I've been in a stall for about a month, but its more complicated than that. I got down to 268 for about two days, then it shot back up. This happens pretty much every time I follow any type of eating plan. I get to around 270 and my body refuses to go below that weight for more than a day or two. I hover between 270-272. Its very frustrating. I would say I'm losing inches, but I'm not. My pants are actually tighter than when I started low carb 20 pounds ago.

Here's what I normally eat and what I've tried:
I started off in January eating about 2000 calories per day, with 70% fat, 25% protein and 5% carbs. All carbs come from salad vegetables or broccoli and cauliflower with tomatoes a few times per week (but never over 100 grams at a time).I lost 12 pounds in January.

This stopped working in early February, so I lowered my calories to about 1700 per day and lost 3 pounds in one week. Then nothing. And nothing. So I lowered my calories (keeping the same fat/protein/carb ratios as in January) to 1500 and still nothing. For a week after that I lowered my carbs to about 10 per day. Nothing. For the week after that I upped them to 30. Nothing. Then the last two weeks of February I did IF with a huge dinner in the evening and started exercising with 40 minutes of cardio and 50 minutes of strength training. I got down to 268 for my monthly weigh-in on March 3rd.

So I kept it up for this last week. My weight went back up 4 pounds. I know its not all muscle, because its physically impossible to gain more than a third pound of muscle in a week. I drink about 3/4 of a gallon of water per day. I would drink more but it makes me physically ill when I drink too much, even spread out over the day. I also recently cut out all my artificial sugars, even in ketchup and all the meat I eat is fresh, not processed.

Here's what I want to do, and I want to know if anyone has had any success with such a plan:
I'm going to stop all exercise until Monday and up my calories to over 2000 per day and raising my carb limit to 40 for the day. Then Monday, I'll drop it back down to between 15-20 and my calories back down to 1500 and reintroduce IF. I'm hoping this will get my body moving again.

The thing is, I've made a commitment to myself to do LC for one year, for better or for worse. This is my last effort before I look more seriously into weight loss surgery. I've been struggling with weight since I was about 3, and made serious attempts to lose weight since I was 8. I know I'm not going to lose it overnight, but my body has certain patterns that I can recognize readily (like not going below 270 for the last five years). I have had complete endocrine workups about six times since I got pregnant with my son almost 7 years ago, and they are all normal, and always in the middle of normal, not at either end where it would raise an eyebrow. I am not diabetic or prediabetic, I have no other health problems except hypertension that I take a beta-blocker for (Zebeta). Its just going to be so much harder to keep this commitment to myself if I can't see at least some improvement. I wouldn't care about the scale number if my pants weren't getting tighter by the day.

Please help!

Sorry to hear the scale won't budge.

Keep in mind you are preventing diabetes and improving your health in other ways aside from weight loss with LC. So that is why you stick to the diet. LC still has value.

At this point, since you have been so diligent about your eating, I would look into some supplements. Atkins recommended some in his book so read up on it. I use Alpha Lipoic Acid, Chromium GTF, L Carnitine and Inositol. (Not saying you should take these, just sharing.) Until I introduced those I was unable to lose weight.

I think it has to do with the degree of insulin resistance. I know mine is pretty bad and I have to really work to compensate for it.

I would also continue with exercise to improve your insulin sensitivity. Just 30 min a day. Or you could look at metabolic conditioning which tries to manipulate hormones with exercise to foster weight loss.

I know Taubes et al say exercise is useless but I have found it's not quite so simple. Sometimes exercise has really helped with the weight loss, others not so much.

There's also the meat and egg fast. You could try that for a few days.

F

I have found that completely going NO CARB for a few days works for me. They I slowly add back my veggies 1/2 cup a day until I am starting to see a slow down again. Also it might be time to go buy some Ketostix to make sure you are in ketosis. Once you are in ketosis and can stay there you know what your limits are.

No Carb:
Meat
Eggs
Fats only
NO Cheese, or nuts or veggies for at least 3 days.