Omggg

Emilie04444

No offense, but I warned you last year about the risks involved when pursuing an aggressive calorie deficit considering your exercise volume and amount of fat you wanted to lose. What were these risks?

-Disproportionate loss in lean body mass relative to fat mass.
-Disproportionate reduction in Resting Metabolic Rate relative to weight lost.
-Significant reduction in serum leptin concentration levels and/or impairment of the receptors that assess leptin levels.

Judging by your posts, and pictures, it seems all three have resulted from your rapid weight loss.

You lost a substantial amount of lean body mass because you restricted calories too much. As I explained many months ago, we all have a limit to how much fat can be oxidized in a 24-hour period. Think of this as a maximum deficit. The closer you get to that maximum deficit, the more lean body mass is used for fuel instead of fat mass. If you exceed this deficit, fat is no longer oxidized and any further energy demands are met strictly from lean body mass. Although you may not have reached that max deficit, the degree of restriction led to a ratio that favored a disproportionate amount of lean body mass to be used as fuel.

This restriction caused serum leptin levels to plummet and/or impairment in the receptors which aid in regulating satiety and energy balance. This means your body was receiving false confirmation that you were meeting energy needs by eating enough when you truly were not.

Because you were receiving incorrect feedback, and you continued to restrict to the tune of 1300 calories, your total daily energy needs lessened greatly. Thus, you can see the reciprocal relationship leptin has with energy balance. The wacky hunger signals you are getting are a result of this.

Why is your body presently responding the way it is? Because you decided to lose weight using extreme measures. In turn, your body wants to replace the weight you so rapidly lost. Although you lost a significant amount lean body mass during restriction, you shall only recover a very small amount during this "weight recovery." This, and the above, is why people who quickly lose weight via a VLCD gain a lot of the weight back and end up at a higher body fat percentage than what they had during their original weight. So if you were originally 140 lbs at 28% body fat back then, and you gain all the weight back, you could have a body fat percentage far greater than 30%.

What should you do?

-Keep lifting weights so more of the weight you regain is recovered lean body mass.
-See an endocrinologist or a metabolic testing center and assess your RMR to gauge how low your TDEE has adjusted.
-Slowly increase calories until your weight stabilizes and maintain eating that amount for several months.
-Only after that can you attempt to reduce fat mass again, but use a much smaller deficit.

I agree with this completely. I have been there myself when I lost weight years ago eating 1200 cals/day. It took all of the willpower in the world to lose it and maintain that. Once I became depressed, my diet was the last thing on my mind. So I ate and ate and gained it all back and more. I used to say that if you lose weight and start gaining it back, there is always a point where you can stop and go back in the right direction before all is lost. But I don't think that way anymore, especially when you have a disordered relationship with food. Now that I am losing weight again, I average 17-2000 cals, no food is off limits, I exercise, eat healthy, and if I eat "bad" foods it doesn't lead down the bad road because I wasn't heavily restricting in the first place. And I am losing weight at a much slower rate, but if I binge on pizza and crap for a few days (though I try to avoid that) everything doesn't come back, because I am not in the mental state that all is loss because I ate 3500 calories at one meal and my body isn't crying for nutrients. That kind of all or nothing thinking made me gain weight fast

I say reevaluate the way you look at food and exercise. It isn't about all about the scale so I would take a break.

carlysuzanne85

No offense, but I warned you last year about the risks involved when pursuing an aggressive calorie deficit considering your exercise volume and amount of fat you wanted to lose. What were these risks?

-Disproportionate loss in lean body mass relative to fat mass.
-Disproportionate reduction in Resting Metabolic Rate relative to weight lost.
-Significant reduction in serum leptin concentration levels and/or impairment of the receptors that assess leptin levels.

Judging by your posts, and pictures, it seems all three have resulted from your rapid weight loss.

You lost a substantial amount of lean body mass because you restricted calories too much. As I explained many months ago, we all have a limit to how much fat can be oxidized in a 24-hour period. Think of this as a maximum deficit. The closer you get to that maximum deficit, the more lean body mass is used for fuel instead of fat mass. If you exceed this deficit, fat is no longer oxidized and any further energy demands are met strictly from lean body mass. Although you may not have reached that max deficit, the degree of restriction led to a ratio that favored a disproportionate amount of lean body mass to be used as fuel.

This restriction caused serum leptin levels to plummet and/or impairment in the receptors which aid in regulating satiety and energy balance. This means your body was receiving false confirmation that you were meeting energy needs by eating enough when you truly were not.

Because you were receiving incorrect feedback, and you continued to restrict to the tune of 1300 calories, your total daily energy needs lessened greatly. Thus, you can see the reciprocal relationship leptin has with energy balance. The wacky hunger signals you are getting are a result of this.

Why is your body presently responding the way it is? Because you decided to lose weight using extreme measures. In turn, your body wants to replace the weight you so rapidly lost. Although you lost a significant amount lean body mass during restriction, you shall only recover a very small amount during this "weight recovery." This, and the above, is why people who quickly lose weight via a VLCD gain a lot of the weight back and end up at a higher body fat percentage than what they had during their original weight. So if you were originally 140 lbs at 28% body fat back then, and you gain all the weight back, you could have a body fat percentage far greater than 30%.

What should you do?

-Keep lifting weights so more of the weight you regain is recovered lean body mass.
-See an endocrinologist or a metabolic testing center and assess your RMR to gauge how low your TDEE has adjusted.
-Slowly increase calories until your weight stabilizes and maintain eating that amount for several months.
-Only after that can you attempt to reduce fat mass again, but use a much smaller deficit.

I agree with this completely. I have been there myself when I lost weight years ago eating 1200 cals/day. It took all of the willpower in the world to lose it and maintain that. Once I became depressed, my diet was the last thing on my mind. So I ate and ate and gained it all back and more. I used to say that if you lose weight and start gaining it back, there is always a point where you can stop and go back in the right direction before all is lost. But I don't think that way anymore, especially when you have a disordered relationship with food. Now that I am losing weight again, I average 17-2000 cals, no food is off limits, I exercise, eat healthy, and if I eat "bad" foods it doesn't lead down the bad road because I wasn't heavily restricting in the first place. And I am losing weight at a much slower rate, but if I binge on pizza and crap for a few days (though I try to avoid that) everything doesn't come back, because I am not in the mental state that all is loss because I ate 3500 calories at one meal and my body isn't crying for nutrients. That kind of all or nothing thinking made me gain weight fast

I say reevaluate the way you look at food and exercise. It isn't about all about the scale so I would take a break.

Could not agree more with both of these posts. I have been right where you are in the past and both of these posts are right on for getting through to the other side without being miserable and unhealthy and constantly hungry. I still struggle and slip up too but I just keep right on going because I'm not dieting, I'm establishing a heathy lifestyle that I can live with and be happy with for the rest of my life. I also eat about 1800-2000 calories a day now instead of 1200-1300 and it has made a huge difference--I binge a lot less, I'm much happier, I'm losing inches, I have energy, etc. I'm losing weight slowly but am having a much better time doing it

One thing that helps me when my motivation is waning (which happens to everyone--I don't think anyone is 110% gung-ho all the time): I think about all of the reasons why I'm doing this in the first place and I think about how much better I feel now than I did when I was unhealthy (both unhealthy with eating too much/not exercising and when I was unhealthy by eating too little/exercising too much). You have to be patient with yourself and know that it takes time to improve these things. Be kind to yourself, fuel your body, and don't give up.