switching from low carb to low calorie diet

Instead of diets, how about just eating healthy?
1200 calories would be barely a sustinence (sp) level of carbs, without the workouts.
If you are going to SBR, then you'll probably want to be doing somewhere around 2K calories or even more, depending on your frequency and intensity of workouts, and still lose weight.

A few things:

I recommend you read "The ABS diet" for the eating and nutritional education. Doing the workouts is optional, if you continue to SBR.

Second, its going to be awhile before you hit the right number of calories. Its going to be trail and error. Keep a written record.

Don't judge your success by weight loss only. Measure it in inches. Your upper arms, chest, hips, waist, thighs. Keep a written record of those measurements, cause its more than likely you may be losing the fat but gaining muscle, and not losing weight.

Its possible you may be plateuing now because of too few calories (burning muscle instead of fat), or you need to change your routine (add intensity, do some calisthetics, etc). Or you may have let your calories creep up and/or your body has adjusted to your workouts and you now have too many calories. It's possible you simply need more calories to start losing weight again.

I did the atkins a few years ago, and it worked, all I did was walk for exercise. However, it was too easy to fall off the wagon, and long term, it's not healthy enough for a triathlete. 

So eat healthy and take the time to figure out your ideal calorie intake.

I dont think its a good way to go personally. Low calorie diets will restrict your ability to train well, potentially making recovery from exercise sessions more difficult and meaning you may well suffer low energy and hence quality, in your future workouts.

Another draw back is that when suddenly faced with a drastic reduction in calories, your body goes into emergency mode and will try and sore everything it can, which is counter productive to your aims. In times of really low caloire consumption your body will also likely cannibalise lean muscle tissue in its recovery from your activity, which again is not what you want.

I eat low GI, which means I end up consuming less calories from carbs as the most calorie dense stuff like pasta, potatoes etc dont really figure in my diet. I consume large quantities of fresh fruit and veg constantly though, and have a very nutrient dense diet that maintains high energy levels and allows me to eat a lot of food and have plenty of energy for each session. Maybe try switching a few foods to lower GI versions or using different exercise types for a few weeks to kick-start the system again? Keep going with a slight imbalance in calorie intake and make sure you still eat a healthy balance of nutrients and sufficient calories.

That.  1200 Calories!?  NFW!

Congrats on the weightloss...

I had a similar plateau.  I preface this statement by saying I'm not a nutritionist, just sharing stuff I read during my plateau.

When training for endurnace type sports the body will initial shed weight.  I did obviously you did.  Not to be overly technical but during endurance sports your primary fuel during exercise is fat which sounds great.  But you just lost a bunch of fat and increased your need for fat because of your new activity so you body is gonna try to make a stand and hold onto what you have.  If you lower you caloric intake you'll just become a more effiect fat storer.  Just my opinion based on my personal research. 

My advice is to kick the diet and start eating the stuff you should eat.  In the proper amounts you should be eating them  in.  Diets stop and start, if you wanna be fit you gotta figure out what you can do all the time, not what you'll do to drop 10 lbs next month.  I needed help with that... I kinda knew what to eat, or what I shouldn't eat, but had no idea how much and when...  I read a book called "burn the fat feed the muscle",  had alot of good info.  It helped me figure out what my numbers should be, and I was surprised how much more I was allowed to eat.  I was down to 1100 cals a day and 2 workout sessions per day.  I started losing weight when I ate clean food and right around 2100 cals.

I believe, and again opinion, your weightloss from here on out will be at the mercy of your metabolism.  Mine is anyway.  So I have to do the things that drive the metabolism and the biggest change I made was limiting the amount of endurance training I was doing and adding strength training.  That I'm sure sounds counter-productive, especially since were all here for triathlons.  For me, its my offseason, so I'm focusing on adding lean muscle and boosting my metabolism, hopefully dropping to a weight I wanna compete at and then getting back to the endurance.  Don't get me wrong I'm still running biking and swiming (1 day each ) I'm just not doing the longer distances and I'm doing more high intensity intervals with those activities, for now.

If your looking to shake things up to get off the plateau my biggest 2 changes were eating clean ( the proper amout) and making strength training  my primary focus,   both aim'd at boosting the metabolism...

Congrats on your current success and goodluck

Good advice from the post above mine re: eating clean. 
I gotta tell you...  I weigh less than half of what you do and know from personal experience that I don't function very well on 1200 calories a day if I am doing anything more than sitting on the couch.  The recommendation for 1200 calories is for a petite woman (like me) with low activity levels (not me).  This number exists because it's the lowest amount of calories that will still give you your RDA of nutrients  (well, actually - this applies to women only as the baseline recommendation for men is 1500 calories).  And that assumes that you are eating healthy foods to begin with.  So, no... I don't think that's a healthy approach for you at all. 

I'm sorry but I can't answer the rest of this post without sounding snarky.  It's all coming out wrong, but I just get so frustrated when people focus on pounds lost and completely forget about nutrition.  Losing and maintaining that weight loss is not something that results from just eating less Wendy's.  Trust me.

Edited by DMW 2009-12-11 2:10 PM

OK gang, decided to stay on low carb for a while, Thanks for the thoughts, but I feel I have to continue to diet to continue getting the weight off. It is helping me get better at running and riding, and I do feel so much better. I was down to 255 this morning.

If you think that the diet thing is not good, try running at 328 pounds, it will not take long to understand why it has to come off. 

There is a difference between carbs and junk food. They generally mean healthy carbs, whole grains, fruit and veggies, oatmeal, etc. I am trying to get my nutrition in check but I know my body wants/needs carbs so I am trying to work some of the principals of paleo and other athlete oriented into my nutrition plan. I don't like diets but I rather want to find a healthy nutrition program that fits me so I can stick to it.

I just started reading Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald last night. It's a new book on nutrition for endurance athletes. While I'm hardly in that category I figured it's good advice and maybe if I follow the principals I will eventually get closer to my ideal weight, though I have quite a ways to go.

http://www.amazon.com/Racing-Weight-Lean-Peak-Performance/dp/193403...

Get The Paleo Diet for Athletes.

Good book. It gives you carbs, but in fruits and veggies. Focuses on 60% carbs/20% fat/20% protein (or a variation of that).

If you did low carb this way of eating will probably speak to you.

I personally do not believe that someone can be an endurance athlete and eat low carbs. But the carbs needs to come from healthy sources... not high glycemic sources.

I really think that may be what I am looking for. I want a different variation of the diet as not to stay in Ketosis and letting my body basically starve itself to death. I don't have any issues with the low carb diet, if I get extremely hungry, I just eat. I will try to get a hand on the book and read it. I am still losing weight, but was thinking long term with my new found love for training and after my weight loss curtails, I just didn't know how to eat healthy. I feel that with continued training and diet, this will be a joyous journey for me.

I was wanting to go for the fruit and some vegatables and cut out the snacks instead. Dieting can be complicated with the good/ bad carbs, sugars, etc. I just want to be healthy.