So I weighed 308 pounds. I have always been a light eater. My usual calorie intake before dieting was always around 2200 calories a day. I don't exercise but I'm never home long enough to exercise. I'm always out and about taking care of things. Blood tests were all normal dr. Thinks I'm a liar. I have track my calorie intake in a diary. I make sure I don't miss anything not hidden calories .I make sure even my dressings are measured out. I never liked sweets even as a child so I don't eat them. I only drink water. I drink at least 12 glasses of water a day. I did not drink soda at all. I do not salt my food. I can't eat a lot of protein because I do get kidney stones so I do eat a lot of vegetables. Is very hard to maintain my weight even at 2200 calories a day. I seem to gain about 6 pounds a year. I am down to 1200-1500 calories a day to maintain 308 pounds. I don't lose anything not an ounce not a pound. I go to my doctor for help but get none. He tries to put me on these diets that make me eat way more calories than what I eat now. He doesn't understand that I cannot eat that much I get too full too quick and gain. He cannot find anything medically that would be causing this. I don't ever eat fast food. I tried to explain to him I've been like this for well over 30 years. my heart doctor has tried to get me to have bariatric surgery he also does not believe how few calories I eat per day. I told him it would not do any good. because bariatric patients typically will eat between 1000 and 1200 calories a day to lose weight after their post op 6week diet. i need help. im going to die and my doctors dont care.
Last edited by candigrl63; 09-04-2016 at 01:50 PM.
Reason: wrong number
that is a lot of calories, do you eat Pasta, rice, bread, dairy potatoes, try cutting all of them from your diet and ALL processed food also from your diet , cook everything yourself, sauces salad dressing everything. it is very easy ... i lost 60 lbs in no time doing that. also a great site for recipes is Linda's Low carb.... she has everything from soup to nuts on her site,including dessert,breads, as for gastric bypass get another doctor to refer you...you fit the requirments.... good luck... http://genaw.com/lowcarb/recipes.html
Have you thought about getting a second opinion from another doctor? They can be wrong! I would also suggest seeing a dietitian. The best thing I have ever done was joining a gym with a dietitian-approved eating plan. I have struggled to lose weight too, and I was really sceptical about the whole dietitian thing, as it was double the food I was eating before, but I workout 5 times a week, I eat like a horse as per the meal plan, and I have lost over 15kg in 6 months. I also know what it is like to have a very demanding job and to be time poor, however you need to make a commitment to yourself, your health and your future, and make time to do some exercise at least 3 times a week. I workout in the morning, and it is a great way to start your day. You just have to make a commitment and stick to it. You owe it to yourself! Best wishes
do you use a food tracker program .. I believe you are only eating what you say -theoretically if you are eating those calories and doing 10,000 steps you should be loosing weight
As for me - I am following WW Aus/NZ online program - they encourage track everything - and fruit is free from points due to how its digested - also most veggies are free of points unless they are starchy ones like beans (such as baked beans soy tofu and broad beans) potatoes sweet potato yams and peas all attract points to give you an idea - I am probably working on 1000 calories but having said that I dont count fruit - we are meant to eat 2-3 serves fruit a day and as many non starchy veg - lettuce spinach silver-beet broccoli cauliflower mushrooms string beans and carrots dont have points to give you an idea
back to you Do you use my fitness pal or similar such as my plate from live strong - both have calorie calculators where you put in your height and weight and how much you want to loose per week and give you a calories allowance - this is also based on your age and height
I would think you will probablly find you want to be eating around 1600/1700 per week to loose 1-2 pounds and you do not want to be loosing weight too fast either
also = Do you have a movement tracker you say you dont exercise but you might find incidental movement is quite high
I read 12 glasses of water and went WOW I struggle drinking 6-8! let alone 10 -12
do you drink before you eat -that can make you feel full faster
..... also I hate to say it as Caldawg89 has put it ... second opionion .. .diatician ..... Especially if your Dr is not listening to you it there is something not right...
I had the problem of not having doctors believe me. My husband and I ate the same things for a year, everything weighed and measured and cooked by me in our kitchen. All was tracked on my fitness pal. He lost 100lbs. I lost 3.
I believe you. The gut bacteria of some people can be incredibly efficient at breaking down and pulling calories from food, while their body cells are excellent at storing it as fat rather than working with muscles to burn it off during regular daily tasks. I would suspect you have a sort of ongoing functional starvation reaction.
Logic says that if what you are doing (counting calories) isn't working, even though you have truly and carefully given it a chance (working with your Dr. , weighing and measuring food) - it isn't the right choice for you. People can lose weight following a number of different paths - the success stories prove on this site alone prove that it's true. You obviously need a different path.
My personal recommendation for you would be switching to an Atkins or similar plan. it's not the plan I am using for myself (I am using a mostly vegan diet with a focus on vegan/vegetarian proteins and lots of seed and plant fats and occasional meats/cheese and eggs) because it upsets my IBS the least while keeping me from feeling shaky) - but the reason I suggest Atkins for you is because it forces your body to burn calories differently (eg: ketosis, which is a more inefficient method). - just skip the brand name shakes and protein bars and focus on Dr. Atkins original plan with meats and certain veggies (there are probably books at your library) because I have heard from those that follow that plan that that is what works best.
You will need to make time to exercise though. You are worth it. Increasing muscle mass will help you shift the weight and make you feel more energetic. If you truly think you get enough cardio just being out and about - focus on weight lifting. You can do it - we believe in you!
Last edited by lostbutstilltrying; 09-05-2016 at 12:31 PM.
Reason: edited for spelling, I really can't spell :)
What you are going through sounds really frustrating. I think that you may want to consider doing more than calorie counting, but looking at nutrient intake. Low-carb diets seems to work very well for many folks. If you have not tried that, I would give it a try. Our bodies care more about nutrients than calories, so it's important to evaluate the type of food you're eating in addition to its calorie content.
It might be possible that you have a metabolic disorder. I have PCOS myself, which makes it very hard for me to lose weight unless I eat a very clean diet of protein, fats, vegetables, and fruit. Your hormones might be out of whack, which can make losing weight difficult. You said you don't like to eat sweets, but are you eating things that have hidden sugars in them? Processed food and starchy carbs can be full of sugar and can add up quick if you're not paying attention.
Exercise is also a good idea. You said that you don't have time, but a lot of us here don't have time. You make time. Sorry to be harsh, but that's the way it goes. Maybe start with light resistance training. Muscle helps burn fat. You can get a resistance band or a set of light dumb bells and do some curls. Find a youtube video that uses bodyweight training, which requires no equipment at all. Fitnessblender has a ton of them.
I hope you are able to find a dr. who will listen to you. Be your own advocate and push until you get them to listen, or find another dr. Not knowing what is going on with your body is so frustrating, and I am sorry you are going through this.
Everything you mentioned in your original post sounds like me just a few years ago. Everyone would be telling me to join this club, join that club, WW want me to eat too much, and many others are the same. Doctors would think that I was lying to them about my apparent obsession with fast food or soda or sandwiches or chocolate or something else that I simply did not eat.
I found that PASTA was one of my devils. When I was about 10yr old I became a veggi for 4 years, and in the 90's no one really knew much about food, which meant I over carbed my diet that ruined my body. I can eat bread and rice, but not pasta. It took a lot of learning from my own body to find out which meals caused me to gain (even if it was the same calories as others). I invested in a great set of scales and weighed myself every single day, this helped me to see the weekly fluctuations and when meals did what to my body.
In January I weighted in at 323 at my biggest and decided to lose just 1 pound a week. I am currently 28.4lbs down. I already ate healthy and drank lots of water, so I found it hard to see where to lose the 1lb from. I currently eat 1300 (roughly) calories per day, sometimes it is only 1150, sometimes it is 1350. I realised that my body just does not loose ANY weight if I eat over 1400cal.
People may think that it is far too little for someone who is 294lbs, but I am the expert at my own body and it is simply just how mine acts compared to everyone else's.
To get as low as 1300, you need to be very smart about the food that you eat. It doesn't mean I eat nothing, I just eat more of foods with less calories.
Your devils may not be pasta, you may also lose weight at 1500cal per day. But YOU need to spend some time experimenting with foods to find out what causes the ups and downs. No doctor, no club, no other person, can give you a diet that is right for you.
This is a rough guide to what I eat personally most days, just so you can see where I try and even mine out. Yours will obv be different, but sometimes it helps to see what other people do:
Breakfast: 2 boiled eggs with toast / Scrambled eggs with toast
Metabolism is a complicated thing. Yoyo dieting can trash it permanently. I've often thought that we know more about it than any nutritionist because we live with it. I have this narrow band in the 1500-1800 range where I can lose. Above or below, I gain.
Catherine That is interesting to know that even if you go too low you don't lose. I also completely agree with the yoyo dieting and that we may know more than most.
I am 27 and have been overweight for 18 years or so, I have tried every "trick" in the book and sometimes it worked for a while, but nothing long-term. I just wish I knew more about food as a teenager and maybe I would of been able to lose the weight before it got too bad. Luckily I am in a position now to lose the weight as I am a lot more educated in how my body reacts to food.
They did a study on people who were on the Biggest Loser show. They studied their metabolic rates. They were damaged after losing too quickly and it was stuck at a lower level than before the show. Maybe permanently.
The good news is, there's a fair amount of research out there about ways we can encourage our metabolisms to keep chugging along as they should. This is why exercise is crucial to me--not for the calories burned, which most of the time isn't that much, really--but because sitting / inactivity is NOT a good thing for metabolism. There was a study a few years ago (small population, so limited, of course) where they had people sit no longer than 20 minutes at a time. They just had to take a 2 minute walking break. The subjects who did this had lower fasting blood sugar than the subjects who ate the same but were allowed to sit long hours, like we do in office jobs. When I have tried the no-more-than-20-minutes-sitting rule (alas, I'm not able to do it consistently), it has had WAY more positive effect on my fasting blood sugar than any changes I've ever made in my eating. And stable blood sugar levels in the healthy range are important for a healthy metabolic rate.
There are lots of other things that are shown to help improve metabolism. Each of them has a very small effect, but this time around with my weight loss I'm trying to incorporate them all, hoping that a bunch of very small effects will be enough to help me keep losing instead of plateauing around 270, as I've done the last 3 times I tried to make a significant change. All of the following have real studies to back up their value in improving/maintaining good metabolism rates: (a) build muscle, (b) include interval training in cardio, (c) eat frequent small meals/snacks, (d) drink 3-5 cups of white or green tea daily, (d) drink your water and other beverages iced whenever possible, (e) stay well hydrated, (f) get plenty of fiber, (g) use organic produce when possible, wash produce SUPER well when not organic (pesticides linked to slowed metabolic rate), (h) include some protein at every meal, (i) get sufficient dairy/vitamin D, and (j) get enough sleep.
Oh, here's one more: eat grapes, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and apples to turn your white fat into obesity-fighting beige fat. https://news.wsu.edu/2015/06/18/wsu-...ing-beige-fat/ (This was widely reported as "drink red wine to lose weight," but as the study indicates, you get more of the good stuff from grapes for fewer calories, and berries and apples have it too.)
cant lose no matter what
