Question about waistline

Without getting too personal regarding your health issues...have you considered that you may have fibro or something of the like? Also, you are using your knees, legs, arms more than what you used to and this may be aggravating your joints. If your doctor is at a loss and cannot offer any helpful suggestions, I suggest finding a new one.

Lastly, once a workout starts to hurt so bad you want to cry - STOP IT!

If I did that, I'd get maybe 20 minutes of exercise maximum a day and my metabolism is so bad that if I dropped my exercise to that level, I'd never lose weight.

Water work outs.
You can do water yoga
Water zumba
A bunch of different work outs in the water.
They even have underwater treadmills.
Try something like that, see if that helps your pain.

Also, i started running when i first started my journey.. and i had no pain, 6 months into my journey i had severe ankle back and shoulder pains.. my body wasnt use to the movements and they became sore. Work through it little by little and it gets better. A year later, no pain.

I assume that like women, men lose fat from different places at different rates. Therefore you store more fat on your belly and less elsewhere (legs, arms, etc) than those heavier people you know. You'll lose it there eventually just keep going.

As for the knee problems, you are experience a case of correlation and not causation. At your heaviest, you probably weren't very active and therefore not putting additional strain on your joints. Now that you are at a lower weight, you are more mobile (be it at exercising, or just the fact that you are okay to walk around a bit more). This is putting more strain on your joints than they are used to. At this point, I'd say your better off dealing with knee pain than the health risks of being obese. Find activities that don't leave you in as much pain (swimming is good, and ellipticals instead of treadmills, avoiding the stairmaster).

Good luck and great job so far!

Without getting too personal regarding your health issues...have you considered that you may have fibro or something of the like? Also, you are using your knees, legs, arms more than what you used to and this may be aggravating your joints. If your doctor is at a loss and cannot offer any helpful suggestions, I suggest finding a new one.

Lastly, once a workout starts to hurt so bad you want to cry - STOP IT!

If I did that, I'd get maybe 20 minutes of exercise maximum a day and my metabolism is so bad that if I dropped my exercise to that level, I'd never lose weight.

If you're eating a healthy diet at 20% below your TDEE, you will lose weight whether you exercise or not. Exercise is awesome, but if you're truly in that much pain you either need to find another way to exercise (ie pool) or manage your weight loss via eating.

ps, I checked out your diary, why not just add the foods you eat to ensure you're eating the right macros?

MFP recommends me eating 2080 calories a day. If I eat even as much as 1600 calories a day, even with exercise, I will gain weight.

I use scoobys calculator to figure out how much i should eat... google it. It might actually be the food you're eating... log each and every thing, not just a block of quick add cals, you mght be surprised. I'm on a limited budget as well along with going to school, working FT and having 4 dogs but still manage to eat lots of fruit and veg, it's possible

I didn't say directly that weight loss caused my knee problems. It just seems unusual that my knee problems developed after dieting and have only gotten worse as I've lost more and more weight.

For the record, the troll comment is unnecessary and utterly pointless. Nonsense like that is why I don't like to come to this board too often unless I have a concern that I can't elsewhere find an answer for.

My guess is knee problems are from walking more- even if your weight it going down if you went from sitting on the couch at 400 lbs to walking at 300 lbs, your knees are doing more work walking.

Don't let comparing yourself to other's waistlines deter you. Your body is shaped how it is shaped. You are improving your health by lowering your body fat percentage and getting exercise.

If I were you, i'd consider exercise that has a lower impact on the knees since they hurt- like swimming or bicycling. Somehow that your knees don't have to carry the load. As your weight goes down, your knees should be able to handle it better.

You may also want to talk to your doctor about strengthening your knees through a consistent and specially designed lifting program for your knees. Or physical therapy.

Whatever you do, don't give up. You are on the path to better health and you know it.

First, congratulations on the steps that you've taken to achieve better health! It sounds like your body type may be android, which accounts for weight to accumulate around the midsection. Waist circumference on its own is an independent risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus. Aiming for < 40 inches is a good target for a male. The visceral fat that accumulates in the midsection secretes adipokines, which are hormones that can affect regulation of metabolism (as do your thyroid hormone levels). Any kind of severe joint pain should be evaluated by a medical professional. Hope this helps!

If it isn't bad enough for them treat it, it likely isn't effecting your metabolism as much as you think it is.... Especially not enough to be eating as little as you are. It would be helpful if you would enter what foods you are actually eating into your diary, instead of quick calories. Macros do matter, for example if you are eating 1000 calories worth of bread every day, you can't expect your body to be able to build muscle. It is really difficult to tell what is going on here since I don't know what you are eating. What I DO know, is I am a 5'5" female and you eat less than I do.

I eat bread very rarely and when I do eat it, it's whole grain bread. As I said earlier, I live in the southeastern US and health care here is a complete abomination. I imagine if I lived in any other region of the country, I would likely be on medication for it. There are reasons why the obesity level is so much higher in the south and why life expectancy in the south is usually much lower than the rest of the country.

I live in the southeast too, Jackson, Mississippi.... I know what the healthcare is like in the southeast.

My metabolism is a thyroid issue and is genetic. No doctor will prescribe medication for me because they say "it's not severe enough." Basically, unless you have something along the lines of gigantism or acromegaly, they don't like to do anything for hypothyroidism. At least that's been my experience with 4 different doctors and 2 specialists.

You really, really need to find better doctors.