In need of Help....

lauraelizabethwms

I am becoming increasingly frustrated. Here are my issues. I can't find a balance of food/calories that works. I started out on January 2, 2013 at 318 pounds. It is now February 12th and I am weighing in at 284.4 pounds. In the past 2 days I've gained about a pound. I'm not use to the scale going up when dieting.

First thing, I'm pretty much doing some form of exercise daily, Monday-Zumba, Tuesday, Wednesday Friday, Saturday Couch to 5k, Thursday-Zumba and Sunday I take some type of walk/run because I feel like I MUST do something. I've gone from nothing at all to 7 days a week.

-I am taking Phentermine which curbs my appetite very much, but I don't get the energy boost most people get from it. I'm obsessive about weighing myself daily.

-I was eating around 700 calories a day and losing weight but was told that wasn't enough, so I've tried to up it a tad to at least 900-1200. I follow Atkins as much as I can, but instead of 20 carbs I do 30, just because I'd like to be able to eat pasta/bread in small amounts down the road.

-I take my pill around 8:30 and then usually have some type of breakfast/lunch around 11 or 12 if at all and if not I usually have lunch around 3, then I'll go home from work and work out and have dinner around 7.

I don't even know if I know what i'm asking but I just need a diet plan that's going to work for me. I want to lose at least 120 more pounds.

Anyone have any kind of helpful advice?

trogalicious

-I was eating around 700 calories a day and losing weight but was told that wasn't enough, so I've tried to up it a tad to at least 900-1200. I follow Atkins as much as I can, but instead of 20 carbs I do 30, just because I'd like to be able to eat pasta/bread in small amounts down the road.

1. figure out your BMR and don't eat less than that. 700-1000 calories is not going to do you any good in the long run.
2. if you're actually eating what you need, you probably won't need to take phentermine.
3. You're already exercising a lot, so you don't need to add that.
4. Set a realistic calorie goal and stick to it for at least a month.
5. If you look at it like a diet, it's not going to be as easy to keep up with as a healthier lifestyle. Unless you plan on doing a ton of workouts for the rest of your life...
6. Weigh your food accurately, don't eyeball it.
7. Don't assume that the calories burned from exercise on MFP are accurate. Take a percentage or get a HRM for accurate numbers.

Use the tools here to figure out how much your body needs.

http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/

corn63

You need to eat. You're losing muscle, not fat. Holy goodness. My body would be in critical shape eating as little as you do with as much as you're doing. Body needs fuel to burn fuel. I'm not going to introduce starvation mode (although I'm sure someone will) but you REALLY need to fuel your body.

Going from doing nothing to doing something 7 days a week has probably shocked your system and you've significantly decreased the calories in as well... EAT. Eat good foods, energy foods. Protein, healthy fats.

gpizzy

First, way to go on your weight loss thus far.

A few tips from personal experience. Weigh yourself once a week, that gives your body time to adjust. You can go up and down daily for a high sodium intake, or water gain etc. Just not worth the mental havoc.

Food wise - your body needs fuel particularly if you're working out that much. Feed it! You will see (likely) greater progress if you slowly reduce your calories over time. For instance, lets say to maintain you should be at 2200 calories, just chop 300 calories off of that per day, and keep working out. Then, after a month, chop off another 250... etc etc and you will still be losing weight at a great rate.

In my experience whenever I lose the 'big numbers' 2-3lbs per week and I keep it up for 3 months, it eventually comes back.

Try for healthy and balanced. If all else fails, try weight watchers. THey'll teach you how to eat and provide a good support group.

violinkeri

1--I notice a slight increase on the scale leading up to my period, due to water retention and constipation (sorry if thats TMI) I use a free app on my kindle called PinkPad which tracks my cycle and there is a direct correlation.
2--This should have been first, but thats a great accomplishment for such a short period of time!
3--Since you are taking a pill, which I presume a medical professional of some kind recommended, they may be able to give you some insight
4--Take your measurements periodically. I have noticed that people here do that and its a more reliable indicator than a scale--you can gain/lose several lbs of water weight just day to day!
5--Be patient! The first few pounds come off easiest, the closer you get to your goal the slower it comes off and the more difficult it is. Make sure you recalibrate your goals when you lose a significant amount--The recommended totals will change at your new, lower weight.

Mexicanbigfoot

I am in no way a diet or exercise expert, but some of the things I read in your post disturbed me. First of all, have you entered your height/weight/activity level and goals in MFP? The app gives you calorie guidelines for your weight and activity level and adjusts as you lose weight. Second, the pill you are taking, is it prescription? I, too, am a bigger gal but I have never taken any pills or other "diet" products for weight loss. If I was you, I would ditch the pills and deal with the issues behind why you are overeating (if that is the case) Last, it does not sound like you are eating a healthy diet, you need to be consuming way more than 700-900 calories/day and you need to make sure you are eating protein which will give you energy. Try to plan your meals the day before, I usually make breakfast, lunch and morning and afternoon snack the night before and log it into my app then after I work out after work, I decide what's for dinner using the calories I have left. If you want to, feel free to take a look at my diary, I "restarted" my lifestyle change this month and I am just hitting my 30 day mark but I feel great and I can tell I am definately losing inches, as well as weight. Tonight is weigh night and I figure I am down at least another 3 pounds. Also, add me if you need good support and good luck with your journey!! Samantha

bokodasu

...you've lost over 33 lbs in 42 days. I think the thing you need to be worried about here is your expectations, not your results. That's over 10% of your bodyweight. In six weeks. How much do you think you should have lost in this time?

As far as the other part goes, 1 lb of "weight gain" in 2 days signifies absolutely nothing. I can "gain" 8 oz just by going swimming (which is gross if you think about it too hard so let's not do that). Other explanations could include ToM, sodium intake, recovering from heavy exercise, undigested food, scale wonkiness, dieter's edema, or any other random thing bodies do.

I definitely understand weighing every day, because it can give you a lot of information - but not if you're going to believe that the information it's giving you is the definitive, to-the-hundreth-of-a-pound accurate "WHAT YOU WEIGH" (whatever that means).

Please take a step back and relax. You didn't go from 160 -> 318 in a month, and you're not going to go the other direction that fast either. Spend some time going through the links in this thread - http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10665-newbies-please-read-me-2nd-edition. And try to enjoy yourself - I mean, eating less than you want to sucks and that part really isn't enjoyable, but you do need to figure out a way to fit it into your life without letting it consume you, and try to find other ways to be nice to yourself when you can.

auntiebabs

...you've lost over 33 lbs in 42 days. I think the thing you need to be worried about here is your expectations, not your results. That's over 10% of your bodyweight. In six weeks. How much do you think you should have lost in this time?

THIS IS NOT THE BIGGEST LOSER (I hate that show, I think it promotes unrealistic expectations and unhealthy timeframe... Okay when I was fat I used to watch see them at their start weights made me feel like I wasn't doing SOOOO bad.)

But studies show the more slowly you lose, the more likely you are to keep it off. And I'm in this for the long haul. Seeing how my 83 y.o. Mom is suffering really lit a fire under me. I'm not tough enough to go what she's going through.

My metabolism is kind of sluggish, so when I was doing lose 1 lb a week I was actually losing 3 lbs a month, but as long as I was moving in the right direction I was okay, even if it was slowly.

The more drastically you change your diet the more times you have to adjust to a new diet... So you might as well go with an eating plan that is livable from the get go. When you go with a dramatic change and stress hits (trust me stress ALWAYS hits) often the whole thing goes out the window and revert to what you knew before, what you were comfortable with. I'm a firm believer in a series of small sustainable changes. Give yourself 2 or 3 things to improve every month and focus on just those things. When those things become habit pick a couple more things to improve improve ...you don't have to be perfect you just have to be better....

Here a brain dump of my philosophy...

I don't know how tall you are so I couldn't do the math to see if #5 will work for you.

The good news is you don't have to be perfect, you just have to be better.

1) tracking for a couple of weeks before I worried about losing.
(although seeing what I was eating I couldn't help but rein back a bit)

2) seeing where I could make small changes on things that weren't that important to me.
(Don't even think of taking chocolate out of my diet!!!)
--Reducing quantities where I won't notice it so much
--Swapping out things instead of eliminating them.

3) Look at my diary and started adding foods that had positive healthy effects specifically for the health issue in my family.
I found most of the things I "should" add were really yummy too! salmon, avocado, oatmeal, mango, red grapes....
(Sort of think of food as medicine to deal with family history of various health issue oatmeal is good for heart health, mango and red grapes lower cholesterol, tumeric and cinnamon good for arthritis)

4) every couple of weeks I see where I can make another couple of small changes.
If you completely revamp your diet, it's way easy to revert to old ways in times of stress. (and who doesn't have stress?)
If you make a series of small changes, food still offers you some sense of comfort.
sort of a comfort continuum, and after a while the first small changes will seem comforting in themselves.
You don't have to be perfect you just have to do better.

5) also rather than being uberstrict with the target MFP set for me. (I swear this saved my life.) I was happier once I gave myself a range:

ROCK BOTTOM: 1200 cal
TARGET: MFP Calories for lose 1 lb a week (when that hit 1200 I changed to lose 1/2 lb per week)
TOP OF RANGE: Maintain Calories for my GOAL Weight.

---

(SAFETY VALVE: Maintain Calories for CURRENT Weight - remember to keep updating this number as you lose)

---

I naturally tended to do 2-4 days between 1200-1300 cal then a day at about 1500-1600 cal then back to the 1200-1300 cal. (No hard science here, but I credit the zig-zagging calories with preventing plateaus.)

--As long as I stayed under the top of my range I should continue to lose, even if it is at a slower rate.
--As long as I don't go past my safety valve I shouldn't gain.

6) I only worry about it 1 lb at a time.
Forget I *NEED* to lose 20, 30, 50, 100 lbs. I'm only worried about 1 lb the next one. I'll worry about the others later.
Once I found ways to lessen the stress, I found it way easier to focus on the process and let the results follow. (It's what worked for me some people need the stress to get them motivated. Me I get scared and overwhelmed and don't see the big goal as achievable. )

7)
The closer I got to my goal the smaller I made my deficit. Yes, this took longer to get to my goal, but I was focusing on (am STILL tweaking) strategies for maintenance. What I found difficult (and haven't yet conquered) it establishing a guideline for a range for maintenance, being that I'm not really good at hitting the same number everyday.


Food is not the enemy.

Oddly enough on my journey here I've reduced guilt over food.
I have the occasional treat and I fully enjoy it with no guilt involved.
The thing is since I'm not eating crap all the time, now the occasional treat is just that a TREAT it's special and I enjoy it so much more than when I was unconsciously shovel junk food into my face.

I figure if I've got a good plan that I can actually maintain I can keep this off for a long time to come, without feeling deprived.

GauchoMark

I agree with some of the previous posters - 33.6 lbs in 41 days is CRAZY. You can't expect to sustain that long term. You NEED to slow your weight-loss for a few reasons:

1) you are losing muscle mass
2) you are going to end up with a LOT of loose skin
3) you are going to yo-yo diet because it is too hard to sustain

That said, its awesome that you are weighing daily, but you need to make a time series chart of your weight with a trendline. What you are more concerned with is keeping the trend pointing downwards, not the individual measurements. Make something like this:

Ready2Rock206

Stop starving yourself, ditch the magic pills, turn off Biggest Loser and have some patience.