##  Sounds like diabetes to me.  A gallon of water????

##  Keeping in mind that many healthy people drink less and others drink
more.

##  Eating when NOT hungry is not a great idea.  One size does not fit all.
That's how many of us ended up overweight in the first place.

I agree with all of this except the amount of water, after doing some
reading I found that drinking half my weight in ounces each day is what was
right for me, for example, if I weigh 100 pounds I drink 50 oz of water,
this was a bunch when I weighed 230 but has gone down as I have lost.  The
less water I have to drink is a reward to me for losing, also I drink 16
ounces of water in my cherry juice concentrate every day, which is well
worth the 2 points and 16 ounces of skim milk also each day.  I just started
this and it seems to be helping curb the hunger, Lee, rambling again

Hazell,
thank you so much for your story! It clearly shows why it's not sensible
to eat too little.

You mentioned about the "technical jargon". I'm not sure you really want
it, but here goes anyway! ;)

Basically what happens is that if we eat too little over any length of
time our brains register it as a famine. To survive a famine, the human
body has been beautifully designed to conserve energy (energy =
calories), particularly the emergency energy store: your fat.

So the following things happen:
1. Your metabolism drops significantly, reducing the amount of calories
you need. For instance, the gut slows down, leading to constipation.
2. You feel tired and lethargic and start to automatically reduce energy
expenditure - not just conscious energy expenditure, but things like
reducing figgetting and the amount of movement in your sleep.
3. You start to automatically obsess over food and hunger increases -
it's the brain's way of "motivating" us to find food.
4. In order to find the energy it needs, the body breaks down sources of
energy that it can spare for the current "emergency": your muscles
(Note: not your fat in this situation!). This includes all muscles, not
just skeletal. Remember that the heart is a muscle.
5. Since muscle burns off energy as you move around, the less muscle you
have, the less energy is burned off.
6. The less muscle you have, the weaker you feel and the less likely you
are to move around.

If the "famine" lasts too long, all the above continue except your body
eventually turns the hunger off, although the obsession over food
continues.

So, in short, you burn off fewer and fewer calories, your bones and
muscles become weaker and weaker and you think about food *more*
(leading to the risk that you'll crack and eat everything in sight).

To effectively lose weight, you need to reduce your calories just
enough, and increase your activity just enough so that the body doesn't
react as if its in a famine, but you are burning off slightly more
calories than you take in. About 1-2 lbs a week should be about right -
the WWs points system is designed to achieve that for most people.

Ain't no technical jargon. The body is like a furnace. It needs fuel
to function. If you don't feed it - the fire goes out and the
metabolism slows. Maybe your friend would do better if she ate more
frequently - but smaller meals - and she could also add some fat  in
the form of good healthy oil - that adds points in a hurry.

Lynne
Highest Weight - 308
WW Start Weight this time around Dec 29/04 - 222.4
Weight this week - 218
Goal - 150 (Subject to change)
"Change doesn't happen while you're sitting around."

$$  If eating MORE caused weight loss we'd all be skeletons.  When one
leader told me to "eat more" I gained back 2 of the measly 5 lbs I had lost
in the proceeding 6 months.  No on loses weight by "eating more."  You can
be sure she wasn't keeping a real journal.  People lie.  10 pts a day?
That's barely 500/600 calories a day - anyone would lose on that unless they
were bedridden and unable to move at all.  Just to maintain life takes about
11 to 1200 calories a day.   She didn't eat more to lose the weight - she
finally started to keep a REAL journal.

$$ Of this person  wasn't losing weight on 600 to 700 calories a day she is
truly an anomaly!

- but she knows she has to eat all or nearly all her

$$  And what of those of us who ate the points and DID/DO NOT lose the
weight?   Look at those on this NG who don't lose or even GAIN on the
points.   Read all the posts.  I have to stick to the low end of my points
and walk 1 to 2 miles a day to lose anything at all.  At the high point
range I lose almost nothing.  I would have to live on the *&^%$#@ treadmill.
Another thing that I find hard to believe is any obese person being able to
stick to 10 pts a day.  Who could tolerate such hunger?  If they didn't
suffer hunger they would not be obese and on WW.

And lets forget the "starvation mode" BS.   Your metab' only slows so far
until you must consume fat to survive.  You can't live on water and air in
the absence of enough food.  It that were true no one lost in the woods for
a few weeks would be as skinny as they are when found.  Those unfortunates
in the concentration camps would not have looked like skeletons.....

I am one of these people, before ww I couldn't lose on 400 calories a day,
now don't get me wrong, no anorexia here, just wrote it down and that is
what I hate many days and wasn't hungry, then I could go 2 weeks and way
over eat on calories but the volume would be about the same,  I do struggle
with this but have learned that if I do not eat every point I will go into
starvation mode.  Now that I have been doing WW for 2 years I find that
eating is much easier, I have a several meal schedule to keep blood sugar in
order and the small volume in points and quantity at least most weeks keep
me from gaining and on occasion I even lose.  Understand, I consider a week
where there is no gain a complete and total victory, Lee