Hey all, I'm posting on this forum in order to get professional, specialized advice. In Nov of 2007, I began an intense exercise program which was followed with a diet program about 4 months later. I was getting consistent results for ten months straight, then hit a plateau last Oct (08). About me:

Male
5'6"
21
initial weight: 270lb
current weight: 195lb
goal: 175lb
most of the weight is in legs/buttex followed by stommach

current lifestyle:

mon-sat: 1200 calories split into 3 main meals with snacks in between (no carbs, only fruits,juices, white/red meats, nuts and oils, rarely vegetables, I hate'em). Boxing Gym 12-1pm then 1 mile running/elliptical 5 days/week. Work from 2:30-10:30pm (pc technician).

sun- off

when I hit the plateau, I did my research and saw a lot of conflicting solutions. The most popular being zigzag diet, lift more weights, more cardio. I even tried atkins for two weeks, tried the 1000 calorie diet, tried to eat more and lift more, but all either caused no weight loss or added some pounds.

I'd like to know what the experts think, I'm willing to give as much info as possible. Please help! Thanks!

need to eat more calories!

Tried that too...got stronger but fatter too! I'm trying to lose the weight first then build lean mass. The 1200 cal diet was a last resort. The reason I stopped lifting was because I'd spend 9hrs a week in the gym working hard and gaining muscle, then literally lose it all in 3 days of "moderate" dieting. It's either gain muscle and gain fat, or lose fat and lose muscle. For now I'm sticking with the latter.

Should be eating around 1700-2000 cal/day.. 1 hour cadio a day and the weight should fall off!

Maybe your body is in starvation mode from eating so little calories. The only way to fix it is to eat the right amount (more than what you have been). You'll gain weight at first, but you'll lose it when your body adjusts. You wreck your system when you don't eat enough.

The problem is that when I ate 500cal under maintenance, I gained weight pretty fast despite the fact that I was doing 1.5 hrs cardio 6days/week. Some of it was muscle but mostly fat. I know it shouldn't be this complicated!

If you were truly "under maintenance" you wouldn't be gaining.

If you're under maintenance, you're short changed on energy so there's no way to create something out of nothing.

i agree on the too little calories. im a 21 year old female that weighed 160 and when i started dieting i ate about 1600 - 1700 a day and lost weight. maybe your body has adjusted to the low cals and your metabolism has slowed down? i know mine has after eating a set amount of calories for a long period of time and loosing my first 20 pounds. when i got to 140 i felt stuck there and after seeing no results for a month decided to take a break. so what i did was i ate at maintenance for about 4 months and then got in the groove of dieting again and being in a deficit. maybe your body just needs a break? try eating at mentainance for a couple of months and then get back to it. that may work? thats my only advice from personal experience. good luck!

1) Stop being an idiot.

2) Raise your calories up to a normal range like 1600 or 1700. That will generate a great deficit for decent weight loss. Don't raise them too fast or you will gain weight because you are starving yourself. Try raising by 100 or so a week.

3) Start eating some complex carbs, your body requires them and you can't go your whole life without eating carbs.

Thanks for sharing your experience. That's what I thought as well, that my body has adapted to the amount of calories I was consuming. I lowered my calorie intake even more assuming that the body will get rid of the excess fat and re-adapt, it never did. What I don't understand is how can the body hold on to the fat if I'm only consuming 1200 calories and burning 1000 through exercise! That's a deficit of 2400 calories!

Lol thanks for the advice, especially point #1!
For the past four days I've been eating 2000cals/day (about 500 under maintenance) and I put on 5lbs, probably mostly water weight. Will give it a couple more days and see it keeps rising or start dropping.

A deficit of 500 is great but like I said going from 1200-2000 may shock your body a bit and you will gain some weight, but it will come off once your body gets back to normal if you keep dieting and exercising.

If that scares you too much go back down to 1200 and come up slowly like I said.

That day off at the end of the week might not help as well...try to have an off day every two weeks or even every month...I usually let my self have two off days right next to each other each month, especially when there is something big going on that might make it hard for me to watch what i eat

I was in the same boat as you, and at the same weight. I was eating too little at 1500-1600 calories per day. I increased to 2100-2200 on Monday and I can already see a small difference on the scale (down over a pound). Allow your body to readjust and everything should workout. Like Steven said, if there is a caloric deficit then it is not possible to gain fat.

That's a good point. It used to be fine to take a day off of exercise and diet once a week. But after loosing all that weight I noticed I gain a decent amount of weight that day.