what have I actually done?
EmilyAFraser1
Posts: 31 Member
Hi
I have been at the EMTWL for quite a while now, my food diary is public so if anyone wants to take a look then it might help clarify what I'm trying to ask/say in this post.
I started eating more after several months of major cutting and several periods (eg. 4 weeks eating loads over Xmas break) of eating normal-ish. Although I have gone through periods of major calorie restriction for a few years, it has never been for largely extended periods of time. So in March I started eating more after maybe 4-6 weeks of severe cutting/bingeing. I slowly upped my alories by 100 a week to avoid big gains and stuff and it worked amazingly, I continued to lose after the first few weeks of being at a standstill, and have steadily increased since then, with a random under-eating blip for about 10 days when I went to visit my parents and sort of freaked out about not being able to log, as a consequence, i think I over-estimated calories hugely and therefore was eating at a cut but this was only a week or so, and I went right back to upping when I got home again. So I've been at 1800 cals for several weeks now and for the first couple weeks I still lost and since have pretty much stabilised, although I did see a .8lb gain yesterday which is the first gain I've seen since starting to eat more, oddly enough, and I was back down by .4 today.
Anyway, my question. Is this right? really, I can't put it more eloquently...I think my tdee is around 1800-1900 as I'm really bad at using the calculators as I don't work out, I just walk alot and have a busy lifestyle.
Info about me to help; 5'7", 20 years old, female, currently weigh 112lbs ish. I know this is underweight, but thing is, I am happy at this weight, happy with the way I look (I definitely don't look skeletal or anything, this isn't an eating disorder I promise, and I had bloodwork and stuff done recently and I'm actually perfectly healthy)
Really what I want to know (I want to stay at this weight) is have I sorted out my metabolism or is it still busted because it's not what seems to be a conventional reset. I eat plenty, and lots of fruit and veg and protein and wholegrains etc. but allow myself treats every day as will be evident if anyone looks at my diary. I am a waitress and work about 20 hours a week, sometimes more, at a chain restaurant which is often very busy so some days I do ALOT of rushing around and am on my feet loads.
Can anyone tell me what they think? I want to stop being so obsessed with logging and making sure I have enough, but not too many calories, and want to be more relaxed about this, but I want to be sure I'm back to a healthy metabolism and that my body has forgiven me for all the starvation I put it through.
I know this is a crazy long post and I'm probably just being very silly but I keep reading about resets and gaining suring resets and since I haven't gained, I'm worried that I haven't actually done anything for my metabolism at all and that it's still busted. Advice guys? Please help me out, I just need some clarification and peace of mind/advice.
I have been at the EMTWL for quite a while now, my food diary is public so if anyone wants to take a look then it might help clarify what I'm trying to ask/say in this post.
I started eating more after several months of major cutting and several periods (eg. 4 weeks eating loads over Xmas break) of eating normal-ish. Although I have gone through periods of major calorie restriction for a few years, it has never been for largely extended periods of time. So in March I started eating more after maybe 4-6 weeks of severe cutting/bingeing. I slowly upped my alories by 100 a week to avoid big gains and stuff and it worked amazingly, I continued to lose after the first few weeks of being at a standstill, and have steadily increased since then, with a random under-eating blip for about 10 days when I went to visit my parents and sort of freaked out about not being able to log, as a consequence, i think I over-estimated calories hugely and therefore was eating at a cut but this was only a week or so, and I went right back to upping when I got home again. So I've been at 1800 cals for several weeks now and for the first couple weeks I still lost and since have pretty much stabilised, although I did see a .8lb gain yesterday which is the first gain I've seen since starting to eat more, oddly enough, and I was back down by .4 today.
Anyway, my question. Is this right? really, I can't put it more eloquently...I think my tdee is around 1800-1900 as I'm really bad at using the calculators as I don't work out, I just walk alot and have a busy lifestyle.
Info about me to help; 5'7", 20 years old, female, currently weigh 112lbs ish. I know this is underweight, but thing is, I am happy at this weight, happy with the way I look (I definitely don't look skeletal or anything, this isn't an eating disorder I promise, and I had bloodwork and stuff done recently and I'm actually perfectly healthy)
Really what I want to know (I want to stay at this weight) is have I sorted out my metabolism or is it still busted because it's not what seems to be a conventional reset. I eat plenty, and lots of fruit and veg and protein and wholegrains etc. but allow myself treats every day as will be evident if anyone looks at my diary. I am a waitress and work about 20 hours a week, sometimes more, at a chain restaurant which is often very busy so some days I do ALOT of rushing around and am on my feet loads.
Can anyone tell me what they think? I want to stop being so obsessed with logging and making sure I have enough, but not too many calories, and want to be more relaxed about this, but I want to be sure I'm back to a healthy metabolism and that my body has forgiven me for all the starvation I put it through.
I know this is a crazy long post and I'm probably just being very silly but I keep reading about resets and gaining suring resets and since I haven't gained, I'm worried that I haven't actually done anything for my metabolism at all and that it's still busted. Advice guys? Please help me out, I just need some clarification and peace of mind/advice.
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Replies
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Well, a reset is done to get the metabolism back to right, to remove a stress on your body to allow that and get hormones back in balance.
This is to allow you to take a deficit to lose weight.
Since that doesn't need to happen, and it sounds like you just want to eat at possible maintenance.
Because ya, you are underweight for that height, no one is that small boned.
As to weight fluctuations, if not aware of how extreme they can be, weigh yourself many times a day and see how invalid that is as data points to even give thought to, same applies to daily, though with no formal exercise you do indeed have less chance of fluctuations.
I'd still pick a morning after a non-work day, eating normal sodium levels, for a valid weigh-in to confirm you aren't gaining/losing.
And then for peace of mind to know that is a good calorie level (because if you do start working out, you'll need to know what to increase from), you can do a simple 2 weeks test.
Eat 250 extra calories daily. If you are truly eating at maintenance, you would see a slow gain of one, 1, mere pound over those 2 weeks.
If it's fast, it's water weight, and you are not at TDEE eating level.
If you want to try to hone in on likely TDEE, use this for good bodyfat calc, best estimate BMR based on it, good activity calc for putting in those work hrs on your feet.
Of course you don't need the eating goal given, since this is weight loss calc and you have none to lose, just look at the TDEE level, perhaps the macro goal too as being useful.
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/813720-spreadsheet-bmr-tdee-deficit-macro-calcs-hrm-zones
During that 2 weeks you can also try to figure out and really learn what portions are and calories are, because indeed, don't want to log forever if no need to.
But hopefully that 2 week test also shows you that since you'd have to eat a whole 250 more each and every day for 2 weeks to even gain a lb of fat (it wouldn't be totally fat if doing lifting BTW), you have some buffer in there before you'd really gain weight easily.0 -
Ok thanks that was really helpful actually, although I had no luck with the spreadsheet as it completely blew my mind and I have no spreadsheet software on my computer!
I like the 2 week test idea, but my question is, if I gain a whole bunch of water weight, will that mean I bloat? Because although I know I am 'underweight' I have a suspision that is because I drink so much water that I retain very little water weight anyway and I've worked so hard for so long to finally be happy with the way I look that I don't want to ruin it all and risk slipping back into bad dieting habits by gaining a whole bunch of visiible 'weight'.
I know I probably sound like a pathetic, silly, irrational 'little girl' but I've worked so hard and finally found out about eating more that I don't want to mess myself up and go back to crash dieting because I put on all the weight I lost.
I understand that 250 extra a day would only lead to a 1lb fat gain but I'll admit it, I'm a slave to the scale and I do let it affect me, although I know this is bad. I suppose what I should do is eat 250 extra for like a week and then only weight myself once, not daily to see the results after one week then two, but I'm just terrified of ruining both my phsical state and my new mental perspective!0 -
Ya, if you don't have a gmail account, and no Excel or compatible, you can't use the spreadsheet.
The water weight gain would be because of storing more glucose in the muscles, so not bloat, probably not even noticeable as it's all the muscles that store glucose, mainly in those you use a lot, so perhaps legs from walking a lot.
Because glucose stores with water, and if you are under-eating, those will always be depleted to some level. That's what I'm guessing current variance is from, slightly more carbs eaten one day or less of them burned, stored and with water, weight up. Lighter carb day or more carbs burned and they deplete more, weight down.
Because your diet isn't high enough to totally keep them topped off.
It would take probably a couple lbs to end up being the least bit visible.
Sadly, you'll have to work on this, as I can sense you will always be ruining your own mental state.
You are likely to see any scale weight fluctuation as a big deal.
Always keep that math in mind. You gain 1 lb over night after big night out - it obviously wasn't fat, because you didn't eat 3500 calories over maintenance. So no need to go nuts with cutting back calories big time for mere water weight.
4 weeks as a woman should be your minimum time span for trying to observe any pattern. Outside that, useless mental stress you really don't need.
Because each time you crash diet, you do lose muscle mass, and that will set you up for worse next time down the road.
That's why I wanted you to use the spreadsheet and get good estimate of bodyfat% and BMR based on that, you might have already a higher % of BF despite your low weight because of your past eating habits. And if not careful you'll just be making it worse, and then destined to do it over and over and over again, harder and worse each time if you constantly use the same bad methods.0 -
Yeah, I'm really trying to not obsess and have a bad attitude about all this; and for the last few weeks I have been totally fine and wasn't obsessing about the scale or intake of food much at all, but ever since it occurred to me that I might actually still be damaging my metabolism by undereating I've started obsessing again. I mean, a gain of a couple lbs water weight probably wouldn't bother me, but if I jumped up 5-10lbs I would probably be really bummed by that.
As far as body fat percentage, I have used a few calculators and it seems to be around 15-17% but I don't know if thats high or low or what.
I kind of figure I'm either going to start next week with the two week test suggested, or if I chicken out, I'll up my calories by 50-100 each week until I start to see an upward trend and then go back to the previous count, hopefully that'll settle me at a maintenance intake, but there are some days where I probably burn a lot more than others just through work and lifestyle; I live in London and walk wherever I can and sometimes this means just a mile or so or sometimes a 6-10 mile round trip in total, does that mean I should eat more those days and less on days where I'm pretty much in the house just doing chores and laptop based work?
I'm sorry, I sound really ignorant, but I just get overwhelmed by all the info on the boards and numbers and stuff and it doesn't really 'compute' well!0 -
You can try to balance out the week by eating an avg amount daily, or eat correctly for that day's activities, so more on active days would be eaten.
And that 15% side of range is low BF%, athletic level, where hormones usually start getting messed up for women.
Be aware the measurement methods at goal weight can be fooled by carrying a lot of fat, the skinny-fat syndrome.
Probably would only jump up 3 lbs I'd bet max, since your body isn't training for endurance stuff, it's not going to see a need to store a bunch really.0
