The Weight Management dietetic practice group of the American Dietetic Association specializes in working with weight control. You can find a dietitian at the American Dietetic Association. Include your zip code or city / state and the type of service you want (individual consultation) with expertise in childhood obesity, healthy eating / meal planning, metabolic measurements or weight control.

Both 30 and 55 grams of carbohydrate per day are less than the minimum 130 grams necessary to prevent loss of lean tissue (muscles and organs). I would not recommend either for weight loss as you are likely to regain this weight once you stop dieting. Read the questions and answers below for more information.

Good thing you take a multivitamin vitamin as it is impossible for women to meet the RDA on less than 1600 calories per day. But why take additional potassium or Vitamin C? Read my Potassium
and Vitamin C
nutrition topics. If you have normally functioning kidneys, you probably have very yellow urine from these two supplements.

Insulin resistance occurs when fat cells are full and more insulin is necessary to enter a cell to metabolize glucose (blood sugar) into energy (calories). As little as a 10% weight loss does improve insulin resistance, lower blood glucose and lower blood insulin levels. Type II diabetics often have insulin resistance and this is reflected in their higher blood sugar. Often they have higher blood insulin levels even without taking insulin shots. What makes you think you have insulin resistance? Do you have high blood sugar? If so, you should be treated for diabetes.

You don't explain why you have trouble with 1200-calorie diets in particular carbohydrates.

Yes, I have heard of blue green algae. It is not the silver bullet for weight loss that you are looking for. Would suggest you talk to a Registered Dietitian who could help you plan a healthy weight loss / exercise program for life. It takes a lower calorie intake, exercise and writing down everything you eat to successfully lose weight according to current research.

Yes the concerns are similar when restricting carbohydrates whether or not you have unlimited protein or even fat in your diet.

Your wife is in ketosis because of restricting carbohydrates. Your body can scavenge from dietary protein and fat to supply glucose. But the hoops your body has to jump through to do that requires more effort than depleting your body's stores of glycogen. Glycogen is converted to glucose rather easily. The problem is when you've depleted your stores of glycogen (stored glucose in muscle and lean tissue) your body turns to burning muscles or organs (lean muscle tissue) and dietary protein or fat to provide blood glucose to supply energy needs. When this happens, your basal metabolic rate drops because you have less lean muscle tissue burning calories and your body thinks its starving and cuts back on energy requirements. The human body's genetic material is 12 million years old and still thinks in terms of feast or famine.

A 25+-year-old female needs 50 grams of protein per day. Protein is used to build and repair lean muscle tissue. This would not provide enough glucose to prevent ketosis. A diet of 500 grams of protein per day would be equal to 71.4 ounces (4.5 pounds) of meat, fish or poultry. Do you really think you wife can eat that much? (Did you mean 50 grams?) Also, since most sources of protein also have fat, I would guess that a diet that included 500 grams of protein would also inherently contain at least 214 grams of fat. (One ounce of lean meat, fish or poultry has 7 grams of protein and 3 grams of fat.) A diet high in protein usually turns off the appetite (as do the ketones being produced) and puts a strain on the kidneys. Proteins are large molecules and you blood is constantly filtered by your kidneys.

Twenty grams of carbohydrate is only 80 calories. If the remaining calories are protein and fat, she could be eating 35 ounces (2.2 pounds) of lean meat. Could this be possible?

I would bet that a lot of the weight your wife has lost is water because each gram of glycogen in muscles and lean tissue holds 3 grams of water. When you deplete glycogen, you lose water. Muscles and lean tissue are 70% water; fat is only 15% water. Usually these low carbohydrate diets encourage 8 glasses of water per day. This is to help flush the ketones out of the body through the kidneys and to prevent dehydration. One method of determining if you are dehydrated is to grab a pinch of skin on the back of your hand and let go. If you skin snaps back flat, you probably are not dehydrated. Also, look at the color of your urine. During the day it should be colorless and odorless unless you take Vitamin C supplements which will turn your urine yellow.

Look at a ten pounds box of butter. Does you wife think she has lost that much fat in two weeks? Probably not.

What is your wife going to eat when she goes off her low carbohydrate diet? When she starts to eat a low fat diet, she will experience weight gain just due to re-hydration. A weight loss program that is more like her normal eating habits with fewer calories and less fat with a regular exercise program has been shown to be the most successful to keeping weight off long term.