Good advice. Also, Lauri--you do have to consider that you've already successfully lost a lot more weight than what you're trying to lose. Being at a reduced body weight will make things slow down, for most people. Dr. Fung's protocols can probably help with that, but I don't know if they can remove it completely. I know myself, within a fairly narrow weight range--if I'm at 170 pounds, fasting for a day is easy, but if I'm down around 154 pounds--then I'm more likely to be lethargic, maybe cold, probably hungry, and also more prone to binges coming out of a fast. In myself, at least when it comes to weight regulation, I've come to the conclusion that the leaner I am, the less aggressive my fasts should be. Admittedly I don't always follow my own understanding.

If you look at calorie restriction approaches to weight loss--you can find any number of blog posts where some personal trainer/fitness guru will tell you that as you lose weight, your metabolism slows--and then they'll tell you to recalculate your metabolic rate, and restrict your calories more and more strictly, until you reach goal. This is a reasonable approach for a bodybuilder in his twenties, on steroids, who needs to get down to five or six percent bodyfat to compete. Except for the part about it being reasonable.

The major problem here of course, is that becoming more and more aggressive as you become lighter might be effective for further weight loss--but maybe you're just coiling the springs of the body's hormonal etc. machinery that drives rebound, once you return to a more moderate approach. The argument against the idea of starvation mode I see most often put forward is that no matter how slow the metabolism gets, you can always undereat to a point below what the body's capable of lowering its metabolism to. True enough--but also very true that at some point, the trade off just isn't worth it. I think low carb and intermittent fasting do push the envelope--the lower insulin levels allowing readier access, perhaps, and use of fat for energy at a lower level of body fat stores, but I don't think that's an immunity as such, all it takes is a couple of days of SAD meals and you're liable to feel as deprived as you would have if you'd lost the weight through white-knuckled calorie restriction.