"Not eating enough to lose weight"?! Myth or true? Please explain!!

[Callipo]

So, doing WW PPs and I love it, never hungry, but I am now stuck on a bit of a plateau. I am mega strict and NEVER eat any of my weekly extra points and usually come in 2 or 3 or even more points under my allowance. My friend suggests that I m "not eating enough" - but I lost really well for the first 8 weeks. Is there any truth in this? If so why? And if not, why am I not losing??!!

Plateaus in wait loss are normal - you may need to introduce more exercise at this point to increase your daily metabolism to continue the weight loss, and improve your muscle:fat ratio.

And yes, your friend may be right, depending on how low your calorific intake is daily - too low and your body starts conserving energy in the form of fat etc. because it realises you're not taking enough in to sustain you. So it will slow your metabolism down to conserve energy.

Yep, what she said.

Your body reacts by slowing your metabolism down. One of the ways SW, and I presume WW, works is by giving your body lots to digest with comparatively few calories. Basically, it's what you eat, rather than how much you eat, that's important.

Goes against the grain with some, I know (having had that argument on here recently).

Also your body is now used to taking in less calories and wants more so it is getting more efficient at retrieving them so to speak. For example where you may once have got 80 calories out of one slice of bread, your body is now extracting 100 calories out of that same slice of bread.

Read that in the Dukan diet book.

Your body adapts to what you are eating, hence plateaus are normal. Mix things up - not necessary eat more, eg - change / increase exercise or change diet....

I'm not convinced that eating more will result in better weight loss though but changing balance between protein and carbs (ie more protein, which uses calories to digest and less carbs certainly worked for me). Eating more protein stops your metabolism from slowing down.

Do you know roughly how many calories you are eating a day? I ate 1200 a day for months on end and did eventually reach a plateau, which I got out of by going low carb (and low fat) but still sticking to 1200 calories.