It turns out I'm eating less than I thought. I went to www.dietitians.ca[/URL" target="_blank"> and entered a typical day for me. The only difference was that I entered the pizza leftovers I had for breakfast this morning (Bad, I know, but that's very rare). Normally I have shreddies or cream of wheat.

It came up with 949 calories, so I guess I'm going to boost it to 1200 per day and see where that gets me..

One of the girls on the WW board that I hang out with has a strong educational background in nutrition, physiology, biology, and fitness. I was talking to her about all of this stuff and it really made a lot of sense.

She said that there is a threshold at which your body revolts against your attempts to cut calories. It thinks that you're going to starve it and starts holding on to too much fat, just in case it needs it when it really is starving. This threshold for most people is around 500 calories below what you need to maintainyour current weight. I'm 5'3, 140lbs, 21 years old and apparently need between 1900-2000 calories to maintain my weight. That leaves my dietary needs at about 1400 to lose safely and effectively. I should lose about 1lb per week this way. She said an extra 100 calories or so won't hurt anything, so to get maximum benefit I could go as low as 1300.

Exercise complicates things, because it's hard to know exactly how many calories you're burning. But if I don't keep my intake at about 1300 calories, my body will think I'm starving again. So if I eat 1300 calories that day, and then run 2 miles, I need to eat another 200 calories to make it up (you burn about 100 cal. per mile). The exercise will help my body to keep its metabolism up, which means that it isn't convinced that it's starving. Therefore, exercise is important to losing weight because it gets you fit and raises your metabolism, but you have to eat enough to fuel it. If you do that, you should lose steadily each week.

That said, she explained that this is exactly the science that created weight watchers. On ww, you are given a certain number of points to eat per day. 1 point equals about 50 calories, and every food has a points value depending on how many calories it contains. I'm given 20 per day. That's about 1000 calories. On top of that you're given 35 "Flex" points (basically, a food allowance) to do what you want with each week. If you split it evenly, I that means I get 25 points per day, or 1250 calories. Whenever you work out, that translates into points as well. For every 100 calories you burn, you get one point, or 50 calories to eat. That way you're still creating a small caloric deficit with your exercise, to help with the loss, but you're eating enough to fuel the body.

Does that make sense? If you go to www.dietitians.ca,[/URL" target="_blank"> there's something called the EATracker. You log on (it's free), enter the foods you eat in a day, and it tells you how many calories you're eating, how well you're balancing food groups, how much of your daily recommended intake you're getting for all your vitamins, etc. It's really great. It even tells you how many calories you should be eating to maintain your weight. So if you go there, and subtract 500-600 calories, it helps you plan your menus. It's fantastic, really.. I don't enter in exercise but if you do, it will recommend that you eat more calories. You can still subtract your 5-600 from that total to get what you need to be eating..

Hope this helps and makes sense. I'm giving it a shot over the next few weeks to see if it really is as sensible as it sounds..

I am actually in university, and there is a nutritionist we can see for free but the problem is that... well, she's a nutritionist. I don't know how things are in the US but here in Canada, the professional name of "nutritionist" isn't regulated - meaning anyone that thinks they know how to eat well can call themselves one, regardless of education. Dietitian is regulated, however. I did go to speak to her but all she was able to tell me was to "follow the food guide recommendations and get more exercise." in exactly those words. Nothing specific, nothing helpful. That's when I looked her up and found out she has no education on the subject and was an English major in university.

Oh well.. It's a trial and error thing I guess and we all have to find what works for us. I'm going to see if I can find a dietitian nearby. Because I'm still in school my dad's health plan through work still covers me, so doctors and specialists are all free to me anyway.. Might as well take advantage..