I hit a plateau

[lisa77]

I stopped my 5 k run under 30 minutes and started with a personal trainer to see how it goes. My personal trainer works on core strength and I have seen more results with his method of training than busting my a#* for 30 minutes of a treadmill. He does use a lot of training that could be done at home but you would need to make a minimal investment on a couple weights and a pilates ball. 95% of all diets fail because of 3 reasons:
- Poor nutrition
- Feeling hungry
- slow metabolism
Do not get into any of those situations because you may see some results but the damage you are doing to your body is FAR worse and you will just yo-yo on your weight. Your machine ( body ) needs to function properly in order to take on any physical or health challenge, so good fuel and exercise.Moderator cut: not allowed

[McBain II]

Originally Posted by Opsimathia

That is a starvation diet. Don't do it. VLC diets are made to be done under a doctors supervision and with additional nutritional help. You need to eat more period. Fast loss on starvation diets are crap for your hair and skin. But if you want you hair to fall out, slow your metabolism, deal with gallstones/constipation and add some wrinkles and saggy skin...starve yourself as advised. When you try to eat to maintain those pounds are going to creep on rather easily after doing a diet like that.

What you're talking about is a side effect from gluconeogenesis occuring in the liver. This is when your body starts breaking down muscle and organ tissues to supply the body with the amino acids needed to make glucose. We now know that you can prevent this from happening by keeping protein intake at or above the 1g/lb of lean body mass I mentioned earlier. Keeping intake levels that high allows the liver to use dietary protein instead of body protein to create glucose.

Long story short, keep the protein intake high and you'll be fine.

[Opsimathia]

And how will you know how to eat after the loss? You won't. So it will all fly back on.
And you body needs more than just enough protein to operate properly. And fast loss still will destroy skin. Even those who do the doc aided protein rich VLC diets usually have to cut off skin.
And then you need to get your lean mass tested which is only accurate if you have it done in a submersion tank in a hospital. Not exactly cheap.

I would say its ok if you already know how to eat well, and only have to reduce for a month.
But other than that its too extreme and teaches you nothing.

OP take that info to a nutritionist and see what they say about it.

[McBain II]

Two problems here. First, he can cross the maintenance phase bridge when he comes to it. Right now he's worried about losing weight. Second, that issue is not linked to the effectiveness of any diet.

As for the saggy skin argument, this is yet another issue with gluconeogenesis. Sagging skin is almost always the result of substantial muscle loss that occurs during this process, not the actual fat loss, the only real exceptions being the morbidly obese and even then it's a hit or miss issue, but obviously that does not apply to the OP. You can also calculate LBM in a reasonably accurate fashion with calibers and the 1g/lb of lbm ratio actually accounts for this as the number actually needed to fend off gluconeogenesis is about 0.5-0.75g/lb of lbm, leaving you with plenty of leeway to cover the margin of error.

Oh, and all of this information comes from the likes of Alan Aragon, Lyle McDonald and Layne Norton. These are guys who actually have formal educations in nutrition, biology and physiology and actually apply these methods in the real world.