What if I am just meant to be fat?

Scooter_99

Is this even possible??? Can your body just like where it is and that is why you don't lose? I am so sad that nothing changes despite my effort. I feel defeated. Depressed. Disgusting.

x0PIEtRINA

I think like that allllllll the time. I swear my body is different from everyone elses and wants to stay this way. :-(
but it won't do us any good to think like this........IMO for people like us I feel in order to lose serious pounds I would most likely need a personal trainer, and I would need to be working out 6 days a week for more than an hour..I guess our bodies are stubborn! good luck with your journey though, don't give up.

zoeysasha37

What exactly are you doing that hasn't worked?? Are you weighing, measuring, and logging your food? To achieve weight loss, you must be in a, calorie deficit. How have you made sure that your eating at a deficit?
I remember the feeling of being depressed and disgusted, and yes it sucks. But if you really want it, then find a way. Tell us your current stats and maybe we can help

Scooter_99

I totally agree with how x0PIEtRINA feels. I feel like my body is just different from everyone else's and wants to be this way. Here is how I am doing this: I count every calorie and eat clean. About 1400 cals a day. I either swim or use a treadmill 4 days a week. I have gained 30 lbs in the last year and have been to several doctors to find out the culprit. The only thing that is off is that I am estrogen dominant. I don't think that is a huge deal breaker though and I offset this by using bio-identical progesterone. I am only 5'2 and I weigh 175. I am 33, never had kids. This is the biggest I have EVER been and I am still shocked when I see that number, "Normal" me hovers around 135.

martinel2099

That's something I often wondered to myself, I tried everything I knew how to do and nothing worked. Until now. Forget everything you "think" you know about weight loss.

Firstly your body is made to store fat when you eat at a calorie surplus. This was vital for the survival of our species during our evolution because there wasn't always a guaranteed meal. It's not a curse, it's a biological advantage that doesn't have much of a purpose now that there's a grocery store every few blocks away.

To lose wight, it's a simple matter of calories in and calories out. I don't care how "healthy" you think you are eating or how much exercise you do, you will gain weight if you do not eat at a calorie deficit. To lose weight properly I have a few tips

1. Take the guess work out of measuring your food, measure and weigh everything. Buy an electronic scale that weighs in grams. Call me geeky or whatever, but I have one at my desk at work and one in my kitchen at home, I hate guesswork.

2. If you eat at a restaurant you are essentially guessing how many calories you food contains. Just because a restaurant posts nutritent facts on their website doesn't mean the cook won't be heavy handed on the butter and oils and other ingredients.

3. When you prepare you meals you need to weigh and measure everything. Did you know that if you measure peanut butter that you are actually dong it wrong? Peanut butter and items liek it should be weighed,and the difference in calories when you compare the two are significantly different.

4. Weight loss can be achieved in the kitchen, you don't need exercise. This is true, you can lose weight not going to the gym at all if you eat at a calorie deficit, remember points 1-3.

5. Though going to the gym is not required, it can help improve your general health and help mitigate muscle loss while on a weight loss diet. I don't want you to get into the mindset that you have to bust your butt at the gym in order to enjoy food, that's not a healthy relationship. By picking up a heavy lifting program like Ice Cream fitness (you can youtube it) you can improve muscle strength, mitigate muscle loss while at a calorie deficit and it will give you extra calories to enjoy per day.

6. When recording exercise you need to be careful. My fitness pal is not very accurate in my opinion. If I lift weights, I generally cut the calories by at least 30%. My fitness pal gives you an estimate and it's impossible to know the actual number, but I feel cutting the estimate by 30 to 50% helps. If you over-estimate the calories burnt while exercising and under-estimate the calories consumed in food you are in for a world of trouble.

du6157

I went to a dietician and she told me you cannot exercise your way to weight loss. You must decrease your daily calories by 500 below your current daily total to lose 1 pound per week. I'm 5'3", 54 years old, and my daily calorie total is 1200. I am losing a little over a pound a week. It's harder to lose weight when you pass 50. I exercise 5-6 days per week, with strength training, running (3-5 miles) and bicycling. I was over 200 lbs. when I started running. My body shape is changing as the inches come off. Focus on getting healthy, not skinny.

wkwebby

That's something I often wondered to myself, I tried everything I knew how to do and nothing worked. Until now. Forget everything you "think" you know about weight loss.

Firstly your body is made to store fat when you eat at a calorie surplus. This was vital for the survival of our species during our evolution because there wasn't always a guaranteed meal. It's not a curse, it's a biological advantage that doesn't have much of a purpose now that there's a grocery store every few blocks away.

To lose wight, it's a simple matter of calories in and calories out. I don't care how "healthy" you think you are eating or how much exercise you do, you will gain weight if you do not eat at a calorie deficit. To lose weight properly I have a few tips

1. Take the guess work out of measuring your food, measure and weigh everything. Buy an electronic scale that weighs in grams. Call me geeky or whatever, but I have one at my desk at work and one in my kitchen at home, I hate guesswork.

2. If you eat at a restaurant you are essentially guessing how many calories you food contains. Just because a restaurant posts nutritent facts on their website doesn't mean the cook won't be heavy handed on the butter and oils and other ingredients.

3. When you prepare you meals you need to weigh and measure everything. Did you know that if you measure peanut butter that you are actually dong it wrong? Peanut butter and items liek it should be weighed,and the difference in calories when you compare the two are significantly different.

4. Weight loss can be achieved in the kitchen, you don't need exercise. This is true, you can lose weight not going to the gym at all if you eat at a calorie deficit, remember points 1-3.

5. Though going to the gym is not required, it can help improve your general health and help mitigate muscle loss while on a weight loss diet. I don't want you to get into the mindset that you have to bust your butt at the gym in order to enjoy food, that's not a healthy relationship. By picking up a heavy lifting program like Ice Cream fitness (you can youtube it) you can improve muscle strength, mitigate muscle loss while at a calorie deficit and it will give you extra calories to enjoy per day.

6. When recording exercise you need to be careful. My fitness pal is not very accurate in my opinion. If I lift weights, I generally cut the calories by at least 30%. My fitness pal gives you an estimate and it's impossible to know the actual number, but I feel cutting the estimate by 30 to 50% helps. If you over-estimate the calories burnt while exercising and under-estimate the calories consumed in food you are in for a world of trouble.

This is great, but I'd like to add one thing as well. I was hovering at 160 +/- 4 lbs. (being 5'4") for the last year. My trainer suggested that I change the proportions of fats, carbs, and proteins that MFP so nicely breaks down for me. I also have to admit that I wasn't logging all of last year accurately (I did the eyeball method). In two weeks however, being much more careful about weighing or measuring food and trying to carefully stick to my carb/sugar proportions, I lost 8 lbs which I'm still disbelieving so I'm not logging the number yet.

Can it be as simple as sugar and carbs holding on to unwanted wanted, etc.? I'm not sure, but could it be worth a try? Definitely! I'm trying right now and it is so far working.

Scooter_99

To be honest I don't work out as hard as I could be because I know that the working out is not going to be the game changer. I don't know what is. Sometimes I wonder if I am eating too little other times I wonder if 1400/day is too high. Every calorie calculator out there says something different. I ate a paleo diet last year for 3 months and didn't lose but I didn't gain during that time either. I make good choices and I like healthy food. I also drink a gallon of water a day. Could it be the 2 glasses of wine I have on Saturday night? I am just lost on why this happened.

Scooter_99

Wkwebby I wonder this all the time. I wonder if taking something out would make a difference. I bought the 21-day sugar detox book but when I saw how much cooking and prep was involved I got a little freaked out. It seemed so complicated.

martinel2099

To be honest I don't work out as hard as I could be because I know that the working out is not going to be the game changer. I don't know what is. Sometimes I wonder if I am eating too little other times I wonder if 1400/day is too high. Every calorie calculator out there says something different. I ate a paleo diet last year for 3 months and didn't lose but I didn't gain during that time either. I make good choices and I like healthy food. I also drink a gallon of water a day. Could it be the 2 glasses of wine I have on Saturday night? I am just lost on why this happened.

Scooter are you weighing and measuring everything you consume everyday of the week? Do you have cheat days where you don't record your meals? One unrecorded cheat day and drastically impact your calorie deficit and even put you over.

I don't know your height / weight, but 1,400 calories isn't all that low for a sedentary female trying to lose weight. And if you exercise you need to eat more than that.

My guess outside of some medical issue you might have is that you are gaining weight because you are not actually eating at a calorie deficit. Nobody is a special snowflake when it comes to weight loss, it's as simple as calories in and calories out.

flowerbob

Firstly - don't give up. It's not easy, and lots of us know that, but it's not a reflection of you being a bad person, and it's OK to have bad days.
Secondly - in terms of a practical suggestion, I have a similar experience to the person above that adjusting the balance of the calories I eat can make a difference. What works for me is a period without refined sugar. That's not so easy at first, as it means cutting out lots of things that I really really like - cakes, biscuits, syrup or jam (on anything) and alcohol - in fact pretty much any drink that's not water or tea or coffee. I also leave out white bread, rice and pasta.
The first week is a struggle as I get really strong cravings and I feel pretty tired, but after that I sort of stop wanting sugar at all, and lots of things (for example fruit) taste much sweeter than normal.
I try to make sure I'm eating lots of 'good' carbs, so I have breakfast (of unprocessed and unsweetened cereal) and some wholewheat rice/pasta/bread with my dinner every evening, and try to eat some startchy veg too.
If you're finding it hard to shift the weight, perhaps that's worth a try.
Good luck
X

martinel2099

I ate a paleo diet last year for 3 months and didn't lose but I didn't gain during that time either. I make good choices and I like healthy food. I also drink a gallon of water a day.

I wanted to comment on this section separately. It doesn't matter how "healthy" the food is you eat, if you eat too much of it and achieve a calorie surplus you will gain weight.

I really don't like the logic of why people follow the paleo diet. The idea here is that if you eat like humans did in the Paleolithic era that you will be healthier like they were. That logic is terrible, first have you even seen a person from that era and thought, man he looked amazing? You realize that people in that era also didn't have a guaranteed meal and had to gather / hunt and kill for their meals as well? Driving to the local whole foods doesn't count as hunting, sorry.

Paleo works in my opinion due to the amounts of restrictions on the diet. You can't go to McDonald's, or eat twinkies and ice cream and all of that jazz. So if you eat fresh meats, veggies and fruits then it's less likely you are going to over indulge. There's no stopping by starbucks every morning for your double double white mocha with extra whipped cream, cavemen didn't have that.

The problem with following a restrictive diet like paleo is it won't last forever. How long can you really last on a diet that doesn't let you have all of your favorite foods? There's nothing wrong with cutting out processed foods from your diet, in fact I wish they would just call it the no processed food diet, but I guess that's too boring. You get really good at eating paleo and maybe even lose the weight you desired, but then you go back to eating like you did before and all the tips and tricks you learned eating paleo are useless now.

Better idea, eat all of your favorite foods and still lose weight. IIFYM is a flexible dieting technique that in addition to watching your over all calories for the day you also track the amounts of fats, proteins and carbs you consume in the day. I love flexible dieting because as long as I reach my fat minimum goal and protein minimum goal for the day I'm doing well, and if I go over those goals its ok, I just consume less carbs. Best of all, following IIFYM is something you can do the rest of your life.

topazora

Bodies never want to be in a position that is unhealthy. You can tell me all you want about how weight is not an indicator of health, but it does effect the health of your joints and put pressure on your organs. Like most people here said, if you're not losing weight, you're doing something wrong. I'm putting myself at an even lower caloric deficit, because I am short and I stopped losing weight at 170lbs and I'm 5'3" So I'm playing around with the numbers and my meal frequency to get the weight loss going again.

alienbabyjen

6. When recording exercise you need to be careful. My fitness pal is not very accurate in my opinion. If I lift weights, I generally cut the calories by at least 30%. My fitness pal gives you an estimate and it's impossible to know the actual number, but I feel cutting the estimate by 30 to 50% helps. If you over-estimate the calories burnt while exercising and under-estimate the calories consumed in food you are in for a world of trouble.

I've noticed this too. It's completely wrong with most cardio calories. I use an elliptical machine mostly and MFP says I'll burn 300+ calories in 20 mins or some ridiculous amounts. The machine tells me 120 or so. It's best to research instead of relying completely on MFP for these.

Dnarules

That's something I often wondered to myself, I tried everything I knew how to do and nothing worked. Until now. Forget everything you "think" you know about weight loss.

Firstly your body is made to store fat when you eat at a calorie surplus. This was vital for the survival of our species during our evolution because there wasn't always a guaranteed meal. It's not a curse, it's a biological advantage that doesn't have much of a purpose now that there's a grocery store every few blocks away.

To lose wight, it's a simple matter of calories in and calories out. I don't care how "healthy" you think you are eating or how much exercise you do, you will gain weight if you do not eat at a calorie deficit. To lose weight properly I have a few tips

1. Take the guess work out of measuring your food, measure and weigh everything. Buy an electronic scale that weighs in grams. Call me geeky or whatever, but I have one at my desk at work and one in my kitchen at home, I hate guesswork.

2. If you eat at a restaurant you are essentially guessing how many calories you food contains. Just because a restaurant posts nutritent facts on their website doesn't mean the cook won't be heavy handed on the butter and oils and other ingredients.

3. When you prepare you meals you need to weigh and measure everything. Did you know that if you measure peanut butter that you are actually dong it wrong? Peanut butter and items liek it should be weighed,and the difference in calories when you compare the two are significantly different.

4. Weight loss can be achieved in the kitchen, you don't need exercise. This is true, you can lose weight not going to the gym at all if you eat at a calorie deficit, remember points 1-3.

5. Though going to the gym is not required, it can help improve your general health and help mitigate muscle loss while on a weight loss diet. I don't want you to get into the mindset that you have to bust your butt at the gym in order to enjoy food, that's not a healthy relationship. By picking up a heavy lifting program like Ice Cream fitness (you can youtube it) you can improve muscle strength, mitigate muscle loss while at a calorie deficit and it will give you extra calories to enjoy per day.

6. When recording exercise you need to be careful. My fitness pal is not very accurate in my opinion. If I lift weights, I generally cut the calories by at least 30%. My fitness pal gives you an estimate and it's impossible to know the actual number, but I feel cutting the estimate by 30 to 50% helps. If you over-estimate the calories burnt while exercising and under-estimate the calories consumed in food you are in for a world of trouble.

This is great, but I'd like to add one thing as well. I was hovering at 160 +/- 4 lbs. (being 5'4") for the last year. My trainer suggested that I change the proportions of fats, carbs, and proteins that MFP so nicely breaks down for me. I also have to admit that I wasn't logging all of last year accurately (I did the eyeball method). In two weeks however, being much more careful about weighing or measuring food and trying to carefully stick to my carb/sugar proportions, I lost 8 lbs which I'm still disbelieving so I'm not logging the number yet.

Can it be as simple as sugar and carbs holding on to unwanted wanted, etc.? I'm not sure, but could it be worth a try? Definitely! I'm trying right now and it is so far working.

Or it could be the greater attention to weighing, measuring, and logging.

martinel2099

6. When recording exercise you need to be careful. My fitness pal is not very accurate in my opinion. If I lift weights, I generally cut the calories by at least 30%. My fitness pal gives you an estimate and it's impossible to know the actual number, but I feel cutting the estimate by 30 to 50% helps. If you over-estimate the calories burnt while exercising and under-estimate the calories consumed in food you are in for a world of trouble.

I've noticed this too. It's completely wrong with most cardio calories. I use an elliptical machine mostly and MFP says I'll burn 300+ calories in 20 mins or some ridiculous amounts. The machine tells me 120 or so. It's best to research instead of relying completely on MFP for these.

Agreed 100%. The cardio machines I find to be the most reliable are the ones that allow you to input age and weight, track your heart rate and adjust difficulty based on target heart rate. That's a better estimate, but still an estimate.

Valtishia

Hormonal issues can hinder weight loss too.

I was sick for a whole year.... insane fatigue, hair loss, dry skin, gaining weight, brain fog, insomnia, bleeding teeth, etc. I was an absolute mess!! I even had a fullness in my neck that was never there before... but despite all this, doctors (7 of them, plus a naturopath) said they could find nothing wrong with me and my thyroid tests all came back normal.

I searched for something that would mimic hypothyroid, but not actually be hypothyroid. I came across iodine deficiency. I have been supplementing with it for 6 months now and bit by bit I started getting better. The fullness in my neck went first... then the hair loss stopped, etc. The energy issues were one of the last things to come back and I still have night waking but it is dramatically better than it was.

I am not suggesting that iodine is your problem.... just that your endocrine system plays an important part in your weight as well.

GothyFaery

That's something I often wondered to myself, I tried everything I knew how to do and nothing worked. Until now. Forget everything you "think" you know about weight loss.

Firstly your body is made to store fat when you eat at a calorie surplus. This was vital for the survival of our species during our evolution because there wasn't always a guaranteed meal. It's not a curse, it's a biological advantage that doesn't have much of a purpose now that there's a grocery store every few blocks away.

To lose wight, it's a simple matter of calories in and calories out. I don't care how "healthy" you think you are eating or how much exercise you do, you will gain weight if you do not eat at a calorie deficit. To lose weight properly I have a few tips

1. Take the guess work out of measuring your food, measure and weigh everything. Buy an electronic scale that weighs in grams. Call me geeky or whatever, but I have one at my desk at work and one in my kitchen at home, I hate guesswork.

2. If you eat at a restaurant you are essentially guessing how many calories you food contains. Just because a restaurant posts nutritent facts on their website doesn't mean the cook won't be heavy handed on the butter and oils and other ingredients.

3. When you prepare you meals you need to weigh and measure everything. Did you know that if you measure peanut butter that you are actually dong it wrong? Peanut butter and items liek it should be weighed,and the difference in calories when you compare the two are significantly different.

4. Weight loss can be achieved in the kitchen, you don't need exercise. This is true, you can lose weight not going to the gym at all if you eat at a calorie deficit, remember points 1-3.

5. Though going to the gym is not required, it can help improve your general health and help mitigate muscle loss while on a weight loss diet. I don't want you to get into the mindset that you have to bust your butt at the gym in order to enjoy food, that's not a healthy relationship. By picking up a heavy lifting program like Ice Cream fitness (you can youtube it) you can improve muscle strength, mitigate muscle loss while at a calorie deficit and it will give you extra calories to enjoy per day.

6. When recording exercise you need to be careful. My fitness pal is not very accurate in my opinion. If I lift weights, I generally cut the calories by at least 30%. My fitness pal gives you an estimate and it's impossible to know the actual number, but I feel cutting the estimate by 30 to 50% helps. If you over-estimate the calories burnt while exercising and under-estimate the calories consumed in food you are in for a world of trouble.

^ALL THIS! This sums me up so much I almost could have wrote it! Don't buy into the diet gimicks. It really doesn't have to be complicated to work.