Hi Jim

Glad to try to help a gent in distress!I

Firstly your question brings up a general principle which is that contrary to popular myth, reducing your calorie intake excessively won't make you lose less weight. It can however cause a range of other problems that make you feel that you are being ineffective!

For a start taking your calorie intake too low may reduce your energy levels, leave you feeling hungry and affect the nutritional adequacy of your diet, all of which can make you feel "dieting" is just all to difficult and throw in the towel.

Worse, our body starts to conserve calories once it senses fewer coming in, and this effect gets greater the bigger the level of calorie restriction. In other words, the extra weight loss benefit of eating say 1,000 calories / day compared with eating say 1,200 cals / day is so small as to make the extra deprivation and hunger simply not worth it. This is the so called starvation effect and endlessly discussed. Though you can argue about the label used, there's no arguing that for most slimmers, cutting calorie intake by 500-1000 in the first instance, and revisiting calorie intake as weight falls, gives optimal result in terms of physical and psychological results.

Your case may be a bit unusual in that you feel perfectly happy and sated on 1200-1500 calories a day even though, based on your starting weight, and what you must have been needing to maintain that weight, a better starting figure for you would be nearer 2000-2200.

I think what you have done so far is not harmful in any physical way, but may have put you at a disadvantage mindset wide because you lost weight so very quickly at first and have now slowed up. If you had kept to the higher calorie intake we recommended you would probably have lost a little less overall but it would have happened week by week making you feel successful rather than elated then deflated.

By increasing your calorie intake you will almost certainly not gain any weight back and will probably continue to lose at a not dissimilar weight, but more predictably week by week,

My best advice would therefore be for you to increase your cals a little (at least up to 1700), whilst ideally also ramping up your physical activity which I know is something you want to do more of as you become more able.

My feeling is that this will help you to lose weight much more steadily which I think is the key to keeping motivated.

Bets wishes

Angela