... 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.

@Eckhart I believe it is size relative. I always burn a lot more than my smaller counterparts in the same class and they find it easier. I wouldn't say I'm necessarily unfit either as I've been doing these intense hiit classes for a good few years regularly and I also have a very active job

I’m absolutely loving “insulation resistance”. I’m adding that to my favourite autocorrects with “electrical impudence”.

I do think the devices account for the fact that we burn after the event too and that's recorded in the regular daily burn

I always burn a lot more than my smaller counterparts in the same class and they find it easier

Yes, that's my point! You're all doing the same thing, but the intensity is more for you, so you are burning more kcals.

How are you measuring how many kcals you burn?

Fitbit but it's only harder because of my size??

Yes. Someone upthread said they were doing 'intense exercise' and burning 350kcals per hour, which is the equivalent kcal burn of light to moderate exercise.

Light to moderate exercise may be anything from a stroll to a jog, depending on how fit you are. Some people may find a jog or brisk walk to be intense, and burn 600kcals an hour doing it.

My point is that it's the calorie burn that dictates the intensity, not the sort of exercise, so I was curious to know how someone was categorising a 350kcal p/h activity to be 'intense'.

Fitbits are great but they measure for the 'average' person with the user's stats. There's only so much they can measure without actually knowing the user's body personally.

The problem with the whole set up is that we're being told to believe that 3500kcal of food/exercise = 1lb of fat, because that's how many calories there are in a lb of fat. Nobody really knows why we do this because it doesn't make sense.

How are you measuring how many calories you're burning
Fitbit. To be fair, it's not 1h but 45 mns of a hit class. I do burn 500 when I run but I don't run marathon!

I am small, low resting heart rate, so j deed, I don't burn a lot. I think I'm more akin of the majority than Looney who burns 4000 calories a day. I'd love to know what activity you do every day that allows you to burn that much.

Looney, I've seen you are much heavier than I, so it makes sense. Still if you burn 500 in one class that's along way to 3000/4000 calories.

Is your resting heart rate quite high?

Feel for you OP. I’d be mighty pissed off if were you

Sounds like you’ve got the right attitude though in terms of focusing on how you feel rather than numbers on the scale.

End of the day we were all created differently and to be different shapes and sizes.

I kind of think if you eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, and don’t have lots of ‘empty calories’ then you should end up where you naturally should be

@Eckhart

The problem with the whole set up is that we're being told to believe that 3500kcal of food/exercise = 1lb of fat, because that's how many calories there are in a lb of fat. Nobody really knows why we do this because it doesn't make sense.

Well, yes, it is more complex. However, some of the MAF (Dr Maffetone) training videos on YouTube and articles I have read give a fuller picture. They have tested athletes running at different particular heart rate intensities fat burn by measuring the gasses in their breath, if I recall correctly. They did find correlations and it's these conclusions that form the reasoning behind MAF (Maximum Aerobic Functions) training. What I like about running at a MAF intensity is that is is not onerously difficult but you increase fitness and burn fat at the same time. It has worked for me.

Oh and MAF training is designed to increase the body's ability to burn fat rather than flake out after the glycogen stores are depleted.

‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’

The OP needs to change what she’s doing as it’s not working. She won’t though.

This always confuses me. As I imagine if you were locked away and starved you'd lose weight guaranteed? I'm not disagreeing with you by the way just seems very odd that you're not losing more. Surely there's an underlying medical reason? Are you older OP? I'm an inch shorter than you and have done similar to you with averaging around 1000-1200 calories most days with a brisk walkout days for an hour and have lost two stone. Some days I eat even less. If I slip up the weight goes straight back on as you really have to eat practically nothing at this height to stay slim it's so frustrating.

I feel the same when people bang on about "starvation mode" which as you said is nonsense.

@Badwill, I suspect its muscle versus fat percentage of mass. I have been 40% fat before. Only was a size 14! And I was only just overweight with a BMI of just over 27. I am small framed. I had to eat half of the portions of what my DH ate who actually weighed less than me for me to lose weight! I do more actual formal exercise than him too. Thankfully at last measurement I am now 25% fat with a BMI of just over 19.

If you put the stats through this TDEE calculator you can see how much fat percentage can change things.

tdeecalculator.net/result.php?s=imperial&age=48&g=female&lbs=124&in=67&act=1.2&bf=25&f=1

Well OP, if you are a medical “mystery”, go and see a GP please. Could be lipoedema or hormonal or thyroid

Don’t angry, get it looked at

Whenever I track calories using MFP I lose weight as I can obviously get an idea of what I’m eating and I do lose the weight. Have never done it for more than a few months to get to goal. Maybe you have some other metabolism issues going on as 1100 cals is nothing.
I lose on around 1300 and prob burn around 1500-1600, but either way, eating healthily is much more important for health than actual weight.

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increase the body's ability to burn fat rather than flake out after the glycogen stores are depleted

I think this is the key to the whole thing, namochangoro, and yet it never gets mentioned in the NHS dietary guidelines or weight watchers. We're so afraid of feeling hungry that we never explore (societally) what happens after glycogen depletion. It's bewildering that masses of people who are desperate to lose weight and have been trying for years don't even know about the difference between using glycogen or fat as fuel.

@Eckhart

Exactly. We need to 'own' our fat! It's our's, we paid for it! In my case it would have been rather costly, the amount we used to spend on gourmet food and drink! Well, it can bloody well serve me instead of me having to drag it around and get ill in the process!

You are probably miscalculating your calories. Everything you mentioned eating for your birthday sounds very calorie rich. Pancakes with syrup is probably 400-500 calories assuming you only had 2. Fish and chips is at least 800-1000 calories. You have already exceeded the 1100kcal set for yourself. That is not even including the "couple" of donuts you had after. Donuts are also high in calories. No mention of how big the donuts are, what kind of donut? Are they glazed or have any filling? I would bet you eat a lot more than you think you are. Diets work for everyone. If you really do faithfully check your calories then it is time to see a doctor to get your thyroid checked.

However, based on your dietary choices for your birthday I'm more inclined to believe that you're not accurately counting your calories and eating more than you calculated.

[quote namochangoro]If you put the stats through this TDEE calculator you can see how much fat percentage can change things.

tdeecalculator.net/result.php?s=imperial&age=48&g=female&lbs=124&in=67&act=1.2&bf=25&f=1[/quote]
Hmm... according that my "maintenance" calorie requirement is a touch over 2000 a day (14000 a week) which seems quite high to me!

Well it's all just an estimate @Pahrump. And unless you have an actual MRI or similar fat percentages tend to be pretty much an estimation. But my point was whatever biorhythms they use views fat percentage as making a difference in terms of calorie burn.

Mine has also come out at over 2000 a day for maintenance. I’m quite active and instinctively that’s probably on the high side of about right for me. I don’t count calories any more so I’m not really sure.

For all you calorie counters; when you burn calories, what is the split of fat calories and carb calories you burn? And before you say 'it doesn't matter, they're all calories', how would you expect to lose fat from your body if you aren't using fat to fuel yourself? Where would you expect the fat to be disappearing to?