help to fix diet/how to tell if I've burned fat not muscle?

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  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,344 Member
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    ...I'm fine with just maintaining my muscle, as long as I'm burning fat.
    As both mmapags and psulemon have already said, you're not even going to maintain muscle at 900 calories. Psulemon gave you a perfect roadmap to get where you're trying to go. If you choose to continue to underfeed your body, you'll continue to lose lean body mass at a good rate along with your fat.
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,401 MFP Moderator
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    If you struggle to get calories there are a few things to do.. first eat nuts, add avocado to foods, cooking meat in evoo or go to town on a peanut butter jar. Step two, until you can up your calories, do not exercise. There is no reason to tear muscle down if you wont supply it with food to repair your muscles. Until you fuel your body, you wont stop catabolizing your lean body mass.
  • pixiestick
    pixiestick Posts: 839 Member
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    Well there is a strong chance that you lost up to 50% of your weight from muscle. But now that you know that, correct it. Start to add another 100 calories a week until you hit at least 1600 calories. Then you will have to sit there for a month and then probably up it to 1800. But adjust your macro's and work on heavy weight training. This is where you will see the greatest changes in your body. In fact, throw the scale away. When you up calories, you also up carbs which will increase the amount of glycogen/water stored. I generally see up to 5 lbs of extra weight. Increasing protein and fats can help eliminate some of the water weight if you are worried.

    This is really sound advice! Why not pitch the scale for a few months and focus and being healthy! Remember that vital organs in your body are made of muscle (like your heart), so losing lean muscle mass is REALLY bad. So you need to gain some of that back.
    If you struggle to get calories there are a few things to do.. first eat nuts, add avocado to foods, cooking meat in evoo or go to town on a peanut butter jar. Step two, until you can up your calories, do not exercise. There is no reason to tear muscle down if you wont supply it with food to repair your muscles. Until you fuel your body, you wont stop catabolizing your lean body mass.

    You should also try fish as it is a great source of the Omega3... and whole grains. You are not feeding yourself nearly enough food. The "loss" on the scale could really come back to haunt you in the form of all sorts of nasty health problems down the road.

    Also, find some good "snacks" to start incorporating into your day. I always have a hardboiled egg and a cucumber at 10am and then an apple and a Tbs of peanut butter at 4pm. These are the sorts of tricks that will keep the fire in your metabolism running (a good thing) rather than letting it shut down because you aren't nourishing yourself properly (a bad thing).

    Good luck! Feel free to add me if you want encouragement :flowerforyou:
  • meshashesha2012
    meshashesha2012 Posts: 8,326 Member
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    your metabolism only shuts down when your dead.

    eating smaller frequent meals to keep your metabolism running is a myth that needs to die but somehow never does
  • ajc1309
    ajc1309 Posts: 255 Member
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    Thank you.
    I haven't exercised for the last 3 days and I skipped a day at the beginning of the week. I think what I'm going to do is not exercise for a few weeks, up my calories by 100 a week until I reach 1600 and then restart my diet in January or February. Does that sound good?
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,401 MFP Moderator
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    Thank you.
    I haven't exercised for the last 3 days and I skipped a day at the beginning of the week. I think what I'm going to do is not exercise for a few weeks, up my calories by 100 a week until I reach 1600 and then restart my diet in January or February. Does that sound good?

    Sounds like a good plan. Also find a way to incorporate resistance/weight training. You can even ask for a few resistance bands for xmas, lol.

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