Hi JustAGuy,
Mate, if you were an Okinawan your weight would be perfect BMI 20.3, these guys retain this BMI from adult hood until death, often well over age 100 years Reference ;
http://www.okicent.org/Incidently the worlds oldest woman is an Okinawan ( Kama Chinen ) and she will turn 115 on April 6th this year and the oldest man is from mainland Japan (Tomoji Tanabe)
http://seniors-health-medicare.suite101.co...an_in_the_worldThese people would never have heard of, let alone taken a protein shake. These skinny well nourished, active people have 34.5 people out of every 100,000 living beyond 100 years in near perfect health America with the best health system in the world, coupled of course with the Standard American Diet (SAD diet) only producing 5-10 people living beyond 100 years per 100,000 people. Okinawan's only have 2.4 years of debilitation at the end while Americans have 7.6 years, and they have lower rates of all aging diseases.
You know you can always back off a little on your exercise program so the energy will go into weight instead of activity if you really wanted to. Fruit and vegetables are lightweights in terms of energy content per gramme so you could eat a little more from your middleweights such as fish/ chicken.
Your comment "Known to be reducing sodium level too far." concerns me, is it the potassium to sodium ratio that is getting out of whack, you could try a bit of miso soup to increase your sodium level, and if you stir fry you could even flavour food with miso or soy sauce to increase sodium a bit, personally I would prefer potassium high and sodium low, less elevated blood pressure and strokes that way.
You sound like you have developed irritable bowel syndrome from what you have described here, did you build up to this diet or just go cold turkey, in which case it maybe a response to the extra fibre in the diet, you can try slippery elm to put a mucus barrier on your bowel wall to see if this will fix it.
QUOTE(JustAGuy @ Oct 22 2009, 04:46 PM)

What if there was a person who lost a lot of weight in a short period and as part of that developed some eating habits that might be good or bad. What if he was concerned that even though he is not gaining weight, he does not always feel good.
Lots of vegies, lots of fruit, some fish, not many calories/day.
Breakfast = Danon 80 cal yogurt + an apple and sometimes another fruit
Lunch = 2 cups spring mix salad, 1 cup frozen vegies, one portion of fish (100 cal), another apple or other fruit like plumb
Dinner = sometimes repeat of lunch some times small servings of variety of foods like pasta, fish, chicken, etc. When going out, smaller portions of what ever is served.
Desert = very rare
Beverage = Lots of coffee, some tea, lots of soda. Known to be reducing sodium level too far.
Between 800 - 1200 cal/day
Middle aged, 160 lbs, 6'2.5"
What can he do? What should he do?
Should add, fair amount of isometric exercise, 330 push ups 3/week, 250 stomach crunches 6/week, 350 calf extensions 6/week, 2 - 3 miles walk 3/week.
Cheers and let us know how it turns out.