... 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.

@justanotherneighinparadise

Those supplements are interesting *@MuddledMiddlebrow*. Do you know how they help?

Berberine is extracted from plants and can help reduce blood sugar, akin to the treatments for diabetes. So it supports the body in effectively processing carbohydrates.

Inositol is one of the non-essential b vitamins and it can improve the transmission of signals around the body so it can prompt better responses to carbohydrates when consumed so they are more effectively dealt with.

I'm not usually one for taking supplements (I think Michael mosely said that vitamins etc by tablet made expensive pee!) But I can genuinely say I have noticed a difference between when I take them and when I don't.

I think the idea though, @andtheHossyourodeinon, is for people to lose weight healthily. The people in the concentration camps, even, will have lost weight at different rates, and with different chemical processes occurring in their bodies at different times during the starvation process. Yes, they all starved, but it's not really a comparable situation with people who are trying to eat healthily whilst losing some fat. Very very different set of challenges and objectives, as I'm sure your grandmother would agree. In fact, she and other concentration camp survivors/victims families may find your comparison offensive.

@andtheHossyourodeinon

Calories in v. Calories out may be basic science if you function normally. But 'normal' and 'average' are just the middle ground. Not everyone is or does work the same way due to many factors

My grandmother survived a concentration camp. Its funny, but everyone did in fact function the same way, literally every person was extremely thin. There were no people who simply didn't lose weight no matter how little they ate. There weren't overweight people whose super special relationships with food/fat/insulin/carbs etc meant that they didn't lose weight the same as everyone else on starvation rations.
Odd that its only people with access to endless food that are ever overweight, isn't it?

There's a difference between malnutrition and being a healthy and a healthy weight and not overweight. I'm sure if I never ate again I'd be skinny, but eating at 'weight loss calories' makes so difference if you eat things that cause a problematic hormone response in your body which cause you stay fat?

It sounds to me that those people who are on what amount to starvation diets are often (not always) sedentary and I suspect have little muscle mass. If you want to be more in control of your weight not to mention stave off much of the bad aspects of aging you are going to have to hit the weights/resistance exercise.

I'm 41 and am aware of this as someone who needs to lift at least 3 times a week to keep maintaining muscle mass.

@andtheHossyourodeinon

Calories in v. Calories out may be basic science if you function normally. But 'normal' and 'average' are just the middle ground. Not everyone is or does work the same way due to many factors

My grandmother survived a concentration camp. Its funny, but everyone did in fact function the same way, literally every person was extremely thin. There were no people who simply didn't lose weight no matter how little they ate. There weren't overweight people whose super special relationships with food/fat/insulin/carbs etc meant that they didn't lose weight the same as everyone else on starvation rations.
Odd that its only people with access to endless food that are ever overweight, isn't it?

I can see where you’re going with this but I do think you’re conflating the effects of prolonged starvation with people trying to become leaner whilst still consuming as much food as they can. Also prolonged fasting puts people into a state of Ketosis where they can cope better whilst being starved. This in itself is a reason why people do manage to survive in famine conditions.

I’m very sorry for your family history and I hope your grandmother went on to have a wonderful life xx

I burn approx 3500-4000 cals a day and nothing lol
What do you do to burn that many calories?

I said way upthread, I’m a recovered disordered undereater who is now fat. Encouraging someone like me (and I doubt I’m the only one here) to starve by pointing out how thin concentration camp victims (or those starving in Ethiopia ffs!) are, is not only really offensive to those people - to be minimised to your shitty stick to beat fat people with, it’s really fucking dangerous to me. Is that seriously the choice you offer, stay fat or slowly starve to death, even if that means on no food at all? If someone isn’t losing weight on 800 cal a day, do you think it is automatically more healthy to drop it down to 500, than to just maintain and be fat? How about if they dont lose on 500 either?

It's not oiffensive, its my grandmothers own opinion. She used to laugh at the diet industry, and all the nonsense people would talk about dieting.

Then it's 250kcal, @BeyondsConstantBangingHeadache, and work harder...

If someone isn’t losing weight on 800 cal a day, do you think it is automatically more healthy to drop it down to 500, than to just maintain and be fat? How about if they dont lose on 500 either?

Do you hear yourself? Everyone loses weight on 500 cals a day! And 800. If you're fat and you think you're eating that little, you are deluded. It is simply not the case that you can be and stay fat on starvation rations, and its offensive to argue such.

Your grandmother was as insensitive as you, then. And just because she didn't find it offensive doesn't mean nobody else would.

@andtheHossyourodeinon

If someone isn’t losing weight on 800 cal a day, do you think it is automatically more healthy to drop it down to 500, than to just maintain and be fat? How about if they dont lose on 500 either?

Do you hear yourself? Everyone loses weight on 500 cals a day! And 800. If you're fat and you think you're eating that little, you are deluded. It is simply not the case that you can be and stay fat on starvation rations, and its offensive to argue such.

What happened to “if you’re not losing weight then there is a medical issue” - we’ve had a whole thread of that being the cut and paste response to anyone who doesn’t lose weight, why the sudden change of heart?

I'm quite athletic and somewhat overweight (70 kg at 5'"2") and the times I've burned 3500 calories in one day where the ones when I went for a 10km run and a 2km swim. You would have to weigh about 250 kg to burn 3500 calls as a TDEE.

Mine is around 1440 right now.

My tdee is falsely high worked out by my heart monitor, as I have permanent tachycardia caused by a fucked autonomic system. So I can see why someone would think they are burning 3000 odd kcal, as mine has told me similar.

What happened to “if you’re not losing weight then there is a medical issue” - we’ve had a whole thread of that being the cut and paste response to anyone who doesn’t lose weight, why the sudden change of heart

I don’t think there is a medial issue known to science where you don’t loose weight on five hundred calories a day.

Even eight hundred, unless you’re very short, would see most folks loose weight.

Your grandmother was as insensitive as you, then

She's dead now so she really doesn't care what you think. Neither would she when alive.
These threads are idiotic. Believe what you want...that you're so special and different that the laws of physics don't apply to you, and it's always someone or something elses fault that you're fat. See how that works for you.

What happened to “if you’re not losing weight then there is a medical issue” - we’ve had a whole thread of that being the cut and paste response to anyone who doesn’t lose weight, why the sudden change of heart?

No change of heart. Rarely,, that can be the case, but even then, 500 cals a day you are going to lose weight. End of story.

Have you considered that the stress hormone Cortisol might be a factor? The last 9 months have been stressful for most of us.

@andtheHossyourodeinon

She's dead now so she really doesn't care what you think. Neither would she when alive
These threads are idiotic. Believe what you want...that you're so special and different that the laws of physics don't apply to you, and it's always someone or something elses fault that you're fat. See how that works for you

You really have no idea, do you, you poor thing

Apart from anything else, I'm 5'10", 142lb and a marathon runner! I'm not trying to blame anyone for anything. I just studied the science of how different foods affect weight loss. I'm not even arguing against your point that starvation makes everybody thin! Go ahead with your little tantrum, though... or had you finished?

Bless, imagine thinking "you" on an internet thread meant specifically yourself and not a general you to all the goms saying the same crap! How self absorbed.

@Bluntness100

What happened to “if you’re not losing weight then there is a medical issue” - we’ve had a whole thread of that being the cut and paste response to anyone who doesn’t lose weight, why the sudden change of heart

I don’t think there is a medial issue known to science where you don’t loose weight on five hundred calories a day.

Even eight hundred, unless you’re very short, would see most folks loose weight.

But bluntness, if you accept that medical issues can affect calorie usage, surely it is logical that multiple compound medical issues affect it moreso?

I used to be a regular weight, I used to be a ballet dancer ffs, but I got ill. Then one shit thing after another lead my weight to it’s current plateau. I’m a wheelchair user, I’m largely bedbound - how can I increase activity? I’m on not one medication that can increase weight, but multiple. I have had tests, everything (outside of my existing issues) appears to be “within normal range”. I have no idea if it’s my normal, as I didn’t get this shit tested when I was healthy!

I don’t know what else I can say to convince you that I am already eating a vanishingly small amount.

I definitely believe that you can fuck your metabolism up by eating poorly (diet/binge cycling) and by being so sedentary that you have very little muscle mass and therefore a really inefficient system.

But nevertheless, on a very low calorie diet almost everyone in the world will lose weight. As much as she's not happy about the speed of the progress, the OP has lost weight and therefore reducing her calories has worked, so it's false to claim to a say that a calorie deficit doesn't work for her.

It's hard to lose weight. It's hard to stick to a low calorie diet. It's hard to build muscle and hard improve your metabolism. But sometimes it's also hard to admit that you aren't really tracking your calories properly and burning as many as your Fitbit says you are, so people like to tell themselves that there is something unusual about their biology that makes them unable to lose weight.

@mistermagpie it doesn’t have to be hard though or at least it doesn’t have to be as hard as sticking to a tiny daily calorie allowance. You can eat in such a way where you’re not hungry AND lose weight. You just have to make different food choices.

No of course it doesn't, and in a perfect world it wouldn't be. It isn't very hard for me, I'll be honest, but I'm very athletic and not hugely into food. But it is hard for a lot of people, loads of them on this thread have said as much.

It’s because lots of people literally want to have their cake and eat it 🤷‍♀️