Don't Starve! The Eat More to Weigh Less Group

[ShirleyKnot]

Hello!

OK, stemming from this thread I promised to start a thread to explain a little bit more about eating well and still losing weight.

I'll start by telling you about me because I love to talk about me

About 5 years ago (when I was 34) I went back to work full time, this time locally, in a sedentiary desk job. I drive to work everyday and was often far too busy lazy to do any exercise at all. My weight remained fairly static (At about 11 stones, I'm 5ft 7.5 and fairly chunky) for a good couple of years and then it started creeping up.

For the past two years I have skipped on and off WW, SW and I have tried low calorie diets, the lot. My weight has gone up to 12 stone 11 lbs at it's highest and I'm carrying it pretty much all over. My gut though TERRIBLE - It hangs over my knickers and in January my size 16 clothes were starting to strain.

Miserable ain't the word. It has affected my confidence (yes, honestly) and I know that at my age (39) it is only going to get harder to lose.

So, in January I started back on WW. I watched everything I ate, I thought about food compulsively, I went for walks in my lunch hour, and every weekend I fell off the wagon and stuffed my face. WHY? It makes no sense! I gobbled bread and cakes and biscuits and sweets like mad.

In April, after having lost and gained the same 7lbs over and over again I joined BIWI's Low Carb Bootcamp, and started upping my exercise at the gym (Doing classes mainly and swimming and I also started the Couch 2 5K) this is where it got weird...I stuck to the diet, it was pretty easy! I loved the food and didn't feel hungry at all - my endurance during exercise was affected but I thought I'd break through that barrier sooner or later. I watched as people on the thread lost masses of weight and I was completely stalled out. What? WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? I believe that during this time I was eating a good couple of thousand calories per day, plus exercising almost every day.

I left the group as I felt so fed up with not losing and limped back to my fitness pal, but decided to stick with the no crap (no white bread/pasta/rice, easy on the white potatoes, easy on the fruit) WOE. MFP gave me a calorie limit of 1,200 cals per day and I did this for a a few days before starting to feel rotten. I started looking around the MFP community pages and found the Eat More To Weigh Less Group and read every link, and lots of the discussion boards.

It was a lightbulb moment - WHY was I expecting my body to cope on less calories than it needs just to exist? WHYYYYY?

I started EMTWL on 16th May and have lost 1 lb. That doesn't really mean very much though, as the scales are FILTHY liars - but I have eaten very well and am losing inches consistently. Since I started eating more calories (I include BIWI's brilliant Bootcamp in this calculation) I have lost 4.5 inches from my waist and a good couple of inches from my hips, arse and bust. I have dropped a dress size.

OK. I'm going to post this essay and then I'm going to talk a bit about metabolic rate calculations and the sciency bits.

I don't really like dried fruit. I do like nuts, but I think it would bore me just to sit and eat them at my desk. I do have a fridge/microwave at work, so I could theoretically bring anything!

I sent you a request, foosty. Mine's kiki_jp if anyone wants to add me...

Have a look at my diary if you fancy it Toby, you can see what sort of stuff I bring in to eat every day.

seventh I've got some Omron ones, I got them from Amazon. They were a bit reduced, but not massively expensive - perhaps £30? I can't remember exactly, we've had them a couple of years.

I can't see yours. I had to change my privacy settings to make mine visible to friends.

Huh. I thought I'd done that. OK, will changeroo it now!

Unless I'm looking in the wrong place...

I see it now!

Can I join?

Baby weight from DD1 three years ago needs to go.

Can't do much exercise yet as cs a week ago- should I wait or can I start now?

Oh, and if you could just explain things to me really slowly, that'd be fab. Or I'll look at the links. Maybe.

Hello - can I join in please ? Been sickeningly naturally slim (5' 8" tall size 8 to 10 weighing between 9st and 9st 10 tops) all my adult life - hit age 50 and whoahhh what is going on ? . I am now 11st 4 or 5lbs at top weight and we (DH and I) recently went on a bit of a health drive - sharing a curry takeaway instead of one each - only one packet of biscuits in weekly shopping trolley on a 'when they're gone they're gone' basis, desserts only at weekend or twice a week at most as opposed to most nights, weekend full English breakfast now only on one weekend morning instead of both and then with only one slice of toast each instead of two or three. We changed from white bread to wholemeal bread also and several other gradual but significant changes. My DH who has a lot more excess than me to lose so might be the reason did much better - lost over half a stone. I got down to a steady 11st to 11st 1lb but scales very temperamental and only good to assess a general overall pattern really.
Now in last few days of it being very hot I have got on the scales in the morning and have gone straight back up to 11st 5lbs - right back where l started basically - dh has stayed the same .
I mention the heat because am sure it's an issue with my weight - I puff up like nobodys business in the heat and all but had to have my wedding rings cut off the other night but managed to get them off in the end with some googled technique involving dental tape - dont ask ! Now these same rings went on and came off perfectly fine 12 hrs earlier so it cant possibly be just down to weight gain. Is it the menopause or water retention problem or what ?

You might have noticed I am mightily pissed off and am definitely in - can you OP or anyone do an idiots guide though as I'm a bit dim lost with all the abbreviations etc

Men tend to find it easier to lose weight because they have a higher % of muscle in their bodies, and muscle uses energy even when it is just sitting there. (which is why exercise is good, even if you eat back the calories you will build muscle)

I signed up to mfp on friday, but really starting today as weekend was busy and I hadn't planned for it. So today I had one egg (fried in very little olive oil) and Total greek yoghurt with milled flax seeds, a few pumpkin and sunflower seeds and some agave syrup. Then had a latte at work.
For lunch I had home made soup, which was mainly vegetables and a bit of chorizo (I threw in all the stuff I could find in the fridge). I am not sure about the calories in the soup since I made it a while ago. So I need to have a bit more for lunch cos I know the soup won't see me through for long and to add protein.
Exercise wise I am cycling to and from work today (3m each way) and will be doing salsa dancing this evening.
My BMR is 1400 and TTDE around 2200 (with moderate exercise) so my target is 1900 calories. I still have over 1000 today so will need to find healthy stuff to eat.
I find it difficult not to weigh myself, but will try to measure myself instead (may need some hand holding not to go on the scales!)
Also, may need some ideas for next week as we will be in self catering accommodation in France.
Happy eating everyone!

Sorry meant to add I am 53 so weight gain started around 3yrs ago and we went on our mini health drive for about last 3 months when we lost the weight but I having put all mine back on now feel like all those months of being 'good' are wasted.

Toby - hooray! it's in a weird bit in the settings, I thought I'd changed it!

Hey tethers my darling! You can totally join in but only if you promise to say on TDEE without a cut. (Are you feeding my beautiful namesake via the wonder of breasticles?) I'll do you a quick explanation:

To lose or maintain weight our bodies need a certain amount of fuel everyday. This is dependant on our age, activity level, height and weight and we refer to the basal metabolic rate (which is the amount of calories your body burns if it were in a coma) as our BMR. As we're NOT in comas (unless at work) we need to calculate the actual amount of cals we burn and we refer to this as the Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). As some of us are trying to lose weight we take a 15% cut off this figure and eat at that level every day.

Consistency is key.

If you are breastfeeding you should be eating your TDEE plus an additional 500 cals, and as you're so soon after the baby I would rather you ate at your TDEE without the cut for a little while - to keep you nice and nourished while you deal with night times and lack of rest.

Mary - dried fruit, although it is high in sugar seems OK to me, I'm not low carbing so it's not an issue and I think that the fibre is a GOOD thing. As to the heavy weights? YOU SHOULD TOTALLY DO THEM! High weight/Low reps are a brilliant way to gain muscle and melt fat! Don't go buying a set of barbie weights that do FA and that you'll "grow out of" in a few short weeks.

High weight/Low reps are a brilliant way to gain muscle and melt fat!

Interesting. I did not know this.

x posted with you myob

You said:

"I mention the heat because am sure it's an issue with my weight - I puff up like nobodys business in the heat and all but had to have my wedding rings cut off the other night"

and also that you'd gained, like, 6lbs over the weekend?

It's water retention. I am telling you now that you have not gained 6lbs of fat in a weekend, or over the course of a week! It's not possible, so STEP AWAY FROM THE SCALES. (SAFTS - is my new acronym for this )

To counter water weight and puffiness you need to drink plenty of water (a good few litres per day) and watch your sodium intake.

Mary - I'm always right.

The app is fairly good, Maryz. I have the android version. It's a bit more fiddly than using my laptop but that's probably because I am old and less used to using a 'phone keyboard for typing everything all the time.

High Weight Low Reps

GREAT benefits from this sort of exercise including burning more cals after the workout than cardio alone, brilliant for increasing bone density which is important for us women and building muscle mass means you are burning more calories per day than a fat person who weighs the same as you.

I went to the gym yesterday and started trying some heavy lifting. I managed 80kilos on my leg curls and extensions and 50 kilos on a seated row and chest press.

That is really interesting. I will start tomorrow. Usually the highest weight I do is 45kg on a leg press. I'm sure I could do more. Just not for 4 sets of 10. But if I'm doing fewer reps...just maybe!

I use my phone app and I use the computer, but I'm mostly on my phone app. I love the bar code scanner on my app (I might have mentioned this before!) and love being able to pump stuff in whenever I want. I can't read message boards on the app (or rather I haven't really explored that aspect of it)

"Did anyone watch Secret Eaters last week? There was a very interesting part about Diet Coke. They found that when one of the family drank a glass of diet coke, about 20-30 minutes later he was in the larder looking for something to eat! It could be a coincidence, but I don't trust that diet stuff as far as I can throw it!"

I highly HIGHLY recommend to everyone on this thread John Briffa's book

here on Amazon - kindle version only 3.99 and there's a kindle app for iphone...

Everything Shirly talks of about food etc is here and it's SO easy to read and understand - I ploughed through 15 chapters yesterday I was so fascinated!