More advice needed please!

Froom37

Member
I've been on the total solution for about 6 weeks now - had great results, lost about 2 stone so far which is fantastic

however the last 2 weeks I've stalled a bit..

I do have times when I have to eat a real meal but I try and be very careful about calorie and carb consumption when I do. I try to stick to 10g carbs, and 200 calories and occasionally 20g carbs when I haven't had a bar that day.
2 weeks ago I got a bit slack and had a few real meals that were controlled but only really around carbs.
On 3 or 4 days my calorie count was about 800 calories, and on one day it got up to 1400 (oops). So was expecting to lose weight but not as much -I actually put on about 5kg.

This week I've been pretty good - had 2 real meals on one day (2 eggs and small slice of bread, and a prawn and spinach salad) total coming in at 600 calories and 40g carbs as per usual exante day.

But I'm not really losing weight - other than that this week I've been on total replacement diet with only additions being bouillon (1 heaped tbsp max each day) and coke zero (max 1 can per day)

I check regularly with ketostix and I have never dropped out of ketosis (been very careful about that!) but have gone from very dark to quite light on the scale. I'm back in the middle at the moment.

I'm back to where I was 2 weeks ago in terms of weight loss - so my blip is sorted but I'm struggling to get lower. Any tips? Should I cut the coke zero? Do I really have to face facts that if I eat more than 600 calories now I'm going to put on weight?!

 
Maybe its time to do add a meal week, to boost your weightloss? Welldone on your 2stone, that is fab! :D
 
On the exante site it says you should add a meal once a day for a week on week 5. Its not much, and still high protein like a chicken breast and green veg, tuna and cottage cheese. Most find it boosts weight loss again, and its good for your bowels too! ;)
 
I would say that with snacking, you've pretty much been adding a meal and sometimes two, so I don't think that's the problem. Thing with a VLCD is that once you start adding this and that in, it makes it so much harder and you mess around with glycogen levels. Your body just isn't in fat burning mode. Plus from what you've said, you've added meals and maybe skipped a product?

If you're not losing and you're eating, I'm sorry to say it's because you're not sticking to the rules :) Take me this week for example, I've losing 0.5lbs and I had 1 meal! 1 meal, not a few and that was on a Saturday. Went straight back to 100% and weigh on Friday. So I've been 100% for 5 days and lost hardly anything. I do think that with any VLCD you have to commit fully to it or you end up stalling and then feeling fed up.
 
Ah I think I've not explained well...

I tried to switch to one meal per day in replacement for one product (the bar) and had 2 other products (milkshake and soup) that day as well
I don't snack at all and the only additional stuff I ate was a mug of boullion and an occasional coke zero. Plus 3 litres of water

The meal should really be 200 cals and 20g carbs. I generally easily manage the carbs but if I have a steak it's more like 400 cals. The day I hit 1400 that's cos 1000 was in one meal...
And that's probably a high estimate.

Now I'm being very careful - all this week I've been 100% apart from the day described (salad and eggs) which shouldn't be any worse than standard exante packs unless I'm missing something. I'm a bit worried the aspartame in coke zero is affecting me...
 
With working solution, you're still intended to have the 3 packs as well as your small meal (I think), or at least that's what I do.

I've felt that I seem to be losing it quicker again without the coke zero (but I was drinking more coke zero when I was also eating other things, so may not just be related to the drink).

With your meal with eggs & salad, you also mentioned having bread - I tend to leave out any of the obvious carb stuff like that.

Maybe try a week TS again, try and get the weight loss going and then try adding in a meal again from there?
 
If you're dropping a pack a day you're still not doing it properly as cybill said you need to have your 3 pack PLUS a meal you don't replace a pack with the meal
 
I don't get that - forgive me for being thick!

Surely if I have 3 packs plus a meal, I'm potentially eating 800+ calories per day and won't lose weight as fast as if I just have 2 packs and a 200 cal meal.

Plus I risk coming out of ketosis as the Exante packs are balanced to have just under the 40-50g carbs and any more is going to risk that...

re bread - I had eaten about 25g of carbs that day so I calculated that 1 slice of bread (warburtons toastie!) would be ok at 13g and take me up to 40g. It was the first time I'd eaten bread since January and I'd been craving it - the reality was ok but not really worth it. Stayed in ketosis so no issue there.

Got my weekly weigh in on Sunday and if its not much different I'm going to stop the coke zero's and see if it changes.
 
Very roughly -
Exante bar : 200cals and 23g carbs
Calories in Exante nutrition bar | Nutrition Facts on iChange
Exante shake : 200 cals and 20g carbs
Calories in Exante Shake - vanilla flavour | Nutrition Facts on iChange
Exante soup : 200 cals and 20g carbs
Calories in Exante Soup - vegetable flavour | Nutrition Facts on iChange

So if I decide to swap one for a meal then I try and balance the above (actually I got the numbers wrong so I eat even less carbs than that!) I also take a multivitamin when I remember to make sure I'm not missing anything vital. Make sense?

(btw I understand what food is ketogenic if its not clear from my posts - I very carefully choose what I eat! A typical meal is steak and spinach or lettuce and prawns)
 
I wasn't trying to be patronising or anything, its just thats really not the way the plan works. Its 3 packs for TS, 3 packs plus ketogenic food for WS.

Its not really a very good idea to do what you are doing and throwing in additional supplements to "make up" for what you havent taken with the packs.

No one is stopping you from amending the plan the way you want, but logic says you aren't losing weight because you aren't following the plan the way its supposed to be done.
 
No that's fine! Thanks for your comments! I am aware of what i'm doing but it's how I keep going rather than quit/lapse. I'd just like to understand what's going on a bit better
 
A little off topic....

But does anyone else feel 63g of carbs is quite high? The total amount of the packs.
 
Froom37 said:
Very roughly -
Exante bar : 200cals and 23g carbs
Calories in Exante nutrition bar | Nutrition Facts on iChange
Exante shake : 200 cals and 20g carbs
Calories in Exante Shake - vanilla flavour | Nutrition Facts on iChange
Exante soup : 200 cals and 20g carbs
Calories in Exante Soup - vegetable flavour | Nutrition Facts on iChange

So if I decide to swap one for a meal then I try and balance the above (actually I got the numbers wrong so I eat even less carbs than that!) I also take a multivitamin when I remember to make sure I'm not missing anything vital. Make sense?

(btw I understand what food is ketogenic if its not clear from my posts - I very carefully choose what I eat! A typical meal is steak and spinach or lettuce and prawns)

You need to remember though there's more to the packs than carbs and calories.
The 3 packs ensure you get everything you need nutrient wise.

You're far better off just doing WS the way it's meant to be done if you want to eat :). Once you start incorporating food then you're not on TS
 
I've drifted into 2 packs and a meal this week, and I know it is not good for me. Skin is bad, feeling lethargic etc. I have stayed the same weight wise also. When I do AAM properly with 3 packs and a meal I usually lose. No idea why but these diets work when stuck too properly, not when I mess around with them. I'm on my fifth go, and every time the same. You would think I'd have learnt to just get on with it by now!! LOL.
 
I did Atkins for a while which is carb controlled but allows you to eat! I def went into ketosis and lost plenty of weight. What's more I kept it off as I didn't have the returning to eating challenge. Maybe that would work better for you? It's the way I'm planning to go once I've been on this for a couple of months.
 
I've drifted into 2 packs and a meal this week, and I know it is not good for me. Skin is bad, feeling lethargic etc. I have stayed the same weight wise also. When I do AAM properly with 3 packs and a meal I usually lose. No idea why but these diets work when stuck too properly, not when I mess around with them. I'm on my fifth go, and every time the same. You would think I'd have learnt to just get on with it by now!! LOL.

Well done on not giving up, and giving it another go Nicki! :D
 
That conflicts with what I've read - and I would agree that 63g of carbs daily does sound high. No way would I eat anything like 100g+ and hope to stay in ketosis (but it is different for different people apparently so who knows...)

Weekly weigh in shows that my "stalled" week was just that - overall chart showing weight loss has corrected and is averaging out at similar amounts.

Have to say I don't agree with the posts saying "you're not losing weight cos you're not doing it properly" - given the actual results. More likely I just had my first experience of a slow week which I wasn't expecting.

I also think that having 4 packs rather than 3 per day is probably "worse" than what I'm doing. I don't like the idea of having 3 packs per day plus an actual meal - I don't snack currently and adding an extra meal is not a habit I want to get into. So I think I'll give the WS solution a miss and stick to TS or swapping out meals for packs as needed. Vitamin supplement will help deal with any loss of nutrient issues.

Speaking only for me, my focus is about losing weight and keeping it off not doing TS or WS properly for the sake of it. My biggest fear coming out of this is putting all the weight back on when I stop - having known several people this has happened too - so I am eating occasionally to not distance myself from food too much, and to be honest, to help me get through this. Having seen how many calories are in "approved" snacks like pork scratchings I'm feeling a lot less guilt about eating a larger meal than I should do occasionally

On Coke Zero - looks like my fears were unfounded as I haven't stopped having the occasional can but still lost 5lbs last week - phew!

appreciate kind comments and advice - even when I don't agree with it - thanks for taking time to help.
 
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