Finally Reaching out.

KoalaDaedelus

Dear group users and admins,

I have been reading a few of the posts here, including a few very important ones;
(such as:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/872212/youre-probably-eating-more-than-you-think#latest
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/818082/exercise-calories-again-wtf/p1
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/819055/setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets/p1 )

But I am still a bit confused about it and decided to (finally) reach out.

I'll try to give my history/stats for a bit;
- I've always struggled with food amounts, and I really love to eat, cook and snack;
- I think I might even go as far and say I'm addicted to food;
- I'm still very overweight after a few years trying to work it (on and off);
- Everytime I start a diet / working out or other form, I gain weight instead of losing it;
- I never had any rhythm regarding sleep.

Currently this has me at 180 kg with a length of 180cm at age 26 (male), however I am not ashamed of myself (which might be a problem?). I still engage in rather hard work such as working on cars or building stuff. I have started my graduation internship lately and have finally gained some rhythm regarding sleeppatterns.

I'm familiar with the following theories;

- When you start working out, you'll always gain some weight first;
- Eat less, more working out;
- Count your food by "points", eat 40 points a day;
- Estimate calories usage, Count calories you eat, eat 500 less;
- Drink a lot of water.

I had appointments with a dietitian, but she kept insisting on the "eat less, move more", which wasn't the right approach to keep repeating it, nor working for me.

I have had some success in the past with counting my calories and eating less, I set MFP to sedentary, since I have a deskjob and (now) actually nearly sit still all day, and "am allowed to eat 2370kcal" to lose 1kg a week.

However I kept getting very hungry, and 'hangry', which passes when I eat something (fruit, snacks, whatever). I'm currently not working out, since I was either too hungry or had too little energy to get a proper workout done (and with my current figure, working out by walking or cycling isn't exactly pleasant for my upper legs/manparts and properly hurts if irritated).

The counting calories doesn't seem to work anymore, so I decided to get a Garmin Vivosmart HR to try and measure my calories usage which I've been wearing for about week now to get a benchmark. This has given me the following stats:

- I get about 6+ hours of sleep every night;
- Generally, I walk slightly less than 5000 steps a day;
- Avarage heartrate during the whole week is between 93 and 120;

Using this data, the GarminApp combined with MFP tells me I should eat about 7500+ kcal a day to lose 1kg a week..

Is it really possible I should eat about 7000 kcal to lose weight? How does that even work?
I want to start working out again, cause that makes me feel good and exhausted, but I don't have the energy or motivation to start. Especially seeing I should eat about 7500kcal a day which I find weird.

I hope I've given you enough insight to help me start up again.

(I do apologise for the long text and if the text is a little bit hard to read, English is not my first language, nor have I used it a lot recently).

Kind regards,

Daedelus

SideSteel

Thanks for posting and welcome to the group.

So first of all, as you know --- fat loss comes from eating less energy than you burn. If you continue to create a higher energy demand compared to energy coming in, you will use stored energy (body-fat) to make up that difference.


I have my doubts that you could lose weight consistently on a 7500 calorie intake per day however I also don't know that I'd necessarily even try that.

A better question for you would be this: Is there a way to lose weight consistently, at a reasonable pace (.5 to 1.5% BW per week for most people) such that I'm not experiencing intolerable levels of hunger. Some hunger is perfectly fine.


The main things I'd look at with regards to hunger are protein intake, fiber intake, food selection (which foods comprise your calorie allotment) and how those foods are partitioned into each meal on a daily basis.

KoalaDaedelus

Thank you for your response,

I can give you some insight in food selection, since they are slightly planned each week.

Breakfast and Lunch consist a total of 12 brown slices with some butter and ham (In weekends often with with cheese, lettuce, tomato and cucumber). Calculated these avarage 1600 kcal in total.

At work/Intership I often eat 1 or 2 oranges, no clue about kcal to be honest.

Dinners mostly consists of cooked chicken with cooked potatoes (or oven-variants) or rice/noodles with quite some spices. I try to stay away from sauces.

I'm trying to start and eat fish, but don't really like the taste yet and averages for about 600 kcal. Most of the time I do miss out on veggies but I tend to eat tomato's and cucumber during the day, so I don't really see that as an issue.

However, if I really get out of time, I do reach for the fryer sometimes and make some fries and snacks (which I know isn't pretty smart) I have not yet reached an ideal replacement meal.

The downside is, when I'm feeling hungry after an exhausting day, I tend to reach for snacks such as crisps / nuts etc. which obviously compromise my 'good' food selection during the day (which is probably the biggest challenge).

Addition:
Drinks mostly consist of water, totalling to about 1,5 - 2 liters day.

SideSteel

KoalaDaedelus wrote: »

Thank you for your response,

I can give you some insight in food selection, since they are slightly planned each week.

Breakfast and Lunch consist a total of 12 brown slices with some butter and ham (In weekends often with with cheese, lettuce, tomato and cucumber). Calculated these avarage 1600 kcal in total.

At work/Intership I often eat 1 or 2 oranges, no clue about kcal to be honest.

Dinners mostly consists of cooked chicken with cooked potatoes (or oven-variants) or rice/noodles with quite some spices. I try to stay away from sauces.

I'm trying to start and eat fish, but don't really like the taste yet and averages for about 600 kcal. Most of the time I do miss out on veggies but I tend to eat tomato's and cucumber during the day, so I don't really see that as an issue.

However, if I really get out of time, I do reach for the fryer sometimes and make some fries and snacks (which I know isn't pretty smart) I have not yet reached an ideal replacement meal.

The downside is, when I'm feeling hungry after an exhausting day, I tend to reach for snacks such as crisps / nuts etc. which obviously compromise my 'good' food selection during the day (which is probably the biggest challenge).

Addition:
Drinks mostly consist of water, totalling to about 1,5 - 2 liters day.

What are brown slices?

KoalaDaedelus

My bad, that would be presliced brown bread, such as whole grain bread (and farmersbread?).

SideSteel

KoalaDaedelus wrote: »

My bad, that would be presliced brown bread, such as whole grain bread (and farmersbread?).

So I'll start by saying that in the context of back and forth writing in an internet forum there's some limitations with the depth in which we can get into habits and hunger and things of that nature.

Having said that, while there's nothing wrong with bread necessarily, it tends to be a low satiety food choice.

This doesn't mean you can't eat any of it, however you're eating 12 slices of it. That's a lot of calories and carbohydrate that you could be allocating towards foods with a much higher satiety.

If I were you, the first change I would make would be to significantly reduce the bread and also the butter from your diet. I would try to replace this with a substantial quantity of protein and vegetables, maybe some additional fruit if you prefer.

If you do this, you'll probably experience a LOT more fullness. Fullness may make it easier to stick to a lower calorie diet, and sticking to a lower calorie diet will increase your rate of weight loss.

Now having said that it's ALSO possible that you could eat more calories, however when satiety is becoming an issue I would not strictly look at calories as the culprit. In your case you can absolutely mitigate some of these hunger issues by modifying your food choices.

KoalaDaedelus

Thank you for your replies.

SideSteel wrote: »

If I were you, the first change I would make would be to significantly reduce the bread and also the butter from your diet. I would try to replace this with a substantial quantity of protein and vegetables, maybe some additional fruit if you prefer.

Just to give some more information: The amount of butter I use is about 5 grams per 2 slices. I hardly use it for cooking (I like to use olive or sunflowerseedoil).
But apart from that, what might be a good replacement for e.g. breakfast meals? Fruit does indeed have my preference above vegetables.

SideSteel wrote: »

If you do this, you'll probably experience a LOT more fullness. Fullness may make it easier to stick to a lower calorie diet, and sticking to a lower calorie diet will increase your rate of weight loss.

Now having said that it's ALSO possible that you could eat more calories, however when satiety is becoming an issue I would not strictly look at calories as the culprit. In your case you can absolutely mitigate some of these hunger issues by modifying your food choices.

I agree with you about the amount of calories, that's what lead me to create this post in the first place I would much rather go for a 'satisfied' feeling and being able to keep a lower calorie diet.

nossmf

KoalaDaedelus wrote: »

(I do apologise for the long text and if the text is a little bit hard to read, English is not my first language, nor have I used it a lot recently).

SideSteel hasn't mentioned anything about this comment, but I wanted to point out your English was completely understandable.

For breakfast, scientists have calculated if you start your day with at least 20g of protein your sense of fullness throughout the entire day drastically increases. Ham is a good start towards that protein goal, as would be eggs at breakfast and peanut butter at lunch. You can still have brown slices, but maybe instead of 12 slices (by the way, is that 12 at breakfast and another 12 at lunch, or 12 total?) cut back to 2-3 slices to go with the ham and eggs, a glass of milk if dairy is not an issue.

KoalaDaedelus

Thank you for the reply.

Those are not 12 breakfast + 12 lunch, but I get the confusion.

Generally I have 4 slices for breakfast (between 7.30 / 8.30) + 2 inbetween if I'm very hungry (10.30 / 11.00), and the remaining 6 (or 8) for lunch (12.30/13.00).

I have been trying to replace the inbetween with fruits such as oranges, which seems to work.

Addition:
Does it matter if these are boiled eggs? And what sort of ham did you mean, I generally have precut thin slices for on bread

KoalaDaedelus

Little update:

As of today (workday) I started my day with the following:

I made a smoothie consisting of the following products, instead of having bread as breakfast:
(No food is lost making a smoothie, since the blender is also the drinking container)

- Cruesli (456kcal per 100grams, 60 grams) - 275 kcal
- Half-frozen Fruit (35kcal per 100, 90 grams) - 31,5 kcal
- Greek yoghurt (fuller) (120kcal per 100, 80 grams) - 96 kcal
- Yoghurt (55kcal per 100, 225 grams) - 124 kcal

Which gave me a total of +- 530kcal for breakfast.

Following that I started getting hungry at around 10 o'clock and started getting quite hungry at 11.00 at which point I'd really like to take something to eat. I keep drinking water (had 500ml) to try and trying to stretch it to 12.00 o'clock before I eat something again.

For breakfast I have planned 8 slices of brown bread, with thin ham slices and some butter, I didn't have peanut butter available yet to give it a try.

Would you say this is how a normal morning/day would be like, to properly loose weight instead of eating extra?