South Beach

Question
Melissa
 I am on South Beach Diet, Phase one, I lost nine and a half pounds in 18 days and then lost nothing in nine days.
Any suggstions?
  I am 56 male 5' 9" 205 lbs. have high blood pressure and
high colesterol, blood sugar is good, I exersice moderatly,
walking and weight lifting.
                                   thanks
                                    Bob

Answer
Bob,
There's lots of different reasons for that. If you're certain that your calorie intake is less than output, and you're following the South Beach principles, then a nine-day plateau is nothing to worry about. After about four weeks of no weight loss, then it's time to figure out what you're doing wrong.
Here's two quick recommendations for you.
1. Get a body fat scale. You should be able to find one for about $60-$70. Before you try it, though, you need to know that these scales are easily confused by water retention. You need to drink 10-12 glasses of water and eat very little salt for 24 hours. Measure your body fat first thing the next morning after going to the bathroom. You'll want to check your body fat every four to six weeks. If your weight is staying the same, but your fat is dropping, then you're simply building muscle.
2. Count calories. There's two methods-pencil, paper, calculator, and calorie counting book ($5 in any drugstore) or online. There's two free counters that I recommend. www.fitday.com is a bare-bones calculator that's easy to use and requires very little setup. www.sparkpeople.com is a huge online community with message boards, motivational articles, etc that takes a bit of setting up.

Your goal weight for cardiovascular health is 186 pounds.
You should be eating between 1278 and 1778 calories a day on days when you do not exercise.  On days when you do exercise, add the number of calories burned to your calorie allowance. If you walked for 30 minutes, then you would have burned about 180 calories, and you should eat at least 1458 calories that day.

Basically, though, stick with South Beach the best you can. In your situation (an active man with high cholesterol) it really is the best diet for you. Stay on it for six months and you can really shock your doctor with your new cholesterol numbers.
Good luck!
Melissa

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