Partially I am tempted to eat less because I tried 1200 calories a day, and it appeared to be having no impact at all. I didn't watch my calorie intake on the weekends, but it wasn't outside the realm of what is reasonable for a person to eat in a day, I thought. Then I added it up and found that if my daily calorie needs are 1800 (I'm short) cutting to 1200 calories a day leaves me at one pound a week. That is almost nothing. And there are no benefits before I lose maybe twenty pounds, which will take six months, and that's if I don't mess up at all, and I certainly will mess up, probably a lot.
I want to be attractive before I start to age. I want to have children, and that's not safe to do if you're overweight. I feel like I don't have three years to spend losing sixty pounds, which is where I feel like it will end up, with starts and stops, unless I do something drastically different than I have before.
EDIT: Also thank you, guys! You have been really good at responding to something unreasonable that I posted when I was in a particularly bad mood, and with giving good response to things that aren't strictly within the realm of weight loss. Also, sunarie, you look CRAZY young for thirty.
Last edited by ImpalaHoarder; 11-06-2014 at 02:10 PM.
When I first started my "journey" I kind of felt the same way as you do Impala, and sometimes I still feel the same way. However, what has ended up working for me is slow and steady weight loss. I can get pretty jealous of the people who are able to lose much much faster, but I've preferred to hang onto some parts of my lifestyle that aren't amenable to faster losses (eating meals with my boyfriend, drinking on the weekends, etc.).
If you're up for suggestions, look into Alternate Day Fasting. I really don't know what the average weight loss is, but I lose about 1 pound a week with 5:2 which is 5 days of normal eating, 2 days of up to 500 calories. ADF is literally every other day you eat normally, then up to 500 calories, so I would *guess* an average of two pounds a week, give or take. Probably not quite as much as you're hoping for, but intermittent fasting has tons of great health benefits and IMO is easy to stick to. Plus a built-in maintenance program - just reduce the number of fasts you do or increase the number of calories on fasting days once you hit maintenance. I'd recommend to eat your calories in one meal on a fast day, rather than in a few smaller meals.
I just read through this quickly, but thought it was a good summary: Alternate Day Fasting
In the end, you just need to find something that is healthy, easy to stick to, and have a plan for maintenance. I hope you find something that works for you!
Last edited by nonameslob; 11-06-2014 at 02:23 PM.
Partially I am tempted to eat less because I tried 1200 calories a day, and it appeared to be having no impact at all. I didn't watch my calorie intake on the weekends, but it wasn't outside the realm of what is reasonable for a person to eat in a day, I thought. Then I added it up and found that if my daily calorie needs are 1800 (I'm short) cutting to 1200 calories a day leaves me at one pound a week. That is almost nothing. And there are no benefits before I lose maybe twenty pounds, which will take six months, and that's if I don't mess up at all, and I certainly will mess up, probably a lot.
I want to be attractive before I start to age. I want to have children, and that's not safe to do if you're overweight. I feel like I don't have three years to spend losing sixty pounds, which is where I feel like it will end up, with starts and stops, unless I do something drastically different than I have before.
EDIT: Also thank you, guys! You have been really good at responding to something unreasonable that I posted when I was in a particularly bad mood, and with giving good response to things that aren't strictly within the realm of weight loss. Also, sunarie, you look CRAZY young for thirty.
My sister is 5'2 and weighs 180 lbs. She is currently calorie counting, and has her calories set at 1300/day, and allows herself to go 100 under or over depending on how hungry she is, etc. and she is losing weight. On top of this, she has a lot of specific symptoms of a thyroid problem (which our mother has been diagnosed with), which should make it more difficult for her to lose weight.
Now, my sister is not necessarily just like you. Our family tends to have a lot of lean mass which burns calories on its own. And we have a heavier bone structure than a lot of people (I'd say my sister has a medium/heavy build). It is possible she needs more calories than you even though she is shorter. But I thought I'd share that in case it helps put things in perspective for you.
I think it would be a good idea for you to see a doctor, and possibly get some blood tests done to see if you might have a thyroid problem or hormonal imbalance. Most people should be able to lose weight on 1200 calories per day.
Also, I think it would be good for you to try eating 1200 or even 1400 for a month or so, and try and evaluate how you feel and how your weight loss is progressing at the end of it. You might lose more than you think once your body adjusts. And one month isn't going to set you back much if you don't lose anything - at least you aren't likely to gain.
I think you're wrong in saying there are no benefits until you lose 20 lbs. There are huge benefits just to changing your diet to healthier foods (which is necessary to eat 1200 calories and feel full), and significant benefits to things like your energy levels and the way your system functions, just because of altered eating patterns. In the same way that eating too much or too little can make you feel tired and dragged out, or bloated... eating the right amount will make your body work better.
Nonameslob: INTERESTING. That might work well with my personality. And my blood sugar is relatively unstable, I think, so if it fixes that it would be great.
Last edited by ImpalaHoarder; 11-06-2014 at 02:34 PM.
I feel like I don't have three years to spend losing sixty pounds.
If you lose weight at a healthy rate, with healthy eating, and get a doctor involved just enough to make sure you don't have hormone problems interfering (and of course, to check that your healthy eating plan is a good one), you could lose weight at a rate of ~2 lbs/week without starving yourself.
This means that you can lose your 60 lbs in 6 months, up to a year. That is NOT very long. And it's NOT going to take three years unless you eat far too little and keep getting off track because you're starving!
You have time to get your system working well, and find an eating plan that works for you and is sustainable. You really do. What you don't have time for is making yourself ill, losing fat so quickly your cholesterol shoots through the roof, and putting your body into starvation mode due to lack of essential nutrients. If you want to have kids like you mentioned, starving yourself is not going to put your body in a place to do that.
Is there ANY scenario where eating under 800 calories a day and taking vitamins + magnesium and potassium supplements and making sure most of those calories are protein and vegetables would work, as far as you guys know?
Does it work for you to lose the weight faster? Sure it does. Losing weight is pretty easy to do if you are on a VLCD.
Trying to stick to the diet after 3 days, 5 days and beyond is another thing altogether. If you think you have the discipline, then my suggestion is for you to follow a specific VLCD plan and there are many available (not the fad "lemon cleanse" diet etc but more structured ones like IP) as it gives you a better chance of sticking to the diet.
And once you are successful in losing the weight, maintaining the loss is the hardest part of it all. This is where you must learn to develop a healthy relationship with food and good eating habits.
So to me, it doesn't really matter how you get to the weight you want (unless of course, it's a really stupid or dangerous way of doing it like purging or reactive binge/starvation cycle, which may happen if you do a VLCD), it's what you do when you have achieved that loss.
Haha, thank you! I don't get carded anymore when purchasing alcohol, sadly. The picture I picked for my forum avatar is just sorta a good one I think. Was back in July for my brother's wedding.. and then my profile picture is from September when my sister got married. Thank you very much for the compliment though.
Some of us had to learn the hard way and so I respect that you might have to also. It took me decades and many tries at low calorie diets to find out that they didn't work in the long run. Amd I know you're not very concerned with the long run now but after you gain the weight back plus extra pounds a few times then you begin to understand that the long run is what counts.
You are driven by the need to lose weight fast which indicates some kind of unhappiness but weight loss doesn't fix your life. It won't stop idiots from yelling mean things out the window. It won't make people like you and many who have lost weight have also reported more hostility by so called friends and family who were jealous. And let's face it, even skinny people get divorced, have financial problems or may have fertility issues. Weight is not an indication of happiness. Your desire has more to do with a wish to escape how you feel now, but weightloss may not provide that anyway.
It's been said by many on the thread but there are much healthier ways to lose weight. The faster it comes off, the faster and more ferociously it comes back so you have to be prepared for that. I lost 20lbs in 6 months which is the slowest I've ever lost. But this is the longest I've ever kept it off too and what's even better is that I have no fears of it coming back.
Your impatience about weightloss might be a sign of immaturity although I don't mean that in a bad way, maybe you're really young. But you don't have to spend decades fighting a dysfunctional relationship with food and your body and crash diets are known to destroy metabolisms. Yoyo dieting is bad for your metabolism and it's bad for your heart. Dieting this way also becomes progressively harder so if you drop some weight really fast now and then gain it back, it becomes more difficult to lose it again. I don't know the technical term for that but I read about it here sometimes when people don't understand why they don't lose the initial weight with the "whoosh" effect like they used to.
Last edited by Palestrina; 11-07-2014 at 07:09 AM.
Partially I am tempted to eat less because I tried 1200 calories a day, and it appeared to be having no impact at all. I didn't watch my calorie intake on the weekends, but it wasn't outside the realm of what is reasonable for a person to eat in a day, I thought. Then I added it up and found that if my daily calorie needs are 1800 (I'm short) cutting to 1200 calories a day leaves me at one pound a week. That is almost nothing. And there are no benefits before I lose maybe twenty pounds, which will take six months, and that's if I don't mess up at all, and I certainly will mess up, probably a lot.
I want to be attractive before I start to age. I want to have children, and that's not safe to do if you're overweight. I feel like I don't have three years to spend losing sixty pounds, which is where I feel like it will end up, with starts and stops, unless I do something drastically different than I have before.
EDIT: Also thank you, guys! You have been really good at responding to something unreasonable that I posted when I was in a particularly bad mood, and with giving good response to things that aren't strictly within the realm of weight loss. Also, sunarie, you look CRAZY young for thirty.
First off, if you aren't losing when you're eating 1200 calories a day and exercising 5 hours a day, you need to talk to your doctor about getting your thyroid tested. Something isn't right.
Second: a pound a week is NOT nothing. It's a pound less than you weighed last week. in a year that is 52 pounds less, which is a couple dress sizes.
Third: overweight pregnancies aren't across the board unsafe. Something you learn if you get into researching pregnancy and childbirth is that doctors hold you hostage to the safety of your unborn child. I had two kids at well over 250 pounds and I had low blood pressure, low weight gain, perfect labs and zero gestational diabetes. I had no complications with my son who was born at 42 weeks gestation or my daughter who was 4 days over due. Both are bright, happy and healthy children which you'd never believe them to be if you read any of the studies that say they should be fat, autistic or dead because I was fat during my pregnancy. Sorry to rant, but it's a subject that irritates me.
Fourth: you can be attractive AND age. See Helen Mirren.
The journey to a healthy body and mind, can sometimes be a long one.
It is a learning process. The thing I see most, is people who are not willing to learn along the way.
Just my opinion, but, even with supplements/vitamins, anything under 1200 calories, is not sustainable long term. Our bodies do not work that way.
We need to take the time to track, observe, observe certain medical considerations, and learn from what does and does not work, and take it from there!
I totally get feeling like a rebel. I feel like I did that as a teenager when my parents would tell me to eat less or healthier. It can be useful if you're applying it in the right ways. Think about it more as: these mean, not worth my time people see me and think I'm eating pizza, etc but they don't know ME and I am eating all the foods they think only skinny people eat, veggies, fruits, beans, whole grains, lean proteins, etc so in that way I am rebelling against their expectations. At the weight you're at, I think it's fine if you eat 1200-1400 calories a day and if you really want to lose weight quickly, the healthiest way is to do a lot of exercise as well, 2 hours a day and don't do more than that in one session because it'll release cortisol which slows weight loss, if you want to do more then divide it into two sessions. Trying to eat less is not healthy physically or mentally and will backfire on you as it makes it so much easier to gain back the weight and then you're in the same position as you are now. Focus more on the good things you're doing versus on how fast you're losing and definitely try to get some free therapy to help if you can.
I get where you are coming from ImpalaHoarder, I do. I am actually there right now. I feel so stuck that I just want to do something to make the scale move. I've also been anorexic and a binge eater, 6 years recovered on the anorexia.
I'm also studying graduate psychology and actually eating disorders right now. One thing that stood out was that you can make a person as messed up as an anorexic (that brain stuff that someone was talking about) through starvation (which is what you are doing). So be careful, you are on track to mess with your mind a lot more than it is already.
