Switching from fat mentality to fit mentality: A rant

Kerryatoon

I hope posting this here is ok..I respect and value all the advice and knowledge in this group so much and I wanted to see if anyone has suggestions or can relate to what I'm going through.
I'm kinda freaking out. I've inched up 100 again on my cals this week as suggested in recomp/weightlifting threads, multiple calculators and articles I've been reading. I hadn't gained any weight and still lost inches over the last 3 weeks at 1500 and the previous 2 weeks at 1400 so I'm up to 1600 now. It's frustrating and scary to allow myself to eat that much (I'm not having any problem enjoying it though..which scares me) I still need to work on higher protein, lower fat to fit my macros but that's another story. I'm trying to find MY maintenance at my current activity level. I'm not terribly unhappy with my size now but still have a pooch on my belly and some flab here and there I know is fat that I want to lose. According to MFP I should still be losing about 1/2-1lb week at 1600. But that doesn't seem right as I haven't lost anything worth mentioning (.25lb) in 5 weeks now. I'm still seeing strength gains every week on my SL program and I know this part of the journey takes mad patience but it's more of a head trip than I was counting on.
I was told to try 1600 for a couple weeks and if I saw no weight gain to try 1700 for a couple weeks and so on. I'm looking for that point where I "tip the scales" so to speak and gain a pound or two. Then I'll know where my maintenance point is and how much of a deficit to run to maximize fat loss and minimize muscle loss. I'm sorry to ramble but i need a place to talk this all out. Part of me wants to just drop back to 1200 but I've worked so hard for this muscle and I DO NOT want to lose it.
It is soooo hard to change my mindset from "I'm too fat and need to lose weight" to "I'm pretty good now and want to get bigger, stronger muscles" I still want to lose a bit more body fat but honestly I don't want to get much "skinnier". I've spent most of my adult life with the I'm fat mentality, and have villanized food because of it. I eat 1600 cals and then lie awake at night feeling guilty. I have never tried to do any kind of "body building" before, so I'm taking it all on faith that it works and that (good) food is my friend.
I LOVE my muscles and how strong I feel. I LOVE lifting more every week. I LOVE that I can run a mile now! I LOVE how I'm looking in my clothes! I just have never been ok with weighing 148-50 lbs before. When I think goal weight I think 125. When I think 125 I think 1200 cals.
I guess I have to re-learn how I see myself, my body, food as fuel and my fitness goals. It's really revealing to me what a messed up relationship I've had with food and the scale most of my life. Any advice or suggestions welcome, and thank you in advance for your patience. You all can bill me for the therapy session..lol.

SideSteel

I just want to wrap my head around the strategic part about this:

You are reverse dieting to try to establish your maintenance intake, then you're going to go into a small deficit?

Kerryatoon

@SideSteel yes that's the idea. I was lifting and eating @ my original deficit for weight loss chosen by MFP 1200. This was getting me 1.5-2lb/week (10-15%) before I started SL. It was suggested by multiple people that 1200 was way too low if I was looking for strength gains so I should up until I find my maintenance. Have done multiple TDEE calculators and just confused me more. Still on the fence whether I want to recomp or do a slight bulk/cut. Read that thread here and not sure what would be best for me as I still think I need to lose about 15 lbs.

heybales

Just be aware that if you increase that 100 cal daily for a week or two - and gain 1-2 lbs - it wasn't fat - it was water.

If fat and you only increased 100 calories over true maintenance - it would take about 35 days to show a slow increase of 1 lb.
And actually with lifting - it would not be all fat.

Any faster changes is water weight.

I'll bet your workouts are getting better, and your daily activity movement is higher than before.
First thing body does to adapt to eating what could be too low is slow you down in movement.

So your real TDEE prior was lower - now it's going up as you increase the food and level of movement.

Isn't that great - getting to eat more and still not gain - but improve workouts?!

And great realization about breaking the yo-yo diet cycle. Many reach 60 having done that entire life with terrible relationship with body and food the whole time, before coming to realization.

You got this. Inches lost can always outweigh (weigh! ah!) scale weight lost when body is transforming - and since people only see one of those.....

Besides, wouldn't you like to eat the max you could eat and still lose, rather than doing bare minimum and may not even losing at the same rate?
And workouts would be worse at that slower pace with stressed out body.

taco_inspector

@Kerryatoon -- If you're comfortable with your gains and are feeling better where you are, you can always hang-out there (1600) for a while and see... (might be a good place to hang-out and refine macros?) 100-cals daily would be in the range of 0.25 lbs weekly (either way), so your weight change "detection point" value will be quite slight.

The brain-game sounds like a tougher part; it's a shame that we all seem to be conditioned into some really unfortunate ways of thinking. You mention your mindset of "I'm too fat and need to lose weight", which is something that is a common brain program.

While a pound of fat weighs a pound, a pound of muscle also weighs a pound. - Your body's weight is made up of MUCH more than fat-weight. A common threshold for obesity in a female is a non-fat/lean body mass below 68% (greater than 32% fat weight).

We all seemed to be programmed that any weight over some arbitrary figure is "fat-weight" and so we all think what you're expressing above " I'm too fat and need to lose weight ". Why can't we be comfortable with adding useful mass (muscle) to our bodies and allowing whatever fat remains simply be a part of the whole? If we could embrace that "Overweight" is not always over-fat, and that "Overweight" is, at best, an inexact if not arbitrary value, we wouldn't have to battle with the confusions that you're facing now.

• Fat has weight, but it is a small percentage of your body weight.
• When you weigh yourself, you are weighing your entire body (lean mass, fat mass, waste mass, water, etc)
• Losing weigh is a loss of "body", while some level of preservation of lean mass can be attained, weight loss is losing "body", most of which is NOT fat, even for the very obese.
• While using a scale to check your body's weight may be a reasonable way to assess some changes, it cannot and should not be used as an exclusive measure of change, unless your only goal is an arbitrary value on that scale.

A similar confusion exists for muscles. Muscles have mass and they can be strong (trained) or weak (untrained). We all tend to think that building strength (training muscles) is adding muscle tissue... Not always the case. There are wiser people than me that can expound on where, why, and when a body would build additional muscle fiber, but I believe that most of these discussions would include an environment where the existing muscle is being repetitively taxed AND the body is being properly nourished.

Again, if we could only change our mental programming to think of building strength (and muscle tissue may or may not added) and viewing out body's weight as a collection of mostly not-fat, the struggle that you're looking at now might just be a little less daunting...

As you build strength, you may build muscle, which may increase your body-weight, if everything else about your body's make-up remains unchanged. The scale cannot be your only measure. How are your clothes fitting? What jiggly-bits are no longer jiggly? Your endurance and strength are improving (awesome!!!), how is your rate of progress? More advanced (and expensive) body measurements might be entertaining (body composition scans/fat-tanks, etc), but might not be as available to you as simply feeling better about your daily progress on strength and other goals (you're prolly already tracking these from what you've posted). Why not use your velocity of progress as a 'tuning point' for your caloric and macro tweeking, while keeping only a minor eye on that scale as you progress?

Kerryatoon

@heybales thank you for that reminder. Yes it is great to be able to eat more and still maintain my weight. I'm also continuing to see progress in my lifting, I'm working on shifting the focus to that.
@standenvernet Wow yes! it is mental programming and I can recognize it as being irrational, but its going to take time to change that thinking I suspect. Thank you for clarifying some of the ideas in my writing.. losing weight is losing "body" not all fat. Definitely, I got pretty weak after losing at 2lb/week and I'm sure loving the feeling of (trained) muscle. I am currently tracking other metrics and keeping track of my progress in the gym. I can see and feel a definite improvement and steady progress in my workouts. Thank you for your response..

taco_inspector

Kerryatoon wrote: »

...it is great to be able to eat more and still maintain my weight. I'm also continuing to see progress in my lifting...
... loving the feeling of (trained) muscle... ... I can see and feel a definite improvement and steady progress ...

caroldavison332

Although I am muscly, I refer to myself as over fat I have an unhealthy amount of it. I've started eating right and walking 6 miles a day. I thought it would exhaust my hyperactive, even for a husky, puppy Tika. Now she brings me tennis balls to throw while I am lying in bed trying to sleep. I think that I've wound her up instead. Regardless, It's great to have a hairy little exercise partner.