[oxymoronica]

I feel like I should be able to eat FAR more calories than I am eating and still lose weight. Brief backstory:

I'm 5'10" and built BIG. Even if I get down to a normal weight, I would probably still be a very large person - I naturally have a lot of muscle mass, very broad shoulders, tall, etc. I started out weighing 242 and got myself down to 175 for a period of time so brief it makes me sad to think about. That was last summer. Since then, seemingly no matter what I do, I can't keep the weight from creeping back on.

I have tried eating at every calorie level you can think of (and yes, I measure and weigh EVERYTHING, and I make my own food, so there are no hidden ingredients), from 2000 (still supposedly below maintenance for my activity level) all the way down to 1000 per day. I've tried calorie cycling, I've tried gradually reducing calories, I've tried sharply cutting back. I've tried eating more vegetables and whole grains, I've tried cutting out grains altogether and going with a meat / egg / veggie etc. kind of low carb approach. My most recent failure was carb cycling. Nothing. The weight goes down, the weight goes back up. Then it never goes down again. For the record, I was on a four day cycle, 3 days at <75g carbs, the fourth at <185g. Calories for the low days were typically in the 1100 - 1300 range, and I calculated the fourth day's calories based on whatever it would take to bring me to a 1500 average for the cycle.

Which brings me to my next point. I am a very large, very active person. I work out nearly every day (hard), doing kettlebells, weightlifting, HIIT sprints, slow steady jogging, everything I can think of pretty much. Every calculator I have used tells me I should be eating 3-4000 calories to maintain, but I don't put much stock those so I stay conservative and figure my maintenance to be around 2500. So why on earth can I not lose weight (or inches, bf%, I measure it all)?

If I have lost this much weight and my metabolism essentially shut down entirely, is there a way to bring it back up before I balloon back to my starting weight?? I'm 15 pounds up already, and freaking out. Thanks for any and all help I can get.

[trisaratops]

If you can, I would go to the doctor and see if there are any medical reasons why you aren't losing weight. You should have them check your thyroid levels, if its under-active that could be a cause for your weight loss problems. Some thyroid problems happen in a kind of cycle so you could have been normal before and low now.

I only know about the thyroid because mine seemed to be a bit on the fritz a year ago but its stayed steady for a while so it may have just been a reaction to a virus.... but I'm sure there are other things that could be affecting your weight loss.

Other than that you sound like you are doing things right so I'm not sure what else you could do.... I do hope you find something that works!

[lin43]

I agree with the previous poster. I cannot think of anything other than a medical condition to explain why you're not losing. You're doing all the right things. Maybe your thyroid is the culprit. I would get it checked out.

[oxymoronica]

I will do that, thanks to both of you. I guess I feel better to know it's not something I'm doing wrong. But of course, that would have been easier to fix...