1200 calories a day & gaining weight!!??

[UsedToBeAContender]

Am completely flummoxed really. Am working out 5 times a week, following a diet of 1200 calories a day and my weight has gone up by about a pound a week for the last few weeks!!??

I'm eating really healthily, snacking regularly and cutting way back on alcohol. I just don't understand that if the calories aren't going in, how can I be getting heavier???

I know muscle weighs more than fat but surely at some point the laws of physics have to kick in!? My clothes are tighter too so definitely getting bigger.

So fed up

An interesting video explaining weight gain.

www.dietdoctor.com/the-1-cause-of-obesity-insulin

You don't need a huge calorie deficit to lose weight at a healthy rate, eating 1200 calories a day seems too low. Although it sounds counter-intuitive, many people lose weight by eating more food, but eating better quality foods that are metabolised differently. Calorie values quoted on food labels and website databases are actually very inaccurate and I feel they are unhelpful to dieters.

Try a diet higher in healthy fats, protein and vitamins that your body needs, but cut down on the non-essential starchy stuff like bread, pasta, cereals, beans. I have lost weight steadily from eating a 'primal' / 'paleo' diet, I didn't count calories cos I hate having to count them and think about food all the bloody time. I honestly don't think I am going to put the weight back on either because I feel much better and really enjoy eating 'real' food.

Wanna. Ooh what's that diet?

I don't like counting either so lately i have given up junk food, chocolate, bread, cheese, takeaways, etc. I do still have a tiny bit of those things so i don't feel deprived but am eating lots of home made soups, fruit, salads etc. I haven't weighed myself because i find that if i do and I've lost weighty lose focus and start treating myself too much!

So, the slightly ms Michaels has also written about endocrine disruption; she says she used to be on 1200 cals a day and daily workouts but struggled to keep her weight down, then went to an endocrinologist and found she was hypothyriod, and (significant for you OP) estrogen dominant. Blah, blah. The basic thing is though, hormones like estrogen (which you are exposed to through the coil) prevent the action of hormones that break down fatty deposits and suppress hormones like dhea(um, I think) which enable you to build muscle. This (muscle) growth hormone is released in sleep - poor quality and limited sleep can make you prone to storing fat rather than building muscle for this reason - so your broken nights are part of what is scuppering your diet, probably, OP. There are also lots of endocrine disruptors in the chemical environment. Basically, good endocrine function is what makes you access fat stores and build muscle and disruption can trigger fat storage and muscle break down, even at low calorie intakes. Worth thinking about if the basic energy in/ energy out maths isn't working out for you.

Also worth remembering that cal calculations aren't done in relation to how actual bodies access and use actual calories but are done in relation to how many degree c water will heat up if you set fire to said food stuff. I know that the laws of physics have to come in somewhere, but what if our whole data set was skewed, say, by the fact that average people eat 2000 cals but only access 300? It's unlikely it is that skewed, but still it is possible that our understanding is all wrong in this context.

Anyway, you know yourself the cals in/ cals out isn't really working for you, so maybe look instead at the details of what specifically causes you to store energy in fat in your body - it's well known that type 1 diabetics can manipulate their weight by not taking their medication, no matter what they are eating. Cals in/ cals out only works if you are absolutely and completely absorbing everything that goes in in the first place, and the guidelines only work if they relate in an absolute way to what can and can not be absorbed by or produced in the body by the foods consumed. And they don't. So ditch calorie maths and think instead about your actual biochemistry and how you are intervening in it with the food that you consume.

Sparkly. That's very interesting (what i understood anyway) but how does the op actually do that? Think about her biochemistry?

My thinking exactly PooPoo!

A friend of mine in the medical profession is sending me the names of some nutritionists so I'm going to start there and see what they say. I think Sparkly and others have made some really good points here and I agree that I really need to see what's going on with ME rather than just blindly counting calories as that clearly isn't working!

Thanks again folks, glad to see it's not just me who find this a tad confusing!!

Will you let us know what the nutritionist says?

i have a heart rate monitor - a basic polar with heart rate strap, tells me how fast my heart is beating whilst i am walking, spinning, cycling etc, i can set it to zone and it will bleep if i am out of that heart rate zone, so i know to speed up or slow down what i am doing.

zumba is light and hard to get into fat burning

yoga, really good resitense training and gets to the parts that others dont get to with stretching etc

walking is a really good fat burner

body pump good fat burner

cycling outside is a good calory burner and fat burner but also a good interval training sport as you go up and down hills and go faster or slower - which is good for fat burning and fitness

spin - an ideal quick fix 45 minutes and 600 calories later - but low fat burner

OP - how's it going? Just a thought, could your scales be wonky? Mine have just told me that I put on 5lbs in a week and then lost 2lbs of them since yesterday. I don't think I believe them anymore...