You had great answers here already, I'll just also add that it's possible to lose weight without cardio and HITT at all.

Especially as you are an beginner this process should be quite easy. Starting to work out is very often enough to lose weight alone and when you add a decent, healthy diet with slight calories deficit you can easily lose 10 pounds by cutting your calories a little bit - you won't even notice it to be honest if you have correctly calculated your total daily energy expenditure.

I agree with cherryjuice - getting on LCD is probably the best idea if you want to limit gaining additional pounds, but the question is - are you strong enough to cope with another fairly strict and demanding diet?

Personally, if I have struggled with lack of efforts and was functioning on such big calories deficit, I probably wouldn't be able to go through another restrictions for quite some time, but it's up to you. More work you'll put in now, less you will have to put in later.

Yes, I wish you all well as well, although don't be surprised if your hormones level will be below the norm.

After what you just did to your body, it will take some time to get them back to normal level.

Hi, MissBaine! Don't worry about it - you will get back on your feet soon enough. I would never recommend eating junk food as well, but you definitely should do that as I can see that you have worked extremely hard to achieve your goals and your efforts didn't bear fruit and I know exactly how frustrating that may be. On top of that, you have literally overtrained your body.

Being on such low calories with so much activity added for two months - that's just WOW. I really do admire you.

I personally don't know if I could make it. I would feel exhausted after even a week! I know your metabolism is very slow, so you probably didn't feel it as much as I would, but still - this is a little bit of an extreme situation. Let us know how many pounds you will gain and how determined and motivated to improve your body you will be after your fitness "holiday".

It will be hard to balance a diet with so many different products restricted. You can try consuming less proteins - for example 2.5g - 3.0g/pound and add some protein hydrolysate to your diet.

Your digestive system should react positively to that.

Well, maybe you should tell us what products you can consume? What are your health issues and why you can't eat those products mentioned above? To be honest, you can eat many different things for breakfast - it's up to you.

It is also possible, that the reason he doesn't want to work out with you is because he doesn't want to embarrass himself in front of you. Men are very sensitive about those kind of things.

For example when 100 pounds barbell will take his breath away and some handsome, young guy next to him will be easily lifting 300 pounds barbell, he will feel bad. Especially when he is around you, he will feel threatened this way - like he is not enough for you.

I know this sounds stupid, but men are very competitive and protective at the same time. When he doesn't work out at all, he can't embarrass himself and can't show his weaknesses to you.

What about you will let him attend the gym alone at first? He should feel more confident, when he is not around you and once he sees that there are many people like him - many overweight and out of shape guys, he will feel much better about himself. When it happens, expect him to ask you to come with him :)

Hey, lemonslover. I see you are pretty knowledgeable and you have already figured out most by yourself :) Very often, there is no point in changing things that work well, but I can see your reasons for curiosity.

Do you feel weak/exhausted day after your cheat day or does it occur at the end of the week only?

Well, I'm of the same opinion like cherryjuice. You can do better with steroids, but do you really need it? And also @greenprincess - steroids are mostly natural substances, that are synthesized in our bodies - just in much lower amount. Taking them like most users basically means increasing your hormones level by 5 to 15 times. It's all natural, but I understand your point.

I never used them either, but I'm happy with what I have and I don't have the aspirations to have the best body in the world and you can achieve basically everything you need without any use of steroids. We can compare it to driving newest Mercedes and newest Lamborghini. You can get all the pleasure you need from driving brand-new Mercedes, so do you really need to spend 7 times more money on newest Lamborghini?

The same thing is with steroids - do you really need to run full tests, spend money, risk your health - though if you know what you are doing, there is not much risk involved, just to get a better body, which won't really be noticed unless you get on the scene. It makes much bigger difference for men than for women!

Oh, I knew it will finally come to that. Firstly, steroids aren't bad or good - it's up to you how you use them. Secondly, I can't think of a reason why would you even consider taking steroids if you don't want to take part in Bikini Fitness and other similar events. hammlie has stated here, that using steroids is cheating. I don't see it as cheating - everyone is free to try them and can do them at their own risk, also every pro bodybuilder is ON and we know it. It is more rare among women, but all those women that are competing with each other are ON as well, so unless you won't to pursue similar goals, you shouldn't take them. You have thousands of different ways to improve your looks, strength, agility, stamina - whatever you ask for - there is no point in going for steroids even if you didn't make any progress for a year.

As for voice changes, clitoris enlargement, additional body hair - true those are the downsides of steroids, but you would have to be using them a lot for a longer period of time.

Exactly, I wouldn't call Fit_Bet an genetic freak, but well she is strong. She is much stronger than I was when I started out and I don't believe that every woman can pull of what Fit_Bet did in just a year, but I'm sure that any of you can get on the same level of strength if you try enough.

Wow, great story Fit_Bet! I have really enjoyed reading it. You have found a great place - as we are kind of different than most women attending gym. We love to give ourselves a proper work out and improve! I kind of love focusing on strength as well, it's always a great feeling to beat your recent record.

Hey! I hope you are well. I'm very happy for you - keeping this lifestyle and committing yourself to the gym for two years is really great achievement. Truth be told, not many people are able to stick with heavy work outs and diet for so long - but it's also not for everyone, right? You are already pretty advanced, I agree, trying Push/Pull routine may be a good idea if you feel that FBW is not enough for you anymore. I'm personally still running FBW, just doing lesser reps as I have my own goals to achieve now and personally FBW suits me the most, but not everyone can improve on this plan in the long-term, so you should definitely try Push and Pull. If you won't like it, you can always switch back.

Best advice I can give you is to keep trying new things, but not really changing those that work as well. If you don't feel like doing what you do, feel free to try something else! Learn to feel and know your own body - when you do this, there is no stopping you!

I think I know where your problem lies... I agree that low carbs diets are good for losing weight, but not for beginners that never worked out or have been on diet before! Especially with two cheat meals per week. Of course it depends on how big this cheat meal really is, but in most cases it is not recommended course to take until you have your metabolism rate on point. Try to think logically about this - by consuming fat and proteins instead of carbs you are changing your "hormones" levels - glucagon and insulin, so that they are in desperate need of supplying your body with carbohydrates and by providing two cheat meals per week you drastically increase those levels after they have already dropped to minimum.

The automatic response of your body is to store them, because for past few days you wasn't supplying them and your body, which is used to carbs is in desperate need of getting back something, that has been taken from it by force.

So, basically this is probably the cause - even if you eat less, there is a possibility that your body could have stored additional
carbs and your metabolism ratio slowed down again.

Truth be told, it is pretty rare to gain weight while on calories deficit, but we are all different and our bodies react very differently as well. You should start basic Carb Cycling diet which you can find on this forum, measure your legs, shoulders and waist and give it a go. Start from 2000-2200 kcal and slightly cut every two weeks.

Don't rush, just do so and observe - most common mistake among beginners is that they tend to overdo at the very start. Good luck!

We can't say much until you post your diet here to be honest. There may be a lot of causes, like cherryjuice has noted - slight things like water retention or digestion problems may be the cause. It has been only two weeks, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. You should post how much calories do you consume daily, what is your work out, how much did you eat before diet, how much activity do you have on average, your height and your age. All those things have a big impact on your metabolism rate. For most people it works to just use average bmi models that you can find on the internet, but we are all different so you may need more personal approach here. Waiting to hear from you :)