If I do extreme restriction I lose, but if I a little increase (still deficit) I gain!!! HELP PLEAS

metallicwasye

I just came off of an incredibly restrictive diet. I mean I lose a very large amount of weight in a very short period of time which I do not recommend AT ALL but I am trying to get back to normal eating habits while maintaining my weight. I recently moved my itnake up to 1200 and now I am gaining weigh. I was at median of the healthy bmi range and I was overeating. (never counted calls but 2500-3000 a day. My family is really naturally skinny. I got down 20 lbs (still healthy range) and do not want to lose more weight. But I feel like I am playing tug of war with myself. Is there like a perfect calorie intake??? bc if I'm too low I lose if I'm low I gain I don't know what to do. i thought slowly building up would work but I just added some and 2 week later I've gained 3 consistent morning weigh in pounds. Have I *kitten* my metabolism completely?! Eating what I eat when I was a higher bmi would've made me lose for sure. I just want to maintain....
I literally was like okay let me eat under my BMR (1300) bc surely I cant gain then maybe that will balance my slow metabolism and eventually I can go up BUT NO IT DOESNT.

Courtscan2

It's quite possible your body is simply retaining water as a result of the increase in intake, particularly if you have increased your carbohydrate intake. If you are still eating in a deficit, you are not gaining back fat. If you were eating an extremely restrictive diet, your metabolism won't be broken, but you may have affected hormones, water weight, and a whole host of other natural processes, therefore it's a very good idea to get yourself on a more normal diet to regulate your body a bit, then introduce a small, reasonable deficit if you still feel you need to lose more weight. Extreme diets are not sustainable, not healthy, and not a good idea, really.

metallicwasye

lemongirlbc wrote: »

It's quite possible your body is simply retaining water as a result of the increase in intake, particularly if you have increased your carbohydrate intake. If you are still eating in a deficit, you are not gaining back fat. If you were eating an extremely restrictive diet, your metabolism won't be broken, but you may have affected hormones, water weight, and a whole host of other natural processes, therefore it's a very good idea to get yourself on a more normal diet to regulate your body a bit, then introduce a small, reasonable deficit if you still feel you need to lose more weight. Extreme diets are not sustainable, not healthy, and not a good idea, really.

I think your right. I did measurements for jeans a couple weeks ago (waist, low hip, thigh) and I just measured and I actually haven’t gone up anywhere in my legs (I just drank a bunch of water so my waist won’t be accurate). I’m less anxious now and I’m just gonna let my body adjust and I’ll increase.
Thank you! That definitely soothed my worries

nanastaci2020

What time periods are we talking about? If you showed a + on the scale over the course of a day or even a week, that is not enough 'data' to confirm that you were gaining weight. The increase could simply be from having more food in your system being 'processed' out.

Comparing weighins in the very short term makes it hard to know what is true weight change and what is water weight. Choose to eat at a healthy intake level for you & your goals. Do that for 6-8 weeks. Then compare now vs then.

NovusDies

It takes 3500 or more calories of surplus to gain a pound of fat. The quicker the scale moves the less likely it has anything to do with fat and the more likely it is water or additional waste in your system. In ideal and consistent times it takes about 6 weeks of data to determine your new weight trend. Certainly not days and what you have been doing is not ideal.

You have stressed your system but not broken it. It will take time and patience for things to even back out.

briscogun

I wish I could post my weight graph from MFP here for you to see, it doesn't seem to let me do that, but if you could see it you would see a very slow gradual weight loss over many months, and then when I went into maintenance, it looks like a seismograph for a massive earthquake. Maintenance is a TOTALLY different animal, at least for me. I have some wild swings in my weight. I'll go up 3 lbs in a day. Some days my calories are up, some days they are down. Some days my weight shoots up for no apparent reason, some days it drops.

Not only am I using a weight trending app (Happy Scale) to keep track of trends but I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of my weigh-ins (mostly every day, skip a day here or there) so I can track the averages.

In maintenance you really don't need to watch the daily up and down so much but see the TRENDS. It's not like losing weight. You are trying to keep within a RANGE not right at a specific weight, which is literally impossible and you will drive yourself NUTS! My range is -5 lbs/+5lbs from my goal weight. That's a 10 lb range that I can be in and not stress. If I go up a few, then I watch my calories a bit and it'll pop back down. If I start getting a bit low? Woo Hoo! Ice cream time!

It's taken me months to switch my mental and emotional perspective from a losing one to a maintaining one. In some ways maintenance is harder. It's not as linear as losing weight is. You have to be prepared for the small ups and downs and not worry about them. It's just normal. But this is what you worked so hard for so you can try to live a little and not be tied down by eating at a deficit.

If you go up a few pounds here or there don't stress just keep logging and tracking so you can see the trends over time (weekly, monthly, etc). Then you can make small adjustments over time.

Good luck!