Metabolic Adaptation: BMI = 26.9

In the first 100 days after I changed my diet, I lost 60 lbs. I went from eating about 4000 calories per day of comfort food to eating about 2500 calories per day of mostly healthy food with some snacks that I slowly cut out of my diet over the first 7 weeks.

In the second 100 days of eating a healthy diet I lost about 25 lbs. During that period, I went from eating about 2500 calories per day of fairly healthy food with some cheating, to eating about 1800 calories per day on a very balanced diet with very little cheating.

In the third 100 days I lost about 12 lbs, eating an average of 1800 calories per day of very healthy food. The forth hundred days were about the same, as were the fifth 100 days. I’m now well into the sixth 100 days of eating right and several weeks ago it became apparent that I was unlikely to lose 10 lbs by the end of this phase.

So how did I go from losing 60 lbs on a 2500 calorie diet to having trouble losing 10 lbs on an 1800 calorie diet that is healthier than ever? Then answer, it seems, is that my metabolism is adapting to a diet that has been very static over the past year. My instincts keep telling me that I need to eat less, but each time I cut back, my weight-loss plateaus. Because of this, I’ve decided to eat more!

About four weeks ago I decided to try to increase my calorie intake to 2700 calories per day. The biggest change is the portion of pasta that I now eat. I’ve increased the portion of my pasta lunch from 450 calories to about 800 calories.

It’s hard to eat 800 calories of pasta and sauce, so to ensure that I get up to 800 calories I add some grated Padano cheese.

I’ve also increased the amount of fruit I have at breakfast, and increased my portion of hot cereal a bit, increasing my breakfast from 650 calories to around 850 calories.

At supper, instead of adding my protein to my veggies, I put it in a sandwich of whole grain bread, which adds an extra 100 to 200 calories more than eating my veggies with crispbread.

Since it takes a deficit of 3500 calories to lose a pound of fat, one would think that eating an extra 900 calories per day would cause me to gain almost 2 pounds per week. As it turns out, however, over the past 4 weeks I’ve only gained about 2 pounds, and most of that was gained in the first 10 days.

What I’m trying to do here is get my metabolism to adapt to 2700 calories per day. I’m hoping that if I keep eating like this until the end of August, I will only gain another 2 or 3 lbs. At that point I want to drop back down to 1800 calories per day to see if I can return to the sort of weight loss I experienced in my second 100 days of eating right. In other words, I should be able to take off 25 pounds before Christmas.