long *ss freak out rant sorry

DaysFlyBy

Ok I've read the stickies, watched all the videos and thought I could trust this process but I am on the verge of a total breakdown right now. Looking back thru my food logs I see that my version of the 1200 cal diet MFP originally assigned to me was more like EAT 15-1600 and EXERCISE my net down to 5-900. I've always been a huge eater my whole life, my mom says as a baby I would east baby food until I threw up and then wanted more so maybe I have some congenital eating issue, I don't know, but I didn't get to be 174 lbs of fat by not having a huge appetite. But anyway, I now know such low nets were very unhealthy, I lost a disturbing amount of hair during the few months (mid-Feb thru early May) I followed that routine but it was working BEAUTIFULLY for me, the weight was dropping off like crazy and I was so ridiculously, ecstatically happy, I felt beautiful, I loved looking in the mirror, I could see all my hard work paying off in spades, such awesome definition and omg HIP BONES! I got down tho a size 5 which is the smallest size I've worn since middle school, and even those were getting looser every week. I thought I might actually see a size 4 in my lifetime and I could not have been happier or more proud. My self esteem was at an all time high. But the crazy hair loss scared me and my face had begun looking a bit gaunt. Right around then I found EM2LM and got excited because it all sounded so good and made such sense. I think one of the videos said something like ”I don't care what the scale says as long as I can rock a size 2” and I thought HELL YES because I really don't care what the scale says as long as I'm tiny and omg I'd give almost anything to wear a size 2, lol. Okay fast forward and after a few weeks of trying to eat at TDEE and I am just packing on fat, not muscle, FAT. Fat and maybe water. My face looks healthier but the ready of me looks ugly again, all my pretty definition is list under a later of...something, water, I don't know but it looks nasty. I feel things jiggle on the treadmill that used to be solid. Tonight I put on a pair of cute shorts I used to wear a month or so ago and I look gross in them now. My self esteem is circling the drain faster every day and what's worse is I am STARVING ALL THE TIME now. Like I just get hungrier and hungrier and it gets harder to make good choices because I'm ready to gnaw my limbs off at all times. And I get fatter and fatter. Now I dread leaving the house for fear I'll run into someone who last saw me thin and now I'm...not...thin. I don't know what I weigh because I'm scared to death to look. I feel like something must be severely wrong with me and like maybe I'm the *one* freak out there that really can't do this. Sorry this got so long I'm just so scared watching my hard work vanish while my hunger grows out of control. I'll go set my diary to public so y'all can see what I'm talking about.

Raynn1

OK.. first of all, you are a size 5.. You are not at all fat. Look how far you have come already. You have done wonderfully to lose the weight and now the goal; is the KEEP it off. Stop beating yourself up over it..You are not at all fat. Period.

Second, rewatch the videos stickied. If you are serious about wanting to EMTWL then you need to be MENTALLY prepared for the change in diet thinking. Yes, you will probably gain weight while working on your reset and eating at TDEE or just below. NO this is not a REAL gain. Its impossible to gain real fat by eating at the levels we are. You are gaining water retention. Considering you were essentially living off of 500-900 cals a day, your body is DYING for food right now and because you are "overfeeding" it to hit your TDEE levels, it is hanging on to dear life for every calorie you are giving it.
YOU ARE DOING THE RIGHT THING!!

The hungry feeling is also normal. Your metabolism is crying to be used properly. So it is burning up everything you are giving it.. Over time this hungry feeling does go away as you adjust to the higher calories. As for how you look in the mirror and the clothes... its all water.. as I said above, your body is hanging on to everything because it has NO idea when you are going to starve it again by eating (netting) only 900 cals. Your body needs to trust you all over again, hence the complete reset. You need to give it time to know that you are not going to drop back down to dangerous levels again. SO it will be some time before it will start to drop the weight again.

If you are serious about this process, then your mindset HAS to be the first thing to change. throw the scale away. give yourself a passcard on the eating and for god sakes, ENJOY the extra eating right now. Im pretty sure no one is looking at you and saying "damn.. she gained a little weight.. wtf happened to her???".. its not like you jumped 6 sizes.. you just think you have:)
If they are... so be it.. who the hell cares?? You will be the one laughing months from now when you are rocking a size 2:)

Hope this helps..its a very tough mental game to play.. but it can be won... if you let it..

Vespyr

Yep it sucks I'm there too. You were starving your body for awhile so it's going to hold onto the nutrients you're giving it cause it thinks "omg food...must prepare for the next time we fall on hard times". Your body is built to survive, if it feels threatened with starvation it will try to stockpile. With EM2WL you're trying to convince your body that it's ok, it's not going to starve any more. And to do that you have to take a couple steps back first then move forward again. You literally have to reset your metabolism which is what you're doing.

You're making a new normal. I know you feel fat now, I do too, but you didn't gain 54lbs in a month the first time around and you sure aren't going to be gaining much in actual fat. Most of that is water...boy it sure looks like fat though. Just have to trust the process, and know that you are fueling your body. It looks like you eat pretty darn good too!

For some reason I'm hungrier too...I think it's a phase in one of the stickies.


Edit: What she said ^^^^

Noor13

I agree with pp-almost all of us have been there

It's mentally challenging to go through this stage, I know. But what are a few weeks compared to the rest of your life?

This will take some time. You didn't feed you body for a while, so now your body thinks it need to store whatever comes in, in case another famine is around the corner.

Give it some time, be patient.

Your body already sent you signals-you lost a lot of hair while on VLCD! Do you want to be skinny but bold? Probably not.

Just stay strong. People on here will help you through.

DaysFlyBy

OMFG my weight is up big time but it's TOM and I'm bloated as f***. AF showed up this morning so hopefully some of that s*** starts to go away. On a happy note, I think I'm finally growing back some of the vast quantities if hair I lost during my STUPID 500-900 net calorie days! I have spiky baby hairs sticking up all over the place and my scalp is generally less visible than it has been the last few months -- IMO that's an NSV if ever there was one!!! Anyway thank you for calming me down a bit. I think the worst for me is that I've been in a weight loss 'contest' with a few other people - one I was WINNING by a landslide - and now to see myself going BACKWARDS, like I'm VOLUNTEERING to gain weight, is profoundly disturbing. I have to find a way to make myself okay with this. It's hard sitting here in a pair of shorts and sports bra I looked so hot in a month ago and now I see rolls and bulges again. F*** it's the hardest thing I've ever willed myself to do. I feel crappy too. I used to work out ALL THE TIME and I felt amazing, I had energy to spare, and now I don't want to get up off the couch sometimes. I feel like I'm forcing myself to be the fat disgusting lazy POS I was a year ago. It's just really, r really hard to do this.