mistakes needed. That being said, if you are below 1500 calories a day, you aren't going to loose very well. Your body will go into starvation mode an hang on to every ounce/gram. Also, try to increase your water. The formula that I believe in (which works for me) is 50% of body weight. That means I'm drinking 16+ glasses of water a day. If I drink less than 14 a day i stall.  

actually i drink alooooot of water like 8 small bottles of water sometimes 6 but i never stop drinking water especially after i cut soda out of my diet,,, this week i started to increase my calorie intake which is 1200-1500 ( i hope thats enough),,, I think what you said Suzi maybe true because i did exercise really hard yesterday for an entire hour with new exercising machines and new weights,, but i always exercise for one hour,, so perhaps it is the level of exercise i'm doing is a little bit higher,, so i'll wait until the end of the week and see how it goes for me,,, thank you guys so much for the support i really needed ,,, although i know all about fluctuations it made me nuts because it was really hard to lose the weight,, and when it goes up it kinda got me down.  

Hi again Cireena, it's good that you increased your calories. Weight does go up and down, I can atest to that! Mostly it's body fluid retention, just keep going and keep drinking that water! Linda