... 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.

I agree OP.

I've only lost significant weight when I eat next to nothing.

I agree with you and fully believe you OP (based on my experience).

Some people have low TDEEs. Have you seen the subreddit 1200isplenty? I have picked up a few good recipes off there that are low calorie. I have PCOS and insulin resistance. Some people are bloody horrid and make out that I am some greedy pig. I can eat 1200 and not shift a pound.

If I went back on a rigidly controlled low calorie diet and did not lose weight I would wonder if my thyroid was working right. I'm a bit thyroid obsessed these days as DH was always a ridiculously hungry man, needed the equivalent of 5 big meals a day not to lose weight fast- he's 6'4" and could dip under 11 stone worryingly fast- but was diagnosed with and treated for a thyroid condition and suddenly does not need constant feeding to maintain a healthy weight.

OP is justifiably hostile because some people just don't listen.

Fair enough those recommending eg fast800 as they have experience of insulin resistance and failing to lose weight on a "regular" diet, but those who just say "calories in = calories out" can tend to imply that fat people are stupid as it's so simple.

Lol, amen sister. I'm 14 stone at 5'3" - although I've just lost 13lbs due to Covid, boom. Try the laying in bed groaning with a high temp and raging diarrhoea for 7 days, it falls off ya.

I totally agree and you have articulated it in the exact same way I do in my own head, I've just never had the kahunas to make a post about it. I've tried fasting too but DH says my breath smells like dead bodies...

I don't lose weight unless I do a fair amount of cardio at the gym. A low calorie diet alone just doesn't seem to work for me

COvCO is basic science.

You sound very angry and in denial.

[quote Genderwitched]@iftherewereahorseyinthehouse

It's the Fast 800 website (Michael Mosley) you sign up, and get weekly meal plans, an exercise regime, a forum and a mindfullness course. I didn't do it all, but mainly stuck to the diet. It's hard but I got used to it and feel so much better [/quote]
Thank you! Just seen it, I have the recipe book but thinking a meal plan might make it all easier. £100 though....

Read the Obesity code. The explanation is in there.

Yanbu, I eat 1200 a day and do 500-850 calories of cardio/toning cardio 6-7 days a week and 3 hours of pilates classes a week.

No it is not Portions, breakfast is weetabix so portion is set, lunch is soup from a container so portion set, dinner is half a soup and slices of bread so again no room to fuck up portions. I don't snack, drink tea and water all day, barely drink alcohol - perhaps once a mint h, I have drunk 5 times since end of march. I have been doing this for 2 years and lost 2 stone - it is not calories in and calories out for me, and I think most people would give it up with so little reward for so much effort.

Yes, human bodies are complicated and there is a lot we still don't understand; however, not losing at some of calories listed here is a sign something is going wrong that may be treatable or at least give more ways to give better support even if weight loss isn't in the cards at this time.

you will only lose weight if you are having your pulse rate 60% or so more than it should be to be in the fat burning zone.

No idea where this idea comes from. Many studies on starvation involved people just laying in a bed - people lost weight. Even the real world studies on the topic (often involving refugee camps) does not involve that.

My weight ballooned 7 years ago, no idea what was going on, my appetite was still low, but I ended up at gaining 6kg in 6 months without noticing and steadily climbing like that until I was 3+ stone heavier. Once things were figured out and treatment started, I lost it while doing barely anything at all - daily rehabilitation exercise for stage 1: '2-10 minutes of reclining cardio, 2-10 minutes of resistance and proprioception training'. That plus some supervised walking (I was a fall risk) and drinking a fuckton of water to keep my blood pressure up was all I did. If anything my diet was "worse" as I had to increase my salt intake.

Well done on your loss so far! I’m the same as you @Wroxie. I know you said you didn’t want advise. I just wanted to say I am exactly the same and have eaten this way for 3 years. Over that time I’ve lost over 3stone. During my weight loss journey, it so happened my weight loss went into reverse without changing my eating patterns. Turns out I’d developed thyroid disease. After meds prescribed (will be on for life) I started losing again, albeit very slowly.

As you’ve discovered for yourself weight loss isn’t a simple case of calories in versus calories out. It’s much more complex than that.

Keep doing what you’re doing. To do otherwise and throw caution to the wind will only see you regain all your weight and some. This is a way of life, especially for not so tall ladies. Good luck.

YANBU OP.

95% of people who lose weight regain every single ounce. Loads of research out there proving this. About 5 years is the timing.

Your body obviously needs 1100 calories a day to stay the weight you are. You need to cut the calories down or start exercising.

1,100 calories might be maintenance for your height and activity level. 30 mins walking isn’t a lot. I’m 5’8”, so quite a lot taller, and on that level of (in)activity I can only eat about 1,700 calories a day and maintain. I’d have to drop to about 1,200 to lose anything.

As it is, I do about 3-4 hours running a week, which gives me some leeway for treats! But not a lot. The myth, is that the average woman needs 2,000 calories a day...

And op I totally get how frustrating it is, no one wants to accept that losing weight is harder for some people as to deny that enables them to continue judging fat or overweight people for being fat and lazy. And whilst to you always see the caveat of "excluding health conditions" they don't mean it, it just allows the "I'm just saying it like it is" "it is the truth you are just in denial" folk who really just love too shove an unpleasant oar it, to say what they want.

@lljkk the human body doesn't work like that. Most people who overeat every day but within a reasonable level will only get so fat and then they sort of hover there. I ate whatever I felt like and then some for about fifteen years but I reached my maximum weight about five years into that. People who overeat every day don't just keep getting fatter and fatter forever - and the people who do, who get so big they can't leave the house, are very much the exception to the rule and incredibly rare.

It works the other way too, to a point - let's say you went to a lab and figured out your exact metabolic rate, and ate exactly 3500 calories less than that over the course of a week. You're not going to automatically lose exactly one pound - because of the hundreds of other factors that are in play. Your body isn't a car (and even if it were, even a car burns fuel at different rates depending on how you drive it, the temperature outside, the age of the car, the condition of the fuel injector, and on and on until the metaphor is absolutely beaten to death).

Op, you’re not a medical marvel. You are simoly eating just slightly less than you need to maintain your body weight, so you are losing very slowly.

Reduce your food below your energy expenditure snd you loose weight. How much under depends on how fast you loose it. Or how slowly.

In the history of the world there has no human being who has been deprived of food snd didn’t loose weight. Not one. No human being has walked away from extended food deprivation fat. Not one. Ever.

You do sound angry, defensive, and like you don’t want to hear it. And that’s fair enough. But this is a public forum, you’re only going to get folks with the mind set coming on to agree with you.

I have 800 to 1200 cals a day, and have done for months and it has taken me most of a year to lose one stone. I count every morsel and most of it is healthy stuff. I am less active than you as health issues prevent proper activity levels but if I have a week where I eat to the upper limit, and don't manage any activity, I put weight on, this is despite the upper limit being what the NHS app says an inactive person my age should lose weight on. I do think my inactive may be more inactive than the app allows for as I can be bedbound a lot of the time but even at the most active I can manage it's a huge struggle.

What is your muscle mass? Increasing weights and resistance exercise (bodyweight or otherwise) will help build muscle mass which in turn burns more energy. Are you reasonably muscular? That is do you have visible muscle done on your legs or when you flex your arms? If not, then adding more resistance exercise would help with a focus on more protein and fat in your diet. This is also good for maintaining bone density and body temperature.

I am 5'7 so not short either

my relative is like this. She has tried everything and has now just accepted her weight and the judgments she gets. It’s unfair because people don’t see the massive amount of work she puts in to lose a tiny bit of weight.

You need to come and speak to my NHS dietician/nutritionist and tell her it's bollocks about starvation mode. I say that at a size six and 100lb.

PS being strong is a superpower! And you'll feel like a badass if you can teach yourself pull-ups or a planch.