How smart are our bodies?

Jennifer_b

Hello everyone,
first time poster
So a yr. ago almost to the date i started to eat better and work out more, at my peak i lost 45lbs! so i would say since this past Oct. the lbs are creeping back on and i have gained back 13 lbs since my lowest weigh in. i eat clean for my 2 meals and 2 snacks and kind of let go on dinner, still eating healthy but mixing in more things that were before off my list of foods. guess it turns out i cant do that even if im watching my portions. so since the start of Feb. i have put on 5 of those 13 lbs.... i think my body is just to damn smart and is like ok you have eaten the same foods at the same time for a year and im on to you and im gonna store every damn thing you eat. i have turned to trying some supplements and fat burners and thermobost type things the past 2 months and still nothing. im just at a lost at how my body is reacting. just wondering if anyone else has been in the same boat?
at the end of the day my log in is where it should be and its like if you keep this up in 5weeks you will be X weight less, i just don't get it when the scale keeps going up......
i work out every day as well and at first i was hoping it was muscle gain but i looked in the mirror today and was like nope there is muscle but now it has more fat on it
any ideas people? thanks!

Stumoo

The simple answer is they're much smarter than we'd like them to be. You've got two main things going on:

i) You have a kind of 'foodostat' in your brain. It sets your appetite. Some people are hungry all the time (guilty!) and others just nibble their meals and seem to not eat very much.

ii) You have a weight that your body seems to want to reach and stay at. It can do this in a disconcertingly easy way for the following reason:

Fat is not just inactive lumps that you carry around. It's metabolically active (and not to mention heavy!). Here's a good little article on the subject: http://sweatscience.com/the-fat-trap-and-biological-determinism/

So when you weigh a lot, your basic metabolic rate is higher because your fat needs calories to maintain itself. It's an almost complete myth that just being muscly uses loads of calories, because unless you're a champion bodybuilder you don't have enough of the stuff. Being fat uses loads of calories too. You also need lots of calories to shift your bulk around. Walking, climbing the stairs, all this stuff needs more calories when you're fat.

So you diet and exercise, and you lose the weight, which is good for you for a while. But the second you start to lapse into old habits - it might be as simple as having an extra cookie or two a day (driven by that blasted food-o-stat) and your old habits that used to keep you steady at 200lbs suddenly see you shooting back up towards your old weight.

Basically, it's a *kitten*. Sorry.

Jennifer_b

I joked with my self that my body was battling me and my food but i guess it really is.... seemed no amount of healthy eating, upping the workouts and adding fat burners that are proven to work was going to stop my body from gaining weight. well i guess its back to my 3 day cleanse and back on the limited mix of food and weighing every thing before cooking. bye bye crock pot.....
thanks for the read.

Gosser

What have you let back into your diet?

You may be reacting to a food you are eating. Wheat would do this if you had eliminated it before and now started eating it again.

Jennifer_b

i have not really added anything back in that i was not all ready eating, i just started making dinners that had a lot more ingredients in them and was watching the portions. that way hubby and i could eat the same thing, was getting tired of making 2 dinners since he did not want my bland chicken and salad with cooked veggies. i made the meals in recipes so i knew the cal count and they were all ok..... like i said im logging everything i can, even the "cheat" chocolate or cookie and i am still coming in ok on my intake with exercise.