I'm not eating properly and I need help

jmorla

So I'm 18 years old and I'm 5'3 weighing in about 150 pounds. Since it's summer I usually wake up around 3pm and eat right away which includes rice and vegetables or meat. Around 6-7pm I eat something light like a bowl of cereal and a milkshake (banana with milk and ice). Around 11pm I begin my work out that lasts about 1 hour and by the end of it I'm definitely sweating my butt off haha. I really try not to eat afterwards because then I feel guilty. I understand I'm not eating as much as I should but it's just really hard because I'm trying to lose all this weight and by eating I feel extremely guilty. Any tips? Anything would really help! Thanks in advance.

_Zardoz_

As you have said yourself you know yourself what you are doing wrong. You don't say yourself if you are actually counting your calories that should be the first thing you do without that information it's difficult to make any adjustments. You need the right amount of food to fuel your weightloss and exercise so try and think of it like that rather than as something naughty.

whierd

I am kind of a hypocrite, since I used to sleep in until that time when I was your age, but you should start waking up earlier. Spending so much time sleeping is lowering your metabolism since you aren't active for half the day. Also, by waking up earlier, and being more active, you will stimulate your appetite and hopefully begin to eat more regularly.

I know that it is tempting to just sleep all day, but doing the tough things now means you don't have to do them later.

j6o4

Next time you feel guilty for eating just remember that under eating will damage your metabolism.

mimieon

Have you calculated your TDEE and BMR, and set your calorie goal based on that? (see road map:
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/912920-in-place-of-a-road-map-3-2013). Are you counting calories?

It seems like you are eating very little. Eating too little will not help you lose weight, but it will mess up your metabolism, and is not good for your body in general. Remember that when you feel guilty about eating.

jaxxie

? Without being judgemental, are you working nights? Are you working at all or are you doing what I did and partying your *kitten* off while you can?I

If you are partying like a rockstar...I don't need to continue on, since life won't change until you want it to..............and far be it for me to tell you to. So until I know, I won't judge, but I won't give options or alternatives either. In the meantime, have fun.


EDITED as I spoke too soon and it is best if you seek help, outside MFP. Best of luck.

Oh and Sparkteens has some great resources as well.

katinaxo

Jmorla - YOU HAVE TO EAT AFTER YOUR WORKOUT.
I can't stress this enough - this is the most important time for you to eat! If you don't eat after your workout, what your body actually does is burn your muscle tissue - sure, you'll burn a little bit of fat, but for the most part it's actually your muscle that suffers. This is not what we want - muscle actually is your most effective fat burning tool - the less muscle you have, the lower your base metabolic value.

What you're setting yourself up for is a slowing down of your metabolism - it's something a lot of people do (I did this as well in the past living on digestive biscuits) and it can be very hard to repair.

The best way to lose fat (not 'weight', fat - if you can believe, I weigh 13 kilos more than I used to at 21, but I have a much, much nicer and tighter body now with a lower body fat) is to eat 6-7 small meals a day with a good balance of protein (meat, chicken, fish, etc), complex carbs (sweet potato, wholegrain rices - basically anything that isn't white) and GOOD fats (like avocado, fish oil, nuts).

Don't feel guilty about fueling your body CORRECTLY. Your body needs the food! If you don't eat properly, what it will do is go into 'starvation mode'. We can't outsmart our body by simply eating less - if you're not eating enough, it will hold on to your fat sources to try and save itself - you'll notice that it's harder to burn fat, so you'll eat less and less---where does this lead? Not a good place!

If you have any questions at all just inbox me, always happy to help.
I'm just worried about you xx

jaxxie

Jmorla - YOU HAVE TO EAT AFTER YOUR WORKOUT.
I can't stress this enough - this is the most important time for you to eat! If you don't eat after your workout, what your body actually does is burn your muscle tissue - sure, you'll burn a little bit of fat, but for the most part it's actually your muscle that suffers. This is not what we want - muscle actually is your most effective fat burning tool - the less muscle you have, the lower your base metabolic value.

What you're setting yourself up for is a slowing down of your metabolism - it's something a lot of people do (I did this as well in the past living on digestive biscuits) and it can be very hard to repair.

The best way to lose fat (not 'weight', fat - if you can believe, I weigh 13 kilos more than I used to at 21, but I have a much, much nicer and tighter body now with a lower body fat) is to eat 6-7 small meals a day with a good balance of protein (meat, chicken, fish, etc), complex carbs (sweet potato, wholegrain rices - basically anything that isn't white) and GOOD fats (like avocado, fish oil, nuts).

Don't feel guilty about fueling your body CORRECTLY. Your body needs the food! If you don't eat properly, what it will do is go into 'starvation mode'. We can't outsmart our body by simply eating less - if you're not eating enough, it will hold on to your fat sources to try and save itself - you'll notice that it's harder to burn fat, so you'll eat less and less---where does this lead? Not a good place!

If you have any questions at all just inbox me, always happy to help.
I'm just worried about you xx

While I agree with the premise, would you mind stating the resources you actually got this information from? I'm pretty sure your body is not going to eat up your Lean muscle if you don't eat after working out. There are all sorts of mitigating factors, including the fact that the op strikes me as younger than given age, and info the reader doesn't know. So quit spouting rhetoric and state fact and if you do quote fact, please list the resource.

In the meantime OP...do some research, aka google.

katinaxo

Jmorla - YOU HAVE TO EAT AFTER YOUR WORKOUT.
I can't stress this enough - this is the most important time for you to eat! If you don't eat after your workout, what your body actually does is burn your muscle tissue - sure, you'll burn a little bit of fat, but for the most part it's actually your muscle that suffers. This is not what we want - muscle actually is your most effective fat burning tool - the less muscle you have, the lower your base metabolic value.

What you're setting yourself up for is a slowing down of your metabolism - it's something a lot of people do (I did this as well in the past living on digestive biscuits) and it can be very hard to repair.

The best way to lose fat (not 'weight', fat - if you can believe, I weigh 13 kilos more than I used to at 21, but I have a much, much nicer and tighter body now with a lower body fat) is to eat 6-7 small meals a day with a good balance of protein (meat, chicken, fish, etc), complex carbs (sweet potato, wholegrain rices - basically anything that isn't white) and GOOD fats (like avocado, fish oil, nuts).

Don't feel guilty about fueling your body CORRECTLY. Your body needs the food! If you don't eat properly, what it will do is go into 'starvation mode'. We can't outsmart our body by simply eating less - if you're not eating enough, it will hold on to your fat sources to try and save itself - you'll notice that it's harder to burn fat, so you'll eat less and less---where does this lead? Not a good place!

If you have any questions at all just inbox me, always happy to help.
I'm just worried about you xx

While I agree with the premise, would you mind stating the resources you actually got this information from? I'm pretty sure your body is not going to eat up your Lean muscle if you don't eat after working out. There are all sorts of mitigating factors, including the fact that the op strikes me as younger than given age, and info the reader doesn't know. So quit spouting rhetoric and state fact and if you do quote fact, please list the resource.

In the meantime OP...do some research, aka google.

From schooling and various other sources - while at school I received education on the bodies energy systems and the effect of exercise on the skeletal muscle. As a competitor, it is understood that muscle loss is experienced during cardiovascular activity and especially if nutrition is not enough to support the body in exercise.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19164770
"However, both MPS (Muscle Protein Synthesis) and MPB (Muscle Protein Breakdown) are elevated after exercise in the fasted state, when net muscle protein balance remains negative. Positive net balance is achieved only when amino acid availability is increased, thereby raising MPS markedly."

In short - you will be in a negative if you do not replenish.

From a study on protein metabolism.
http://www.uni.edu/dolgener/Advanced_Sport_Nutrition/Protein_metabolism_exercise.pdf
"...It seems reasonable to predict, a priori, that if better methods were applied,
the results would show that, if exercise were intense enough and/or long enough,
muscle would show acutely a net negative protein balance. Extrapolating from
animals, the mechanisms would likely be a fall in protein synthesis and a rise
in protein breakdown. In the only study addressing this, Carraro and colleagues
did indeed see a fall in human muscle protein synthesis during 4 h of walking"

Same study:
"In rats, when muscle
protein synthesis decreased 26% as a result of treadmill running, there was a fourfold increase in the amount of eIF4E in the inactive form (43). Additionally, eIF4E
association with eIF4G was decreased 71%. When rats were fed after exercise,
muscle protein synthesis was restored to control rates, and this was associated with
an increase in the active form of eIF4E and the eIF4E-eIF4G complex."

Layne Norton - PHD Nutritional Sciences - this is a bit of a rant video, but describes how long exercise and low calories can be damaging in long term.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHzie6XRGk

I'm not saying that she needs to get onto protein shakes and eat beef at every meal, or that she should choose not to exercise if she doesn't happen to have something around to nibble on after every time she exercises - I'm saying that she needs to learn good habits and that if she really does care about losing fat (not just weight, but fat) in an effective and long lasting way, it's going to take eating properly to get there. It's a simple equation: muscle mass = higher metabolic capacity, muscle loss = lower metabolic capacity (and this is true no matter what age you are) - it would make sense to do everything we can to preserve and increase muscle mass (no, we don't have to become the Hulk, haha) so that we are able to burn fat more effectively, even while sitting on our butts. Train smarter, not harder.

jmorla, regardless of all of this ^^^^ the main thing to remember is to not feel guilty about eating healthy and giving your body what it needs, and remember not to become obsessive, I'll have a sneaky little ice cream here and there too, we just learn to eat better 80% of the time It's all about balance. xx