As part of my long-term Maintenance of a large weight-loss (currently 12+ years ), I do a lot of personal experimenting with various dieting issues. 

My experiment this summer from Memorial Day to Labor Day was to see how my own body’s weight results compared with the Body Weight Planner’s (BWP) projected calculations;

... while making a consistent and hard-core effort to drop my current weight lower in my Maintenance Weight Range (back below the 25 BMI border between “normal” and “overweight”).

The Overview pictured above shows my personal data input and the program’s projections for weight-loss. I’m age 72, going on 73, so I listed my age as 73.  I used the lowest percentage that the program will allow for my Physical Activity Level.

Based on my personal numbers, the program gave me an 1151 maintenance calorie burn. It projected that if I ate 900 calories per day for the 98 days between Memorial Day and Labor Day, I would lose from 133.2 pounds down to 126.0 pounds.  This would be a loss of 7.2 pounds over a 14 week period, averaging about ½ pound loss per week.

Note that the  program projects that at the end of the 98 days, in order to maintain a 126.0 pound weight, my calorie burn would be 1121, which is an ongoing 30 calorie reduction. 

This Simulation Graph shows that Increasing my calories from 900 for weight-loss to 1121 for maintenance would cause a weight UpBounce of 1.5 pounds over a 6 day period (98 days of dieting, + 6 days of maintenance = 104 days). 

Therefore my projected final ongoing weight result would be 127.5, which would bring me back just inside my “normal” BMI range.


Many years of keeping ongoing records of my weights and calorie counts have taught me that my personal metabolism burn is Lower than the Average rate predicted by Metabolic Formulas, so my personal diet plan for this experiment was to work to keep my daily calorie intake below 700 calories.