Hi Malishka,

If you are losing an average of one pound per week then you are fine. The calorie goals given on here are only an option. The majority of the people will lose weight with the amount recommended, but some do need less. You will want to adjust your fat grams to be 30% of whatever amount of calories you are consuming. Unfortunately, you can't adjust your calorie goals on here just yet. This has been requested by many people and the people in charge of it are aware of it.

I do not believe in adding activity calories to your daily total. It can be dangerous to rely on that number and end up sabotaging your efforts. You can use your rate of weight loss to determine if you are consuming enough food. If you begin to lose more than 2 lbs per week you can adjust your calories.

Does this all make sense?

Betty Kovacs, MS, RD

Yes Betty, thanks.  That makes sense. 

I found that I could "edit" my plan to a 1200 calorie diet on the site and then just add in 110 calories a day quite easily.  I am getting good recipe ideas using the 1200 calorie plan.  

Adding fat back into my daily diet up to the 30% level has been a challenge for me.  I'm using "good" fats but because fat grams are more than double the calories per gram.  Not as much bang for the buck but I'll do it. 

By the way, I saw a bargain at the grocery store -- a pack of marked-for-quick-sale loin lamb chops. I saved up my calories and treated myself.  I didn't realize I was having 50g of fat at one meal!  Oops.  Luckily, no treatment incident but the absence of treatment effects could indicate that the Alli is not flushing the fat?  Is that scientifically possible?

 Hi everyone,

I have the same problem...reaching my fat grams of 12,,,,I understand we need to reach as close as possible....I do well in cals...not so good in fat most of the time....in the mornings I have added peanut butter to my breakfast...that helps.  If I have a sandwich, I add a slice of cheese now.  Dinner is prob the easiest to reach fat goal...

 Betty,  Help me out here.  I recently fell "off the wagon" and part of it was the frustration of not lossing weight consistently using Alli.  Are you saying that if you eat the calories portion and not the 30% fat portion you may not loose weight on Alli?  If so that may explain my frustration.  I can eat within the calorie range, but getting the fat in is tough. 

Melissa

 well this may explain why i've been taking alli for 2 wks, working out faithfully AND i've only lost 2 lbs.  i have written every single fat gram and calorie down and couldn't understand why i wasn't losing.  but i see that i'm only eating half of the required daily calories and fat grams. i have been pretty discouraged about the slow weight loss, so i will try harder to do this diet more in line with betty's posting. 

Hi Malishka,

No, it's not possible for alli to not be excreting the fat that you consumed. A treatment effect is not guaranteed to happen every time that you consume excess fat. You got lucky and the oil was excreted in your bowels instead of on it's own. Just because it didn't happen this time that doesn't mean that it won't the next time so try to stay under 20 grams in your meals. It really is so easy to go above that, isn't it?

I hope that you enjoyed the lamb chop!

Betty Kovacs, MS, RD

Yes Betty.  I did.  I so did.  I love lamb.  My grandmother used to eat it when she was elderly because she said it was easier to digest.  I find the same thing.  I have a harder time with beef these days. I also noticed that the dog food prescribed by the vet is lamb and rice.  But those loin lamb chops were surprisingly fatty. Funny, because they don't look as fatty as say a beef steak.

We're having a rotisseried leg of lamb for Easter dinner and leg appears to be leaner than the chops.  So I'll just have to add it up and make sure I'm under 20g of fat.  That's one dinner where I wouldn't even have to struggle to get my fat grams up.  Oh well.  At least I'm not crazy about Easter candy.

I look at it this way Betty.  If I live to my full life expectancy that Easter meal will be ONE out of 88,147 meals I'll have in my lifetime.  Big deal.  I can't sacrifice on a few of those meals for the sake of my health?  How obsessed we've all become with food.  It's crazy.

Happy Holidays to you Betty.

 ok, honestly this is what makes me want to just throw up my hands and quit allready. This is too complicated. can I just go by the calories and fat grams in the book??? If I just consume around my target cal and fat is it going to work or not.

Hi Dnsrn,

This post was meant to help explain things in more detail so I'm sorry if it confused you. It sounds like you don't need any additional information. You can lose weight by sticking with your target calories and fat grams and using the book.

Good luck,

Betty Kovacs, MS, RD

 Hi everyone.  I have been taking Alli for about 3 months, but not sticking to the 1,800 cl or the 19g of fat per meal...so it is my fault that it has not worked for me.  I am starting over again this week.  I find that I have problems keeping track after I get home from work.  So that may be where I am messing up, too.  I can use all the advice that anyone can give me.

I need Help!! I have been on Alli for about two weeks. I am losing weight just fine but I am not meeting the daily calorie/fat intake. The Alli website says I am supposed to eat 1600/54 a day and I eat 1200/25 give or take a few. Now I am rarely hungry in between meals and I eat a good amount of food when I do eat just not a lot of fatty foods. I am worried that as I continue on alli I will start to see a slow down of weight loss because of the fat intake. I dont know what to do to eat more without eating so much I get sick. I am not sure if the amount of fat I eat is ok or not and If it even matters!! I am 5'1 and I weight 162!!

SW: 175

CW: 162

GW: 130

i too switched from fatty foods to low fat or no fat

I find myself having this same problem.  I don't feel like I am depriving myself, and very seldom feel hungry,  but I can't seem to eat more than about 800-950 calories a day, and only about 20 grms of fat for the whole day, and most times it's less.   What to do?

Hi Barbaraput,

Once you reach your recommended amount of fat you can reach your calorie recommendations. Here are some healthy sources of fat:

Flaxseeds: 1 Tbsp has 37 calories and 3 grams of fat - you can sprinkle this on your salad, yogurt, cereal, oatmeal, and rice.

English Walnut halves: 14 halves (1 oz) has 185 calories and 18.5 grams of fat- you can have them on the side with your meal or add them to your food (salad, yogurt, cereals)

Almonds: 23 whole kernels (1 oz) have 164 calories and 14.4 grams of fat - you can have them on the side with your meal or add them to your food (salad, yogurt, cereals)

Avocado: ½ cup sliced has 117 calories and 10.7 grams of fat - you can use this in place of mayonnaise on sandwiches or add it to your salad. Here are more ideas http://www.avocado.org/.

Salmon: 3 oz has 175 calories and 10.5 grams of fat

Black Olives: 1 oz black olives has 66 calories and 5.7 grams of fat

Green Olives: 1 oz green olives has 41 calories and 4.4 grams of fat

Mackerel: 3 oz has 223 calories and 15.1 grams of fat

The nutrition information is from Calorie King.

Give that a try and let me know how it goes,

Betty Kovacs, MS, RD

 I'm new and confused.  I thought the main thing was to not go over the calories and fat grams for my goal.  My goal is 1600 calories and 54 fat grams but I am averaging around 1100 calories and 30-34 fat grams, I thought I was doing good since I'm not going over, but is too little bad also?  Am I suppose to try to eat enough to get in more calories and fat grams?  I'm not doing less on purpose it's just working out that way, by not eating the bad things "Chocolate" I usually eat.  I thought I was doing great and would start really losing weight.  I've ionly been doing Alli since Friday so I haven't weiged or checked in yet...too soon.  But I really want to do this right and lose weight.

Thanks,

Tammy