It happens. Don't worry about it. One meal/binge session can't derail your whole process.

You can disagree with facts all you like, it doesn't change them.

Go see a doctor swollen ankles can be a sign of diabetes.

I'm seriously considering a fitbit one, or possibly waiting for the basis B1 to be more available worldwide.

To lose 30lb in 6 months you need to have a deficit of about 550-600cal a day. If you add an hour a day of light exercise (walking for example) it's going to halve that. Registering and logging everything seems daunting, but honestly within a few days it's second nature. I would add to KK's advice, try and log everything _BEFORE_ you eat it. I can't tell you how many times I've seen the calorie count of something and decided not to eat it. And once you've logged everything for a week or two go back and look at your logs and see where you can make further savings.

Err people look at this person's diet calendar for yesterday. http://fatsecret.co.uk/Diary.a... <500cal. Yea you are hungry because you aren't eating enough.

Thanks, I'm looking forward too it. I really want to get up to the golden gallery, but that's a LONG way up past the whispering gallery.

Judging by the fact their posts have been removed and the email I just got from Fatsecret it looks like "da management" thought they were spammers too.

IIRC spacey the theory is that muscles continue to burn calories at a higher rate after exercise. So even if you eat that level of calories burnt during your exercise period you will still be burning more than your sedentary BMR over the next X hours while your muscles go back to their base rate. So you burn an extra 200 in 20 minutes on the exercise bike, and over the 12 hours you will burn another 150 calories because those muscles are still running at a higher rate. Even if you were to eat the original 200cal, you are still 150 better off for that day (Note figures are plucked from the air to illustrate the theory). I vaguely recall there being some evidence to that effect. But I was never interested enough to actually read up on it and see if it was [u][b]real evidence [/b][/u]or buy my book/dvd/whatever "[i]evidence[/i]".

At the end of the day even if you were to consume 1000 calories extra on one day a week in a mostly controlled way, would only be slowing your overall loss rate by about 1/3rd an lb a week. "Burning out" and binging uncontrollably, until such time as you decide to start over will likely a lot more. So even if it doesn't work for you as my (entirely unscientific) personal experience has for me. is it such a bad thing? At least that is my justification for it. One "bad" meal can't kill your progress. One "bad day" can't either. One "bad week"... We all have them, stuff happens!!! It's when "One bad" becomes your every meal. I've been without a kitchen for a fortnight now, and my Dad is in the country neither have make being "good" easy. But my progress is stronger now, despite 2 weeks of eating "badly" than it was when I had more control.

Suzy: From a personal stand-point I've noticed that after a few weeks of being fairly strict with myself, a week or two of higher calories doesn't slow me down as I would expect, but actually seems to speed my losses up. Whether that's because of an increased metabolism, or other unconscious adjustment, or what I couldn't say. But it SEEMS to work for me.

3 bits of advice. 1, Don't blindly trust the calculations the site makes about your RDI and exercise. Particularly in the first few weeks. Averages are all well and good but [u][b]your [/b][/u]body will probably be somewhat be out of step with them somewhere. 2, Don't drop too many calories too quickly. Start out slowly and find your own equilibrium. Just because your new buddy is losing 8lb a week doesn't mean you have too. If they are nearing 400lb (like I was this time last year) then losing 7lb a week is relatively easy and not overly dangerous. The same cannot be said for someone who is 189lb... 3, Whatever "diet" you decide to follow LOG EVERYTHING THAT PASSES YOUR LIPS. This really helps once you get into the swing of things... If your diary is 100% right and you know you _should_ have lost weight then something else is going on. It's probably water or other "transient" weight.

His eminent majesty is spot on. It doesn't matter how you create a calorie deficit but once you create one you will lose weight. IMO the entire diet industry is geared around making that easier (or invisible) to the dieter. I found the easiest way was to log my normal diet, find the places where I ate the most calorie dense food, and try making substitutions for other things I liked which were less calorie dense (So root vegetable mash is 1/3rd the calories of potato mash, but I like both, and both fill the same purpose in my plate). Also TRY everything even if you think you are going to hate it. I still can't believe that I enjoy cauliflower "rice" and cauliflower puree because I still deeply loathe cauliflower as a vegetable on it's own. But both are so mild in flavour in comparison to plain steamed/boiled cauliflower I actually enjoy them.

It was and is again, I added something to it then changed my mind and over-edited myself. I often agree with the points you make spacey, I usually have reservations about the way they have been put across...

[quote=Spacey47][quote=eKather... Even better, find a photo that you want to look like in a magazine. Copy your photo and paste the head onto the body in that photo so your head is on that body. .[/quote] Possibly the sickest advice any moron has offered a 16 year old let alone one who currently weighs 92kg[/quote] The apocalypse must be coming... I agree with spacey on something, without reservations.

In the UK we have a diet system called "Slimming World" the core of which are 2 "diets" Red and green. Red days are high protein, low carb (Unlimited lean meat, fish, limited carbs). Green days are High carb, low protein (unlimited potatoes, pasta rice etc etc, limited lean meat). And you can choose how many of each you have per week. When I was following it (many years ago), I preferred more red days than green days. But I would always lose more weight eating more green days than red. Which according to Low Carb advocates is impossible due to the physical quantity of carbs I would consume during those days. But I can tell you it worked. EVERY SINGLE TIME... Mum found the opposite. She preferred green days, and lost more in weeks where she had more red days. At the time they were at least they were honest about WHY it worked. It was simply that whatever way you did it, it was likely to provide a calorie deficit because you were limiting fat, and one of the other 2 most calorie dense food groups. It's all about what works best for you. And only [u][b]YOU[/b][/u] will know what that is because only you know your body and mind. It's taken me decades to understand that point. I've had huge successes here since I joined in June last year. And it's because I've controlled my rate of progress directly.

[quote=suzygirl1017]I think eating one meal per day is unhealthy and could be dangerous. No physician would tell you different.[/quote] Well the Greeks and Romans considered it the height of gluttony to eat more than once day when you had the leisure to digest it. And the evidence suggests that this was the norm for over 1000 years in the Mediterranean. And their armies who practised this would make our professional athletes look. So "unhealthy" probably not, but certainly we now understand nutrition better than they did (or at the very least one would hope we do). The fact remains that the premise that calories are the be all and end all is correct. How you ACHIEVE your calorie deficit is up to you. Weight watchers, atkins, etc etc... The entire diet industry is built around hiding this fact from the dieter... :)

Freeze the squares Spacey. They melt slower then.

[quote=Rita41]Reading labels is also very important. Some products have a great calorie count but when you look closely at the serving size it wouldn't satisfy an ant. [/quote] Don't get me started... 1/12th of a packet is never a damn portion. And the "meals" where the entire range is in identical packaging and sizes... And listed as "per pack = x" except one... which is "half a pack = x"... Because that one meal has double the calories of the others. And packs where the "portion" isn't a number you can divide the pack by... If it's 80g a portion then why is the pack 130g... Or even better the fruit bags where the portion size is 80g but the pack is only 55g...

whole chicken includes the dark meat which is higher in intermuscular fat.