ate more, lost weight!

Well, what I have read so many times in the forums is true! I (5'7")went from 130 to 129 this morning, finally! I've been at 130 for a few weeks now and was getting discouraged. This week I've been staying under 1250 cals and I took long walks and exercised a couple times at home with pilates/ballet DVD, and the scale didn't move. Last night I had a huge slice of veggie pizza, 2 red vines, and 2 creme sandwich cookies, and I lost a pound! Maybe I will do this Zig Zag with the calories and see if it works better than starving everyday. I've gone down from 145 pounds and my goal is 120, for now. 

It's true that more is sometimes better. I was averaging 1200 cals/day for 8 weeks and lost a total of 11 pounds. Then I was stuck at 159 for three weeks. I increased my cals to an avg of 1500/day and on the fourth week had dropped down...5.5 lbs to 153.5

I think you have to keep the body guessing...

Worked for me too, twice! I hadn't lost anything in a month eating around 1600 calories (5'11" 160) and since I was close to my goal (155-150) decided to maintain for a while. I increased my calories to 1800-2000 and lost 5lbs over the next couple of weeks.

I continued my attempts to maintain at about 2000 for a month and eventually lost 2 more pounds.

The month following my attempts to maintain I decided to try losing the last few pounds. I decreased my intake back to about 1600 and got stuck again for another month. So the other day I increased my intake again to 1800 for a couple days and lost another pound.

It's still hard for me to fathom, seeing how most people are down to 1200-1300 calories to lose, but I think for weight loss I need to be between 1700-1800. To maintain I'm probably somewhere around 2200-2300. I'll lose slowly being so close to my maintenance, but it's still faster for me than decreasing it more than that (and I have more energy and am not as hungry!).

By the way, I still eat healthy (balanced diet, low sodium and low added sugar) and workout.

Congratulations! And happy to hear someone else has had success with this. I worry about people eating too little.

Thats great to hear! I hope it works for me too! Went to a state fair today for labour and ate at maintaince level for my daily calories burns. However, I did walk around the fair grounds, going on rides for 5 hours, so that has to burn some calories, right?? LOL, its just one day and I had fun, so it doesnt matter! Who knows, it might be good for my mestabolism.

There have actually been studies that show that the "zig-zag" method as you call it can be quite effective :) I mix it up and sometimes I eat about 1800 calories a day and then the next day 1300. It seems to work so I continue to do it!