Has anyone else read the personal stories of all the people that lost hundreds of pounds in People Magazine? Truth is, they all counted calories one way or another. Some did pre-packaged/pre-counted meals (lNutrisystem or Medifast.) Others did Weight Watchers or measured portions.

They all stayed around 1200 calories a day, which is what I'm currently trying. It ain't easy. I've gone over by 200 calories a few times, which will make losing weight slower.

I've read about turtles & rabbits & seen too many unhappy people that wish they could lose faster. I can only eat 3 tiny meals a day if I want to be thin. If you want to lose a chunk this year, you must restrict your caloric intake drastically.

I'm currently debating with my lawyer friend who thinks he's smarter than me. He's 30 pounds overweight for the first time in his 40 year old life, and he's decided to read a diet book that uses food combinations so you can eat as much as you want. I explained to him that "a calorie is a calorie." It doesn't matter if you mix prunes with guava nectar or brown rice with string Beans. If you eat 3000 calories worth of anything, you won't lose weight unless you exercise enough to burn a couple thousand - good luck.

I've been allowing myself 5 ounces of Protein at lunche & dinner - what a pig! NOT. Five ounces leaves me satisfied, but 4 ounces will get me into the tight, sexy outfit that I bought for my March vacation. 1200 calories a day to lose 2 pounds a week. Do I really want to struggle on 1500 calories just for 4-5 pounds a month? Hell no. I'd rather stick to 1200 and try for 8-10 pounds.

TO LOSE WEIGHT YOU HAVE TO EAT VERY LITTLE. I'm yelling at myself because it's too simple to register. And I'm hungry.

i am on the kamakazi wedding diet- 900 calories a day. i am adding more foods as i find ones that fit in:

breakfast:

yogurt light 90 calories (i eat this everday anyway mmm key lime pie is fave)

lunch choices:

veggie burger, no bread, sauteed veggies, lite ranch- roughly 250 calories

turkey hot dog-bread-condiments- 200 calories

veggie corndog 1 w/mustard- 170 calories

homeade tomatoe soup- 200 calories (if that!)

1.5 cup lentils 150 cal.

hummus and wasa 250 cal

snack- any fruit or what i have been having lately- splenda lite canned peaches WHOLE can is only 100 calories lite syrup included!

dinner- any lunches OR:

salad with 4 oz chicken- 400 calories

4 oz meat with sauteed mush, onions, red peppers - 400 calories

lite tofu 4 oz and stirfry veggies

all this plus 2 hours exercise a day.

i finally saw TBL and they did super LOW cal and 3 hours exercise a day and lost ASTONISHING amounts of weight. i just want to lose as much as i can by 7-1-06! NO CHEATING!!! since i am allowing myself foods i love and eat normally anyway i think i can 'stick to it'.

we'll see! i am down 3 in week 1!!!!!!!!!

Okay, Lisa, now you have us curious. Post that picture....we want to see the outfit....Celeste

Shelly - another perfect example, though I wish you'd eat more than 900 calories because you'll need extra engery for your HONEY MOON!

Someone please tell me what low calorie foods are??? I don't know. All I know is low carb!!!

>>>>>>>>a sausage biscuit and a vanilla cappicinno is not low carb.

I have lost alot of weight lowcarbing and so has my cousin and daughter.. the calories dont matter during low carbing <!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

Celest, I look like a bad Carol Burnett skit in that sausage outfit. You really want me to post a picture? I'll have to take one and see what it looks like first. I'll think about it.

I knew someone would come back and tell me my breakfast wasn't low carb... I know that I had a very weak morning... I am starting fresh this very moment...

Trying to make a grocery list of low cal stuff to buy!!!

The calories DO matter doing low carb. Most Proteins (especially lean ones) are much lower in calories than carbs. Nikki, you are losing because you are avoiding fattening carbs that are loaded with calories. Most carbs are the high calorie foods that add up too quickly when you're counting calories.

Low calorie foods are vegetables (not corn, potato or peas though.) chicken and fish are lower in calories than beef, but you have to limit the amount of ounces you eat and trim the fat off.

Butter, dressings and sauces are very high in calories, but vinegar and lemon juice barely have calories.

I challenge anyone doing a low-carb diet to list their daily intake here for us to show you how many calories you eat.

I am interested in your point DeLarla...

My mom does Atkins and has lost and successfully maintained her weight. She has lost over 100pounds. She will have to eat that way for the rest of her life to maintain that... and I really think she will. She has maintained her loss for over 3 years. I wouldn't even call her overweight any more. She is skinny.

It seems like I had found a comparison of the low carb and low calorie... and if you eat the right carbs... they really are low cal...

I think I will do the low carb for one week, really strict and post what I eat.... Maybe someone can help me find Calories if I can not.

DELARLA~ I ACCEPT YOUR CHALLENGE

I will start a new thread tomorrow!!!

Hi Delarla. You sound very determined and I have every confidence that you will succeed! Just hang that outfit where you can see it all the time. You will have to post a picture of you in it for all of us to help you celebrate when you wear it in March. Once upon a time when I dieted and loss quite a bit of weight, I found that walking really helped. Once I got used to it I hated to miss it. Wish I could get back on that track again. Just can't seem to work up the will power. That is why I was considering the band. I used to walk a minimum of 45 minutes. I mapped me out a path and walked away from my car for at least half the walk, that way I couldn't cheat and had to walk back to my car to go home. The walking really help increase the weightloss. Good Luck to you!!

i know when i was doing atkins and log on fitday i was easily at 2000 a day. but ate lots of cheese, steak, bacon, ranch and butter those are all really high calorie!

i think i lost on it because i had so much to lose. i gained 25 of it back from quitting the atkins and being totally unrestricted!

the worst thing about atkins was CONSTIPATION! i was ALWAYS constipated! i wont do it again, ever! and my butt thanks me for that!

i'd love to see the outfit too!

I had the 'calorie is a calorie' conversation with my sister the other day. She was griping at me because I don't eat salads for every meal and that's why I'm not losing weight. I tried to explain to her that if I eat 3 to 4 small meals a day, I will lose weight, pretty much no matter what I'm eating, since I can't eat very much at once, but my problem lately has been that I snack and graze, therefore eating enough calories to maintain, but not lose. If I showed you guys a picture of her and told you that she wanted to diet, you'd all want to fly out here and kill her (I'd be your alibi!).

I don't have to count calories if I don't snack, but sometimes counting calories keeps me from snacking, because I know what i'm about to put into my mouth and how it affects my eating for the rest of the day. I think I am going to start a thread to list my intake just so that I can be accountable for my snacking, because it truly is my biggest downfall.

I haven't read the People article (yet) but my first question would be how long have these weight-losers kept it off? This race to lose is all well and good--but worthless if you're back in the same place 3 months later.

And we've all done that, right?

Less calories will of course make you use lose weight, but the most successful losers are the ones who make working out part of their lifestyle--forever. And I'm talking REAL AEROBIC WORKOUTS here. Oprah is the best example and most closely mimics my own experience. In her "maintaining low" phases (& we all know she slips sometimes) her weekly workout consits of an HOUR of aerobics 6 DAYS A WEEK with 3 additional days of one-hour weight training.

That is her MAINTENANCE schedule! And the year that I maintained at 155 that was almost exactly my schedule. (Alternating between 1,000-1,500 cals per day.) Losing for me is pretty much the same regemin but cals have to be between 800-1200. It is critical for me to have low days so I can let lose a LITTLE during social ativities. If I go over too much one day then I work out MORE the next.

I hate exercising as much as the next person, but it's really the only way for me to lose and maintain a loss. I know there are a FEW (very few) people who have lost weight w/ the band w/o exercising (Muffinbirdie would be one) but they lose slowly and they are YOUNG. After 30 I just don't think you can lose in the real world w/o exercise. (And I'm not talking walking 3 days a week--that's a joke. Don't kid yourself about that being enough exercise for WL.)

I'm sure my maintainence at 155 for a year (after going down from 312) was helped by the fact that I took up swing dancing, so I had a lot of aerobic exercise to burn off cals--and the motivation to fit into my dance skirts. When I had to stop for awhile because of foot surgery I put on 50 pounds in 4 months. I kept trying to get back into working out but couldn't stick to it and kept going up, up, up... I got the band at 238# because I just could not get control of myself. The biggest thing spending $10,000 on this band did was finally give me a kick in the MOTIVATONAL ASS, so to speak.

We all know we can eat around restriction. WL with or without the band is an EFFING LOT OF HARD WORK. And no diet is going to get around that.

Sorry to be so long. I'm just typing out what I've been saying to myself all morning and I'm kinda pissed off about it. At least I know that I'm not the only one here feeling what a bitch it is!!

Calorie counting kicks in my OCD - but it does work. Until I find a new obsession...

Penni and Lisa, you two should write a book together titled something like "Banded and Unbanded". You two have waaaaay too much experience and knowledge to share ONLY on LBT!

Hi Lisa,

I agree with your lawyer friend. You can eat more than 1200 calories a day and lose weight provided that the food is low fat, loaded with Protein and low in carbs. I went on Atkins for 8 months prior to banding and lost 50 lbs. For people who have a true satiety disorder, hyperinsulinemia and no lapband, Atkins and the Southbeach diet can be a savior. I was eating more than 2000 calories a day and losing rapidly. It was my endocrinologist that recommended I do this since meds were not helping me with my insulin resistance. Now as a permanent lifestyle, I would never endorse Atkins because the whole basis of the diet is to put the body in ketosis and it is rough on the kidneys because people abuse the portion control aspect of the diet and also eat a lot of high fat food like bacon and cheese because they can. IF you were to do a 1200 calorie Atkins diet for a month, you could easily lose 20 lbs, but once again, its not something I would endorse. I like my carbs and now I tend to have carbs low on the glycemic index like multi grain crackers, 40 calorie multigrain toast, brown rice etc.....

Babs in TX

334/180ish

-150 ish

I found my shopping list, I just shopped with last week.

I will share how I low carb with these foods

Celery

CuCumber

Carrots

Onion

Baby Carrots

Lettace

Bag of salad

Watermellon

Tangerines (NOT LOW CARB, for kids)

Cream cheese (fat free)

Salsa resturant style (a TBS goes a long way)

Cheese Stick's (lite)

Sliced proceessed cheese

Bag of shredded cheese

parmesean cheese grated

Olives (high fat)

canned asperagus

zesty dill pickles

sugar free syrup

pancake mix (NOT LOW CARB, for kids)

Ranch (fat 6, carb 2) (use with carrots and cucumber)

French (fat 7, carb 4) (use on salads)

Thousand Island (fat 7, carb 3) (use on salads)

Summer sausage (slice and eat with cheese.. 0 carbs)

Hot dogs (turkey kind, 5 fat, 0 carbs) (for the kids)

Jerkey

Pepporonni peices

lunch meat (0 carb, 2 fat)

Turkey meat

Lean hamburger

1/3 less fat Jimmy dean sausage

Sausage patties

bacon

Hot and spicy chicken wings (bags) (only 1 carb for 4 wings)

Chicken Breast patties frozen

Chicken breasts flavored frozen (1 carb per breast)

Chicken tenderloins frozen

Hamburger patties

Fish Fillets frozen

Chuck beef steak (for mongolian beef and broccolli)

baby shrimp

Big tail on shrimp

frozen broccolli

frozen spinach

Ketsup (kids)

Jelllo sugar free

gravy (1/3 cup, 4 carbs)

Thai curry sauce

lite coconut milk

Vegtable broth

Beef and chicken broth

Almonds

Kettle Korn (lite) NOT LOW CARB (I have kids)

Pork Rinds

Crutons (4 carbs per 12)

Sugar Free suckers

Sugar free frozen cream bars

Carb Options vanilla Ice Cream (use with diet root beer)

Diet A&W Root Beer (MAKES delicious root beer floats)(carbination fizzles)

diet pop lots flavors (for kids)

diet sorbet ice

Lite diet tea mix

crystal lite

sugar free Kool aid

cranberry juice lite

grape juice lite

orange juice lite

cascadia lite flavored Water

5 dozen eggs

Egg patties

margerine

mayo

Peanutbutter and Jelly (kids)

Sour cream lite

Low carb tortillas (4 per slice, kids cant tell the diff)

Low carb bread (6 per slice)

Post toasties cerial (not low carb) kids

Rice crispies (NOT LOW CARB)

Ok That cost me about 300$ at winco and costco.

Notice How I only buy things for the kids that wont temp me like ketsup, cerial, diet pop, pancakes, pB &J)

My kids will get plenty of carbs in their other foods.. so its not like I am forcing them to low carb.

So here are the things I can make this month with that food.

Meat and cheese with lettace and mayo and mustard sandwitches.

Grilled Cheese sandwitches.

Hot dog's

Turkey and cream cheese roll ups in tortillas

Cheese quesidillas

Cheese and chicken quesidillas..w/ salsa and sour cream.

Burettos made with hamburger and some fajita seasoning, shredded cheese, chopped onion, folded tortillas baked in oven.

Taco salads made with the same as above using crutons for the crunch instead of chips, salad dressing, olives.

Chicken breast salad's

Chicken anything. LOL

Hamburger patties with cheese and onion and the thousand island.

Plus salad.

Mongolian Beef and broccolli

Asperagus with melted cheese

Chef salad, cheese, meat, hard eggs, cucumber

Deviled eggs with the dill pickles.

Egg flower Soup.

Shrimp and cheese. Shrimp toaste. Shrimp salad.

Celery and cream cheese

carrots and ranch

Chicken curry.

Sausage and eggs and bacon .. omlets and all that.. Unlimeted options.

Alot more.. when you look thru the list I am sure you can see many things.