... to tell you that diets don't work for everyone

[Wroxie]

Today is my 9 month anniversary of tracking every bite of food that's gone into my mouth, with the exception noted below:

My birthday (one day in which I had, as I remember, pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast, no lunch, and fish and chips + a couple of donuts for dinner).

And that's it. I don't drink alcohol. No takeaways. No restaurants. Nothing that I didn't weigh, portion, and track faithfully. Even when I bake or make something from a recipe, every ingredient is weighed and the calories per serving calculated. I skip breakfast during the week and have normal, healthy food and smallish portions for lunch and dinner.

I eat, on average, 1,100 calories per day. I have a desk job but I walk for 30 minutes to an hour nearly every day.

Before this, my diet was pretty bad - takeaways 3-4 times per week, pastries for breakfast, sandwich with crisps and chocolate at lunch, biscuits whenever I felt like it- probably more than 2,500 calories most days (I'm 5'3" so that is A LOT).

And now, nine months later, I have gone from 13 stone to 12.3 stone. That's a grand total of ten pounds lost on an extremely restricted diet- and it was all within the first two months.

Please don't give me diet advice - no, I'm not in 'starvation mode' (because that's a complete myth). No, I don't need to 'cut carbs'. Seriously, I do not want your advice. What I want is to point out that, the next time you're tempted to say something asinine like 'it's just about calories in vs calories out' or to dismiss or vilify or judge someone based on their weight, to realise that the human body is not a two-stroke lawnmower engine and weight, food, activity, hormones, age, genes, and a million other factors are at play. Losing weight isn't simple and even with all the willpower in the world - which I have demonstrated - it isn't always possible.

I'm not giving up. I have gotten used to eating this way and I actually feel like my blood sugar is more regulated (no 'sinking feeling' a few hours after eating a big lunch, for example) and I know that as I get older, it will be better to, at the very least, not get any fatter. That, at least, I can probably do. But nothing short of eating less than 1000 calories per day or surgery or medication are going to get me to a 'normal' BMI.

Roller skating? Cycling? Swimming?

[quote namochangoro]**@SchrodingersImmigrant, speed walking with weighted rucksack?[/quote]
That's what I am doing all the time. But.
I AM the rucksack 😂😂😂

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoy HIIT sessions. I have sshort attention span so that works for me really well. 40 sec is just about the top level I can concentrate 😂

No worries, @Eckhart.

There you go @SchrodingersImmigrant

We speak about animals' diets too - some of this is semantics. When I think of 'diet' I just think of it as the descriptive term for what someone / an animal consumes. Others think of 'diet' as restrictive rules for consumption. My diet is generally balanced and health. I'm not 'on' a diet. These semantics mean some of the things discussed on this thread are not like for like, so a comparative discussion isn't always possible.

Totally agree - I have pcos and can restrict to really small calorie figures, IF 16:8 and still bounce around the same 2lbs. Most frustrating thing ever, particularly when a 'well meaning' doctor tells you how easy it is to switch from white bread to wholemeal, semi skimmed milk to skimmed and butter to Marge (as if I have eaten any of the 'bad' stuff in the last decade!)

what do you want any of us to say in order to lose weight burn more calories than you take in its that straight forward. id advise yo to do some exercise as thats what makes you healthy

@Eckhart I was always a breakfast person. Since the first lockdown I started skipping it in order to lower my calories and fast. Now I don't get hungry until about 11am, used to wake up hungry!
The difficulty I find is I can't exercise, so move more doesn't apply as can't even go for a walk it's coming off but very slowly, 18lbs in 3 and a bit months

For the vast majority of fat people diets do work. Most people's bodies don't defy biology. If I said I was under the legal driving limit after drinking a litre of whisky I'm sure people wouldn't believe me. Perhaps you are pre-diabetic or something.

and fat people don't have less willpower than other people

Just catching up on the thread...

The above is quite simply untrue IMHO. When I worked in an office, the fat women were always on some or other soup diet and would say they were 'being good'. However,. when the cakes came out it was always "oh, it'd be rude not too".

Quite clearly they became fat through having no willpower.

Sounds like 1100 is only slightly below your maintenance calories so your weight loss is super slow. You'd have to drop to 800ish which 8s obviously hard because you will be so hungry.

I would recommend exercise. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Nonsense. Losing weight is ALWAYS possible unless medical issues

So you just need to realise just monitoring your calories is not working for you and try something else. Stubbornly continueing with something your body dissagrees with is just silly.

No calorie restricted diets don't work for everyone and don't often work in the long term but other 'diets' (eg the food we eat) do have an impact.

People accept that the low fat, calories in vs calories out is the right and sensible choice but there are other ways of eating that work as well if not better.

I do restrict my carb intake because your body doesnt get anything from carbs that it can't get elsewhere. I eat 'cleanly' so avoid processed/industrialised food and only eat full fat versions of everything. I've lost 2 stone without even trying. I'm never hungry and dont feel I'm missing out. My sleep is better, my skin is better and I feel better generally.

Sounds about right to me. With little exercise 1100 calories is my maintenance food budget. To lose I need to eat 900-1000 calories and walk a lot. That's not the diet mot working, that's believing the myth that all women need 2,000 calories a day.

And yes, your body adjusts to a low calorie diet which means it doesnt work in a nice simple way.

Read the obesity code. It explains a lot.

I stopped losing weight on 1000-1100 a day and I was constantly hungry.

I cut down my carb intake. I now eat around 1700 calories a day and the weight just fell off. I eat more now than I have done in years. Still losing.

I agree OP.
The only thing that works for me is gallstones. And I wouldn't recommend that
Even so.... I'm now on a more restrictive diet than when I was dieting and weightloss has slowed.

Why are you ‘controlling’ anything @Eckhart?

Controlling, moderating. Those are basically synonyms.

If someone needs to lose weight, that does almost always involve some element of not eating everything you want, whether that’s moderating portion size, giving something up totally or swapping for a healthier option or totally new way of eating. Once you’re at a healthy weight and you’ve changed the way you’re eating it’s much easier to do that without thinking so much.

Sometimes you really do have to control what goes into your body though. Without weighing my carbs, I put weight on. I probably eat a smaller portion than I otherwise would but I make up for it with vegetables etc. I can’t have crisps in the house. I just eat them. I enjoy them as a rare treat when I’m in a coffee shop.

@GurpsAgain

I would recommend exercise. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Exactly. Sticking to diet with no change if it doesn't work is like leaving at 7:45 every day for a bus at 7:47, missing it and then be pissed off. Leave early.

Same with diet.
Change your exercise. Zigzag calories (I love that tbh). Try something else. Anything.

I still strongly believe that if OP worked out and built a bit of a muscle, the weight would go even on more calories.

Zigzag calories? What d'you mean?

@Eckhart

Zigzag calories? What d'you mean?

Zogzaging (apparently that's what it's called I found last week😂) Not same amount every day. Let's say I need 1600 to lose weight. What I did from the beginning was to shave off each day and out it on top of one to have a "free day". Later I started watching my eating patterns. It's not natural to eat the same amount every single day. So you juggle them around. There is one day when I always eat just about 600-800. It's a day I am just not hungry. But then there is a day when I am hungry and wanted more. As I have same weekly pattern, my hungry pattern is approx the same. Example week (random numbers) 1400, 1300, 1700, 1200, 800, 3000, 1200 It just has to equal weekly to what you need.

None of this stuff is simple. That’s the issue. If ‘just cutting calories’ worked everyone who ever went on a diet would be slim.

Generally what happens is it works initially, then it stops working, then people give up, slide back into previous habits and the weight goes back on plus extra as your metabolism is now running at your lower TDEE rate.

That’s why making a few lifestyle is really the only thing that’s going to have a long term impact. For me it’s low carb, for someone else it will be running, someone else might decide to ditch alcohol long term and that will be the thing that makes the difference.

then people give up, slide back into previous habits and the weight goes back

Lots of people don't realise taht they cannoy go back to their old habits. Logically what made you fat before, will make you fat again, but lots of people miss that bit.

But yes, everyone needs doing things bit differently.

If you are overweight, then dieting doesn't damage your metabolism or TDEE. Being slimmer reduces your TDEE because you need less energy to maintain your new lower weight. That's not damage.