Can you suggest a 500 cal/day real food diet?

[mulranno]

I did Lighter Life in the past and lost loads....kept it off until experiencing a family tragedy and put on about a stone in the past year.

desperate to loose this and was thinking it might be possible to do the LL approach ie 500 cals/day with real food...has anyone tried this..?..what would work..? thought about a boiled egg for breakfast 100 calls...then veg soup 200 cals for lunch and chicken and salad for tea...what other food would fill me up but keep within 500 cals?

If you keep within 500 cals on food rather than meal replacements that have been carefully designed to provide all essential vitamins and minerals in the smallest possible amount of calories, then you are likely to end up deficient in something essential and quite possibly unwell if you do it for more than a couple of weeks.

I seriously wouldn't restrict calories that much unless you are doing LighterLife, Cambridge (which is cheaper) or under the care of a nutritionist.

I'm doing a mixture of Cambridge and low carb - seems to work and I have to have more than the 500 calories just in order to lose weight, otherwise my body just shuts down.

this is an excellent question!

i'm currently doing lighter life lite and have been doing it for three weeks. i have lost weight but find it incredibly expensive!

i'm sure i could do something similar on my own....but not as little as 500cals

i personally couldn't survive on an egg until lunch time!

when i have my meal i make a lentil curry with tomatoes, spinich and cauliflower and its really tasty. i'm not a vegitarian but find the bulk of lentils more satisfying

Wow an egg would keep me going for ages...! ceratinly longer than a LL soup..I am not too worried about the vitamin side of things as my current eating habits are so poor anything would be an improvement. I am sure that minerals and vits sourced from egg, chicken or fish and veg soup -- would be better than powdered inert LL stuff?

Any other ideas as to how you can do 500 cals on food...it wasnt too difficult on LL ...got to be easier with real food?? What is low cal and satisfying...

I think 500 cals a day is way too low. You'll get used to it and start putting weight on very rapidly when you stop. In fact, sometimes the weight is really slow to come off as you go into 'starvation' mode.

You know you can lose weight fairly quickly if you stick to around 1200 to 1400 cals a day? You won't be starving and feel as miserable either.

Soups are very good and can be low cal.
1/4 can of beans on a slice of toast is less than 200 cals as is;
100g of white fish and salad or veg.
Salad sandwich
50g of pasta in a tomato and veg sauce

Having protein with every meal will keep you full so starting the day with an egg is good.

500 cals a day is far too low for you to get the nutrients your body needs.

As Velvetcushions says, you should lose weight on 1200-1400 cals a day - add some exercise to help you tone up and increase your weighloss.

Re eating eggs, I find that if I make an omelette for lunch (two eggs, spray the pan with fry-light) that this really fills me up and I only have room for a bit of salad with it.