Trying to get off the rebound treadmill

tklow

I'm new here, so a short intro. When I was younger I could eat anything and never went above 105 lbs (I'm 5'4" and tiny boned). In my early thirties, I messed up my metabolism during periods of stress where I wasn't eating, my weight started to creep. I remember being shocked when I hit 115 for the first time because I'd never gained weight before (funny, in retrospect). Long story short, that little weight creep kept gonig until I hit 176, which is a lot on my little frame and just going into the obese zone. That was a wake up call. At my low weight I felt fantastic. Now I feel terrible a lot of the time. I'm snoring, sleeping poorly, have heartburn a lot, I tire easily, and my body is just telling me it's not running well. I come from a family of people with Calista Flockheart type bodies (without dieting). We're just meant to be small ( I could talk here about the body shaming I was subjected to when I was very small and eating lots of food, because people assume a tiny person is either vain or anorexic, but that's another matter entirely. We all have an ideal healthy weight, and it isnt' about the number on the scale!). My goal is feel better and get my blood sugar out of the very-high normal range before it's too late.

I've been able to lose weight on diets but always rebound after 15 or 20 lbs. Through years of trial and error I have learned a few things. First, my body is very stubborn about letting go of fat, so reducing my overall calories moderately over the long term never seems to produce an ounce of weight loss. I have to go on an actual diet and cut back a lot to lose any fat. It works, but I can only do it for so long before I get frustrated with it and rebound.

In the last year I think I found a key to making this work for me. Late last year I went on an fairly intense diet (1100 to 1400 cals a day, carefully chosen for maximum nutrition) and took off about 12 pounds in 7 weeks. Then, I stopped. I gave myself a break and went back to eating normally, but paying attention to portion sizes and limiting high calorie foods. It worked. I did not lose any more weight, but I also did not gain any back. I decided to wait a couple of months before dropping any more to allow my body to adjust and to minimize muscle loss and metabolic panic (I swear, that's a real thing). I coasted longer than expected, so it's been more like six months, but I'm continuing to maintain that 12-13 lb loss. While I want to lose a lot more, I feel I've hit on something that works for me, but maybe not for others.

Because my body is stubborn about losing fat, I'm trying round 2: I'm back on the very low cal diet (just lean meat and fish, eggs, kefir and yogurt, brown rice, a little wholegrain bread, and a wide range of fruit and veg) and want to drop another 10 or 12 pounds, then I'm going to take a break again because it has worked so well. I feel that allowing my body to settle into the new weight has worked so much better than losing even more and succumbing to rebound due to metabolism issues. I've kept the weight off with little effort this time and that feels like a bigger success than larger weight drops I've managed in the past.

I can't say if this is going to continue to work for me, but it's my plan and I feel it's a pretty healthy one. I think it's a good balance between the low cal diet I have to use to actually burn fat, and taking it easy on my body overall.

I also own a treadmill and try to do an hour a few times a week. The Zombies, Run! app is a good motivator these days.

I'm not sure if anyone else has done a similar scheme. It's a bit frustrating that it will take over 1.5 years to get down to where I want to be, but if it stays off and I maintain muscle, that is good enough for me.

Current goals: never get over 170 again, and try to get my BMI out of the overweight range. Then I'll reasses.