I'm ready to give up

I started out on 1200+exercise calories and it worked for awhile, until it didn't. I learned from some of the 'meanies' on here about TDEE-% and looked into that.

I started eating 1200 calories a day, just like MFP told me to do. I felt so righteous eating Laughing Cow cheese on a dry English muffin for breakfast, a salad for lunch and small portions at dinner. I joined the local gym and was amazed when I was able to walk for 30 minutes straight on the treadmill. I was doing awesome! But I was also hungry, kinda miserable and definitely wanting the good food I was accustomed to. I no longer enjoyed eating, it gave me no pleasure or satisfaction. It became a chore to eat the bare minimum of calories. Yes, dieting sucked!!

I started reading in the forums and found “In Place of a Road Map”. That single post changed my life! I learned about TDEE, BMR and a sustainable lifestyle. My weight loss strategy suddenly changed from a temporary diet to a long term way of life – one of eat a little less, move a little more.

I have lost 50+ lbs with that strategy. I eat TDEE-500 calories, walk about 15-20miles/week and do strength training (honestly, I'm not consistent enough to see any real results yet, but I will get there). The best part is that losing weight is not a chore, a job. It is a new lifestyle I fully embrace and enjoy.

Just try the suggestions you have been given for 90 days. I think you will be very pleasantly surprised. If you don't like the results, you can always go back to 1200cals/day.

OP, sent you a FR.

It is great that with your stats, you are able to lose on 1550 a day. Please realize that your experience is not automatically like another one with your same stats. You are an outlier. I don't know what your activity level is, but I would imagine that you are quite active to be pulling this off.
Please do not assume that everyone on a 1200 diet is miserable, and it is impossible. Many people are doing quite well on 1200, and that level is appropriate for THEM.

Well, in terms of this post, I think the comparison's relevant. The OP (fairly similar height and weight target) exercises like mad, doesn't eat her exercise calories back, and finds it very hard to stick to 1200 a day. I don't know everything about her situation, but there's a good possibility that she's yo-yo-ing because she's constantly rebounding from trying lose weight and do exercise on a very tight calorie allowance.

I don't think I'm a particular outlier, actually. I've lost most of this weight doing no exercise whatsoever. But like you, the difference was in working out my personal TDEE figure. My TDEE is 1650, so I try to eat at TDEE-15%. Some of the time I wipe out that deficit because I'm still a bit optimistic about logging. *sigh*

I wanted to share my experience because before I came to MFP, I was absolutely convinced that I couldn't lose weight. Too old, too inactive, too hypoglycaemic, nursing a long-term foot injury etc. I honestly thought I was eating about 1500 calories a day then; I wasn't. It's a question of finding out your own stats, and working out something that you can stick to over the long term.

First off, it's time to stop thinking about "dieting." Anything you do should be sustainable over the long haul.

I was very much in your boat... Crash dieting and eating 1200-1400 a day and thinking I would never get to enjoy food again. Eventually I came to realize that my journey was a marathon, not a sprint. I could rock a 10,000 calorie deficit each week, lose 3 pounds, and feel terrible and miserable, or I could shoot for a 3500 deficit, have some treats, and feel better while losing 1 pound.

Don't weigh yourself after a treat or popcorn! You know that's just sodium and water weight.

Be vigilant and honest while tracking your food... Avoid the calorie creep. It's easy to leave out 15 calories here and 20 there, and not realize where you are.

It's so friggin tough. As a food addict, my primary purpose of eating food used to be the enjoyment. As such, it was impossible to moderate and control portions. Changing to a mindset of food being fuel took months. And I still struggle every day. Just commit to a larger timeframe. Look at calories on a weekly basis instead of daily. That will allow you some more flexibility. Decide which treats are really worth the calories. I love donuts... Love em. But the 5 seconds of enjoyment aren't worth the calories in my budget more than maybe once a month now. But I've learned to replace that enjoyment with other things... Whether it's healthy foods, activity, playing with my kids.

I empathize. But it can be done. I went from 4000-5000 calories a day not even realizing how much I was eating, to struggling to hit 2000 calories while eating almost as much as I want. Share your diary with others and see what they are eating.

I couldn't agree with this more!!!! If you can find healthy foods that you ENJOY rather than ones that seem like a chore to eat, it will be much easier!!! My mind was also set on "food for pleasure" and now that it sees food as fuel I struggle to make my 1500 calories. Also if you can change your focus from body image to health it may help as well. I'm sorry for your struggle but I congratulate your will power and desire for better!! You can do it

Read this link!

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1339672-should-you-give-up-the-answer-is-no?page=1#posts-20568796

Not to bash on you OP, but without meticulous logging you never know exactly how much you are honestly eating. It's more beneficial, in the long run, to measure out everything you can when you can. It's honestly surprising just how far off our guessing can be when it comes to calorie counting. 1200 may not be a number for you. Did you set weight loss to 2lbs a week? 1.5? 1? .5? That can also help you with your calories. Make sure you have the correct activity setting and a reasonable pounds lost per week. I have mine set at .5 lbs a week and I still have about 7-12 pounds to go until I reach my ultimate goal. It's more sustainable, for me anyways, to work off of .5 lbs a week because it leaves wiggle room. And in my current situation, it leaves me plenty of calories for when I start eating normal again so that I don't throw my whole body out of whack because of the super VLCD I'm going to have to eat because of a tonsillectomy.

Logging may seem like the enemy, but it is your best friend. So is measuring foods. Like chips! Man was I the happiest woman alive when I learned 12 chips were NOT a serving. I could fill a whole bowl for 28 grams of chips and not even polish it off because there were more than I needed or wanted. I don't feel restricted weighing everything I eat and I find it fun. It's not miserable and it's a good habit to have because you learn what ACTUAL portions look like. Everything is so super-sized nowadays that what a true portion is gets lost by things like 1/8th of package, 1/12th of package, 1/3 or pizza. What is really one third of the pizza? Better off just weighing it, divide by three and then boom! Perfect size. It makes it easier and makes you conscientious of what you put in your body.

Play around with your number and find what works with you, but if you aren't honest with your logging, this is going to be a bit tougher of a journey than you'd like.

Thank you for the compliment DistantJ, on my previous post; I am so happy that it is also working for you!
It is proof that we are all indeed wonderful and unique individuals when you see all of the different ways MFP members are having success. Everyone has to find their own path. For some that will be vegetarian or vegan, some low fat/high complex carbs and for some the opposite holds true. One note on exercise: recent studies have shown that it will have a negligible effect on weight loss as you saw with your Zumba, etc... exercise focus should be on other reasons like how you feel, flexibility, cardiovascular health. Weight loss, sadly, isn't going to be the result for most people without necessary accompanying dietary modifications. I was bummed to hear that myself but I have also exercised my brains out over the years and I agree with the studies. Still, there are a ton of other reasons to do it!

In my lifetime I have had only one doctor tell me that my family has the efficient fat gene. This is on my father's side who is American of English, Scottish and southern Irish descent though he does have an olive complexion. I am planning on a dual DNA test via Ancestry.com to see what else is lurking there, lol. The diabetes and fat manifestation are all on his side of the family tree with his father, my dad, my brother, my two aunts, several cousins all type 2 diabetics even though some are of normal weight (my dad and brother are not overweight). About 1/3 of paternal family is prone to weight gain (why me?!). My mother's side (she is from N. Ireland with English and Scottish ancestry, too) are all of normal weight but the younger generation (my cousins) are all struggling with keeping weight gain at bay and they were invaded by Asda (Wal-Mart) many years ago...interesting. This doctor's explanation went like this: if there were a disastrous world famine most people would die of starvation in a week I, however, would be one of the last ones standing and I could easily live a month or more which gives me time to find sustenance and survive. So I have a very old gene that persists because survival like that was necessary to our ancestors (which is great) but we of course live in abundance atm. That is one of the concepts studied and discussed in some of the books I mentioned. Very interesting and makes a whole lot of sense. My body takes any carb and, through insulin, shunts it into a fat cell for the anticipated famine kind of like the Little Engine that Could. The only solution is to deprive it of the carbs, keep the insulin response low and switch to fat for fuel over glucose. That is what has greatly improved my blood sugars and overall health. My body does not do well on glucose at all or I wouldn't be obese with diabetes. So this is what I set out to learn about and what to do about it for myself. An interesting side line; I fasted for 36 hours to see what would happen and just like my day long medical test fasts, my energy absolutely skyrockets and I feel wonderful. This is an easy way to see if your body has this genetic propensity but don't do that if you are not fit to try it. It has to do with your body's ability to use flex-fuel, as my husband calls it, we can fuel partition and it is amazing stuff. Bet you didn't know that you were a dual fuel machine! Boy, the human body is a marvel of engineering, isn't it?!

The protocols I described in the earlier post were LCD (low carb diet) VLCD (very low carb diet aka Dr. Bernstein's protocols) and LCHF (low carb/high fat which is also a ketogenic dietary protocol). Don't confuse ketogenic or dietary ketosis with ketoacidosis people! May dietitians still do this and it is simply inexcusable. Studies show that all are excellent for blood sugar control and a myriad of health benefits with the LCHF ketogenic diet is superior if done correctly. Almost anyone can benefit from carb restriction whether diabetic or not (there are a few and I mean a FEW who do better on higher carb ratios). It has taken me 6 months of learning to be comfortable switching off to that particular protocol but that is because I have a long standing medical condition which warrants a bit more caution. Time will tell if it works any better for me than just LCD or VLCD but I have only been working on that for a month. Either way, I am amazed at the results as I have said before. There are obviously a multitude of people who have this efficient fat gene which may now just find itself being switched on (expressed) due to the SAD or chemical manipulation by big food. Humans are certainly not immune to biochemical or corporate manipulation! Just look at our entire lives: food, medicine, gasoline prices, it goes on and on...

So what does big food do when the honeymoon is over or greed runs rampant? Like big tobacco they move to 3rd world countries to pawn their goods and now obesity and accompanying health issues (not to mention lung cancer) are rampant. Why? Because big food has wormed its way past healthy traditional local diets and supplanted them with processed foods, refined carbohydrates, GMO wheat/soy/corn all in the name of money. Capitalism at its worst if you are not sitting on the Board of Directors. In my research I have found that none of those 3 foods are remotely like what was grown just 50 years ago. Just look at the US obesity rate: it began ramping up in the 1970's when three big things happened and they were: GMO grains were developed, increased pesticide and herbicide use both of which have been steadily rising for the last 30-50 years and they linger in the soil which is depleted from over work and synthetic fertilizers. You can find map overlays of their use and obesity rates- it is astounding. It is like over-fishing the oceans; we are over working the land and practicing no long term husbandry. Sometimes I think that old corny Charleton Heston movie Soylent Green could indeed come to pass if we don't shape up. The third big puzzle piece was that the committee recommendations were issued widely to eat low fat and high carb. The world looked to the US and followed suit. Once an idea takes hold on that scale it is hard to wedge it out. Big food is no slouch and jumped on that like a hungry chicken on a grasshopper. Big food and big pharma are often as intertwined as big auto and big oil; keep that in mind as well.

For me, I am 51 and I started gaining at early puberty in the 1970's, my dad used approved pesticides on our home garden believing them to be safe if we rinsed the food, my mother started "watching" what we ate and changed from whole milk to skim or 1 % dairy among other things. As a child I was of perfectly normal slender muscular size until all of that happened and, despite a very active childhood, for me it meant that I was affected by my genetic make-up (the fat gene) and early manifestation means very high carb sensitivity. By the time I turned 13 I had gained about 40 lbs despite constant activity and I was hungry much of the time. My mother began to be concerned but didn't know what to do about it other than to encourage me to be active and "diet" traditionally by watching my food intake. Well, we all know how that works out, right?!

My history was exacerbated by widely disseminated dietary guidelines (I remember seeing the huge You Are What You Eat campaign posters all over my schools). In my lifetime I have also seen a huge change in big farming to huge corporate farms taking over not unlike Wal-Mart eating up all of the small grocery chains (did you know that Wal-Mart profits $1.8 million per MINUTE?). Food became a colossal business in that era and we all went willingly along for the ride. By the age of 14, I began manifesting lactose intolerance but milk was (and still is) required in school lunches. I had to get a doctor's note to keep my girls off of it because they had problems, too. Ridiculous. I know I was 14 because I had an afternoon art class and would double over in agony from the milk every single day- thank goodness it wasn't algebra! It was Phil Donahue who did a show about lactose intolerance that made us realize what it was and we bought the new Lact-Aid drops for our milk. It worked but we didn't know to drop the commercial milk entirely (we were told it was healthy after all) so, like doctors, we slapped a band-aid on the problem. I noted commercial milk because for awhile my father had access to whole raw milk and I, like many others, had no issues with that product. There is a whole lot of research on that subject, too. Our family also switched off to all whole wheat bread/products and things slowly got worse with my intestines. I was in perpetual gas pain, abdominal grumbling, sluggish feeling and this went on for the next 36 years with little old me clueless and frustrated. Weight gain persisted and nothing made it budge; not youth, not exercise, not calorie restriction. That is now ALL history! The only regret I have is that I didn't invest in the company that makes Phazyme- I could have bumped up those stock returns all on my own .

So, again the take away is arm yourself with knowledge, research and learn, don't rely completely on your doctors who are highly likely to be out of date with research and mostly want to give you drugs. If you have one that isn't like that well God bless them and you don't let go! Despite society's pedestal doctors are not Gods and do not have bigger brains than you; they only have an ego complex (after all, wouldn't you if you were always being told how wonderful you are?) and want you to think that they are smarter than you. Think about what they do; they study at universities sponsored by big food and big pharma (yep, guess who provides the textbooks and trains them up early) then they emerge already out of date if they don't practice continuing education (they are so overworked they would never have a family life so something has to give). They get daily sales pitches by pharmaceutical reps who leave samples, doctor freebies (sometimes trips) and discuss the sliding scale of financial compensation for prescription writing. I have several physician friends and they confirm that it is a regular part of their expected income to receive kickbacks from big pharma for every new prescription that they write and especially for promoting the newest drugs. Think back to your last doctor visit...how many new wonder drugs did he or she offer you? Mine was 2 at one doctor, 1 at another doctor all in the last 6 months. QUESTION this! One drug leads to two more to counteract the side effects and it just grows and grows. Did you know that there is a medical movement to put children on routine statins?!? I have chosen to become much healthier on my own and visit a doctor for routine check ups, lab work and if I am acutely ill. It is far better to take my own health into my own hands and avoid illness in the first place. That won't make my doctors, big pharma or even big food very happy and certainly not much money but hey, why should I owe them any loyalty when they demonstrate none to me? So, I chose the red pill and I am glad I did. Thanks Morpheus!

How tall are you??

I started out on 1200+exercise calories and it worked for awhile, until it didn't. I learned from some of the 'meanies' on here about TDEE-% and looked into that.

I started eating 1200 calories a day, just like MFP told me to do. I felt so righteous eating Laughing Cow cheese on a dry English muffin for breakfast, a salad for lunch and small portions at dinner. I joined the local gym and was amazed when I was able to walk for 30 minutes straight on the treadmill. I was doing awesome! But I was also hungry, kinda miserable and definitely wanting the good food I was accustomed to. I no longer enjoyed eating, it gave me no pleasure or satisfaction. It became a chore to eat the bare minimum of calories. Yes, dieting sucked!!

I started reading in the forums and found “In Place of a Road Map”. That single post changed my life! I learned about TDEE, BMR and a sustainable lifestyle. My weight loss strategy suddenly changed from a temporary diet to a long term way of life – one of eat a little less, move a little more.

I have lost 50+ lbs with that strategy. I eat TDEE-500 calories, walk about 15-20miles/week and do strength training (honestly, I'm not consistent enough to see any real results yet, but I will get there). The best part is that losing weight is not a chore, a job. It is a new lifestyle I fully embrace and enjoy.

Just try the suggestions you have been given for 90 days. I think you will be very pleasantly surprised. If you don't like the results, you can always go back to 1200cals/day.