I'm 5.6 (168cm) and hubby is 6.2 too. I am tall depending which country I am in.

Oh cruel fate that made me the daughter of a shorty who bagged herself a giant - I take after my dad, and this thread is depressing. On the plus side I can confidently point and laugh at a doctor who tells me to eat 1200 kcal a day. On MY diet (featuring bacon, mushrooms and eggs for breakfast, delicious Thai curry for lunch and roast pork, sweet potato chips and broccoli for dinner), by toughening up on the rules (really no sugar, no alcohol, no dairy for a month, no grains, no legumes, no chemical stuff) I lost 4 kg in the first week - and I was not eating too badly before, just too many sweets. Granted, I'm 30 lbs away from normal weight but then I was sixty lbs away a few months ago so we're cool with that. According to my hairdresser my hair is growing faster and is healthier, she said this without knowing about the specifics of my diet but she DID notice the weight loss. Most people do...

YOUR diet is mostly protein, so what do you expect?

Nothing but the logical results of a logical eating plan.

How is that possible?

If you have a lot to lose, it is possible - or if you go on one of those really hard to do cleansing, fasting diets where you don't really eat anything and always have an empty stomach, you can lose that much...

No, that's not true. The only way you can lose 4kg in a week is from (some) water weight loss. It isn't possibly to lose 4kg in a week of fat since you'd be operating at a 28000 Calorie deficit. What this means is that, for example, you'd eat absolutely nothing for a week plus do 3 hours on the treadmill each day.

Not to diminish the importance of getting rid of excess water in the form of muscle glycogen - you'll look and feel much better.

Yeah, my first reply (that disappeared into the ether somehow when I accidentally switched browser tabs) I put in a part about water loss, and I forgot it in my haste to re-post! Probably most of the weight you lose when you first change your eating habits (dramatically) is from water loss (in the first days or week)

I thought I was going to starve myself but after two weeks, I don't feel so hungry anymore. And i get full much faster. I have never enjoy a mid morning fruit as much as now!

Most important part for me is the lost of water, the bloated feeling I always had.

Now, like you, I felt like i should lose weight but never got the kick to start it. The only reason I am on this diet is to control my sugar. The weight loss is a bonus.

Not true, I eat a lot of vegetables and fat.

That is very encouraging. My main problem is the fact that I crave sugar so often. There are rainy days when a Tiramisu (for instance) would be just the perfect antidote. I know it could be related to serotonin levels etc., but still...hard to fight temptation. I can refrain from many things, many cravings,...but from sugar...is hard. Especially when you have men around you that shamelessly indulge in cereal bars (those too have lots of sugar), Mars, Snickers etc. Life is not fair...

Oh... Craving....

I crave chocolat sometimes and I have it. Not the whole pack but 1-2 pieces. I bought low calories chocolat pudding this week for when the urge is too great. I also do carrots salads. Carrots, low fat mayo (measuring it to be sure of the amount of calories I put in it) and spices. It does the job for the sweet craving.

If I crave crips, I eat popcorn with a bit of salt and no butter. If I follow the diet 100% the way the doc told me, without allowing myself any craving what so ever, I would have given up already.

Hubby is great, he doesn't eat crap stuff in front of me, he hides in the kitchen or does it at work.

Wow, sounds like fun. Sounds like something you want to do for the rest of your life - not. About the "low fat" and "low calorie" stuff - your body is smarter than that. And it really does not want the stuff they put into those "diet foods", even if a multi-billion dollar industry is telling you otherwise. Now I don't think that my way of eating works for everyone but I feel so liberated that I do not have to count calories anymore. If you enjoy counting and weighing stuff and constantly telling yourself "I can't have but I really want", sure go ahead, do what you are doing.

What I find with my way of doing it - after the first week of feeling like you want to murder for a bar of chocolate, it stops. You just don't want sweet things, you could put a chocolate truffle in front of me and I wouldn't want it. I may fancy it at some point but it is not a necessity. I also refuse to buy into this ridiculous idea of junk food as a treat any longer - putting crap in your body that will make you feel sluggish and bloated is not a treat! However, a nice piece of salmon on the grill, steamed pak choi with lime sauce and a cauliflower mash with butter - that is a treat and it will make you feel full without that "I need a lie down" feeling.

I tried every single diet going and I could not stick to one for more than six months, most lasted a few months, interspersed with long periods of simply pathological eating or not eating patterns. They made me feel like I was missing something and most importantly - which for them to be over. And that is where diets fail, when you stop them. So my question for you is - is the idea for you to stay with this 1200 kcal diet for the rest of your life? Is there a specified goal set for you to achieve after which time you can switch to a maintenance diet? It's very hard to get all your nutrients in such a small energy load and if even one item is "wasted" on something like a low calorie pudding, which has zero nutritional benefit to you, then you definitely can't get all the nutrients.

I'm happy that you are settling into this diet and that you are seeing results, it just sounds like you are not entirely happy being on it and if you feel deprived for lengthy periods of time, then you are setting yourself up for failure. If you eat a pizza, that is easily 1000 kcal, so if your diet says 1200 kcal, you can't eat anything else other than maybe two apples for the rest of the day, By the way, my tip from when I still counted calories -cut your frozen pizza in half or even in thirds and make a big side salad, most of us actually already feel quite full after half a pizza but if you put the whole pizza in the oven, you tend to eat the whole pizza.

I don't think counting calories is a long-term solution, but I guess you can learn what your portion sizes should be and how to combine meals. However, calories are not the whole story. My sister lived off Kinderschokolade for a few months, I think she ate about two packs a day and maybe some cereal for breakfast. Overall, she was eating maybe 1500 kcal per day and was losing weight - but she was getting zero nutrients and if she had stuck by that, she would have ended up very ill. So if you feel safe counting calories, sure, but I think the guidelines for nutrient values are more relevant and in particular you really must make sure you get enough protein.

What about exercise?? You can take on far more calories, but you need muscle and exercise to burn them off...

Not really. Look up the ketogenic diet.

Exercise is irrelevant to weight loss. If you're overweight you need to eat fewer calories than you burn, but out-eating exercise is far too easy for exercise to be any sort of factor. Reduction in calories consumed is the most important thing and the best route to that is a high fat, low carbohydrate diet.

In a different life, I used to go on the cross trainer for 2 hours five days a week to "burn off calories". Accounting for age-related change, I prefer how my body looks now to how it looked back when I was in the low fat, carbs are fine, exercise to lose weight phase. I have more visible muscles despite still being overweight while back then I was a normal weight with an ok shape but I didn't look like I did any exercise. And I was miserable and always thinking about food.

Now, I think about food when I'm hungry but most of the time it's - just food. Not comfort, reward, stress-reduction and most importantly not a treat for being "good". When I think about how much time and energy I have wasted on thoughts and actions in relation to food as a highly emotional subject and trying to shape my body into conforming to an image that essentially negates the notion of diversity and puts appearance before health, it makes me sad. Making a choice to focus on health and refusing to play in the game of prettier/younger/slimmer (that, by the way, you can never win, there is always someone "better") is liberating and empowering. Instead of wishing to look like Gisèle Bündchen (formerly my "thinspiration", I had screen savers, wallpapers, the lot, to remind me of what I was aiming for) I may see someone with a very toned butt and tell myself that, with lots of squats, I too can have a toned butt - not necessarily the one I saw a picture of but the best possible version of MY butt. And that is the only butt I care about. But I mostly exercise to burn off nervous energy, get rid of stress or just as a way to enjoy a sunny day. It's my new treat.

It might help to burn calories a bit quicker if you are regularly active but I was amazed that you have to do some phenomenal amount of running about or cycling just to burn of, say, a bag of crisps.

My running app thingy shows that for me an hour's running burns (I guess highly approximately) about 680 kcal.

i can easily replace most of that, without realising, with a snack and a drink when I get back so the net result of calorie burn is often close to zero.

Exactly, and almost everyone finds it much easier to simply eschew the bag of crisps. What is more helpful is weight lifting. Increasing body mass with muscle increases the number of calories you use per day doing nothing (BMR). However exercise plus dietary change can be too much change for some people to maintain and if this is the case it's more prudent to focus on consumption exclusively.

You see, the thing is I do this diet because I have to cut sugar. Losing weight is a bonus not the goal.

For now, I am happy the way I manage it, feel it and how I see it. Because me, I never did a diet of my life. This is new for me to control what I eat, how I eat, etc. so far, so good. I don't feel like killing anyone, I am adapting my diet in consequence of this. I don't eat frozen pizza. what about making it from scratch.

I don't count every calories I put in my mouth. What I do is choosing 2 products by comparing their calories, nutrients, sugar, etc.

I have now I good idea what is the size of my breakfast, so I don't need to count or weight it. It becomes natural. And things I was not too comfortable to integrate in my diet, I will be able slowly to do it without feeling overwhelmed.

Could I do that for all my life? Yes. It is a way of living, it is a lifestyle. If I don't get diabetes, I'll be happy to keep eating this way.

That idea to reward myself seems to bother you.

As I said before, I never been on a diet. If this is what it takes to me to eat super well all week knowing that Friday, I will allowed myself a pizza, to keep me going into this new habits, there is nothing wrong with it. The doctor didn't tell me I can't eat pizza for the rest of my life. She gave me a guideline knowing full well that I never did this before. I am enough lucky to be able to take actions now, slowly instead to get the diabetes diagnosis in a decade or two and have to change my diet right away, fast.

I don't eat when I am stressed, I don't eat when I am sad. I eat when I am hungry. But the difference between before and now is when mid morning comes and I am hungry, instead to eat cheese and a croissant, I eat an apple or a banana or a kiwi....

By the way, the pizza I ate yesterday didn't stick on my ass. If I was eating it everyday, yes. Once every 3-4 weeks, no. Quantities are also an important element. I don't eat a whole pizza but I do eat as much veggies as I want.