500 calories and tons of bad advice...
tbellamy1
Posts: 353
Ive been thinking to myself all day if i had a story or something encouraging to share. Simply because I have not reached my goals just yet and I am still a HUGE work in progress. But when I think about where Ive come from and how far Ive come the answer would be YES I do have a story.
Not that I haven't always struggled with my weight because I have. I've yo-yo dieted for as long as I remember. Loading up on cardio , tried barbie weights once didn't like it so I went back to cardio. Lost weight, gained weight....yada yada yada. Same story different actress. :yawn:
Let me take you to 2 years ago, when I found the magic potion. It gave me the satisfaction i wanted quick weight loss, a step by step eating plan, NO exercise. Just wake up and BOOM the weight was gone. Hello HCG!!!!! The answer to all my prayers, or at least I thought. Yeah I lost weight about 18 lbs in a month and believe it or not I struggled to eat the measly 500 calories after the first 2 weeks on the diet. I had a plan honey, oh yes Id lose this weight FOREVER!!!! Kept it a secret because I wanted to blow people away with my dramatic transformation and mostly wanted them to think I was doing it on my own. Silly right, I know. I lost they noticed and then,
I gave up my gym membership, fired my trainer. Because after all I was am member and paid the trainer for a whole year and lost a whopping 4 lbs! I'd lost the weight so what did I need them for? HCG did what I was paying them to do, and did it in 1 month. Boy was I silly ( I was skinny though) I kept the weight off for about months. Then slowly without me noticing I gained the 18 lbs back +12 more. And let me tell you it must be angry fat because it wont budge!!
Fast forward to this year I joined MFP in February fell in love with it. Put my info in and started doing Insanity. Id log my food and calories everyday met some nice encouraging people. I was on top of the world!!! NOT REALLY! Everyday Id log MFP would warn me saying in those red letters "you are not eating enough...its hard to lose weight if you don't EAT" well not those exact words but you get the picture. SO I made a comment on a status stating that MFP was telling me to eat more and ALL my pals said ignore it, MFP is stupid, you are doing great. SO I listened to my pals after all they knew what to do. About a month into insanity I decided to read the book that came with the program, did the calculations to figure out my calorie intake and it said 2600 calories. I was like no way!!! How is this even possible eating a lot is why Im here. However I did up my calories to about 2000 a day but I then added 5 more hours of workouts to my schedule. Talk about counter productive!! So that's about 12 hours of working out at a strenuous level. And i thought I was doing something eating 2000 calories. I lost a whole 4 lbs in the beginning and nothing else. After all that work NOTHING!!:mad:
I was surrounded by bad advice, on MFP and in my life. A trainer told me 2000 calories was to much and that I was eating more than he was. And that it takes 3500 lbs to make a pound so I need to eat less than that and burn more in a week. Basically eat 3500 calories and but 6000. So I dropped my calories again. Felt weak, short tempered, frustrated, had crazy binges ( on hot dogs, who binges on hot dogs), no urge to workout and wanted to quit.
Then comes EM2WL!!! They told me to basically Eat, exercise and repeat. Ive learned so much from everyone. I was once possessed by the scale, never did heavy lifting, starved myself. Now the scale doesn't mean a thing, I lift, and I eat. I'm happier, I don't miss out on family gatherings because of some ridiculous fad diet. Im stronger and look forward to my cut and seeing where this journey is going to take me. I still struggle with the microwave mentality from time to time. Thinking I should be lifting crazy amounts and have a six pack already,
If I could say anything to someone who is struggling and skeptical I'd say keep going this is not a cookie cutter journey you have to find your number's, find you workout and stick to it. Put away the scale, pick up some weights, and LIVE!!! Add patience into the equation and it will come. I'm still waiting, learning and have no plans to quit. Happy Ive found my em2wl family Id still be lost without you guys!
Not that I haven't always struggled with my weight because I have. I've yo-yo dieted for as long as I remember. Loading up on cardio , tried barbie weights once didn't like it so I went back to cardio. Lost weight, gained weight....yada yada yada. Same story different actress. :yawn:
Let me take you to 2 years ago, when I found the magic potion. It gave me the satisfaction i wanted quick weight loss, a step by step eating plan, NO exercise. Just wake up and BOOM the weight was gone. Hello HCG!!!!! The answer to all my prayers, or at least I thought. Yeah I lost weight about 18 lbs in a month and believe it or not I struggled to eat the measly 500 calories after the first 2 weeks on the diet. I had a plan honey, oh yes Id lose this weight FOREVER!!!! Kept it a secret because I wanted to blow people away with my dramatic transformation and mostly wanted them to think I was doing it on my own. Silly right, I know. I lost they noticed and then,
I gave up my gym membership, fired my trainer. Because after all I was am member and paid the trainer for a whole year and lost a whopping 4 lbs! I'd lost the weight so what did I need them for? HCG did what I was paying them to do, and did it in 1 month. Boy was I silly ( I was skinny though) I kept the weight off for about months. Then slowly without me noticing I gained the 18 lbs back +12 more. And let me tell you it must be angry fat because it wont budge!!
Fast forward to this year I joined MFP in February fell in love with it. Put my info in and started doing Insanity. Id log my food and calories everyday met some nice encouraging people. I was on top of the world!!! NOT REALLY! Everyday Id log MFP would warn me saying in those red letters "you are not eating enough...its hard to lose weight if you don't EAT" well not those exact words but you get the picture. SO I made a comment on a status stating that MFP was telling me to eat more and ALL my pals said ignore it, MFP is stupid, you are doing great. SO I listened to my pals after all they knew what to do. About a month into insanity I decided to read the book that came with the program, did the calculations to figure out my calorie intake and it said 2600 calories. I was like no way!!! How is this even possible eating a lot is why Im here. However I did up my calories to about 2000 a day but I then added 5 more hours of workouts to my schedule. Talk about counter productive!! So that's about 12 hours of working out at a strenuous level. And i thought I was doing something eating 2000 calories. I lost a whole 4 lbs in the beginning and nothing else. After all that work NOTHING!!:mad:
I was surrounded by bad advice, on MFP and in my life. A trainer told me 2000 calories was to much and that I was eating more than he was. And that it takes 3500 lbs to make a pound so I need to eat less than that and burn more in a week. Basically eat 3500 calories and but 6000. So I dropped my calories again. Felt weak, short tempered, frustrated, had crazy binges ( on hot dogs, who binges on hot dogs), no urge to workout and wanted to quit.
Then comes EM2WL!!! They told me to basically Eat, exercise and repeat. Ive learned so much from everyone. I was once possessed by the scale, never did heavy lifting, starved myself. Now the scale doesn't mean a thing, I lift, and I eat. I'm happier, I don't miss out on family gatherings because of some ridiculous fad diet. Im stronger and look forward to my cut and seeing where this journey is going to take me. I still struggle with the microwave mentality from time to time. Thinking I should be lifting crazy amounts and have a six pack already,
If I could say anything to someone who is struggling and skeptical I'd say keep going this is not a cookie cutter journey you have to find your number's, find you workout and stick to it. Put away the scale, pick up some weights, and LIVE!!! Add patience into the equation and it will come. I'm still waiting, learning and have no plans to quit. Happy Ive found my em2wl family Id still be lost without you guys!
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Replies
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Thanks for sharing! You look fantastic and your mindset has completely changed. That is great!
"I still struggle with the microwave mentality from time to time. Thinking I should be lifting crazy amounts and have a six pack already"
And ME TOO, girl! It's so easy to fall into that trap occasionally. I think it's just our nature to want everything "now". (We never really grow up, do we?) lol!0 -
Thanks for sharing T0
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Wow! But look at you now! You've come a long way baby!! Thanks for sharing this lifestyle changing story!0
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thanks for sharing your story. don't you just love the FREEDOM that comes with EM2WL? being able to go out to eat w/ friends or go to a family gathering and not having to break out into a cold sweat worrying about what you're gonna eat...!! life is grand!!0
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so proud of you!0
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What an inspirational story! Thank you for sharing it, and GO YOU!!0
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Girl - you and I have almost the same story!!! Only I was doing the 600 calorie HCG at the same time as doing INSANITY - CRAZY that I was burning more than putting into my body - no wonder I was nothing but EXHAUSTED!!!!! This is a struggle for all of us and I am SO happy I've now discovered that I need to eat in order to help my body!!! I feel SO much better and even though I still look at that B*^#@ the scale - I try not to focus on it!! You've helped me TREMENDOUSLY through this journey and I'm so grateful for it!!!! It will take time but at least we're NOW going about it in a healthy manner. I shake my head at some of the diaries I look at where people are still eating under 1200 calories but I'm not brave enough yet to tell them to STOP. I definitely need to work on that but I know I didn't want to listen to it when I heard it so not sure if they do as well!!
THANK YOU again for helping me and sharing your success with me!!!0 -
Wow~ what an inpsiring story and so many of us can relate!!
I feel the same way about NOT having to "worry" about every social invitation.
Thanks for taking the time to post this~ so many of us need all the inspiration we can get!!0 -
Hi, I am in a different place after my HCG, but feel the same about bad advice. I actually had to eat less to weigh less. but I was eating and drinking too much. I had absolutely no idea when I was full and kept looking at every dinner like it was the last supper, even though I had my last supper the day before.
Here`s my story.
Sun 09/02/12 09:58 PM
I did the HCG diet. I did some reseach on it and it was recommended by a family member. I used sublingual drops which are readily available on the internet.
I wish I would have thought about lean muscle mass and what it means. I lost 50 lbs in two months. I was happy. But parts of me looked like beef jerky and other parts were still squishy. I spent the next two years doing the diet for a week here and there to keep my weight down. I would strength train and then my weight would go up and I`d do the diet again but only for a few days. I always lost a 3 to 5 kilos in a week. My weight kept going up anyway. I gained back 30 of the 50 lbs I lost.
I started MFP in April and started learning more about nutrition and fitness. I started strength training in earnest and after two months on the MFP plan having lost 0 lbs I went to eat more to weigh less. I did a metabolism reset. Eating 2600 calories a day. I gained 5 lbs the first week and after that stayed pretty stable. After 8 weeks I cut my calories to 2400, 2 weeks no loss, then 2000, 3 weeks no loss, then 1800, 2 weeks no loss, then 1600 3 weeks no loss. After that I stopped counting calories, I did HCG diet for 3 days and lost 3 kg. I went on a hiking vacation. I gained back the 3 kg. I thought, well, hiking 6 hrs a day for 4 days made me gain 3 kg. Something is not working here. I seriously thought about doing the diet for 3 weeks again.
I did a little more research and found the blog of a woman who obviously likes numbers. To keep this shorter I will just put the link, interested parties can check it out.
http://fatlosschronicles.blogspot.com/2009/03/hcg-diet-conclusions.html
She lost half her weight from fat and the other from muscle. HCG diet promises you will not lose muscle.
She lost 16 lbs. 9 from fat, 7 from muscle.
I lost 50 lbs. I must have lost almost 25 lbs of muscle!! And each time I starved for a few days I just put all my strength training to bed. Why did I bother exercising? The exercise is always the easy part for me. I enjoy it. But the scale almost ruined my life. For now I am staying off it.
I really recommend before you do this type of diet, any starvation diet you think about how much exercise you will have to do to just get back to where you were. This is one of the reasons, besides aging, that we can not eat as much as we did as high school students.
I know this is just a blog, and not a scientific journal, but at least it is an honest opinion and most of the other sites were usually selling HCG and were not impartial at all. Chemically speaking there is no HCG in homeopathic doses. A reading of 12X or 24X on the bottle means there should be one molecule of HCG in a body of water the size of the milky way galaxy.
So it really isn`t the HCG, starvation itself makes you not feel hungry.
I starved, but you don`t have to.
I wish you the best.
Good luck, and keep lifting, we will get our muscles back. I think I have gotten some back already ( three months of focus on getting my lifiting in)0 -
Very motivating, thanks so much for the words of inspiration0
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Fabulous story, thanks for sharing.:flowerforyou:
So encouraging that so many of us are in the same boat and here to support each other along the journey.0 -
Another great story...thanks for sharing. It means a lot more than you know!0
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I'm sitting here thinking WOW oh WOW girlfriend ... And I'm RARELY at a loss for words but I kinda am .. Therefore you get this :
FIST PUMP ! bam!0