I can't trust myself...

maybabier wrote: »

Taking a break doesn't mean you're giving up. I also felt weird not burning extra calories. Sometimes you just have to give your body a break. Maybe try 1 cheat day a week? Eat very clean every day except for Sunday. Doesn't keto give you a day off every week?

not necessarily... like any other diet plan, it's ultimately up to you how strictly you choose to follow it. with a ketogenic plan, there are more immediate effects of cheating because you're interrupting chemical processes rather than just getting extra calories.

i've been dealing with some rough crap lately, and last night i let myself have some comfort food (which is not normal... i enjoy food, i appreciate food, but it's not something i have ever turned to for comfort) of a ghirardelli pumpkin spice chocolate square and half a double western bacon burger from carl's jr. i stayed well within my calories, but the excess carbs had me passed out asleep within half an hour. that's normal for how my body handles them. so as a rule, i don't cheat like that because i know i'll feel it immediately.

pplastics wrote: »

Are you currently losing 1/2 to a pound a week? If so, that is a perfectly acceptable rate of loss.

if you average it all out... yes, it's about half a pound a week. that's the good news. the bad news is that according to all the calculations, my deficit is MUCH higher than the 250 per day i'd need for a simple 1/2 pound per week... my deficit should have me losing closer to 1.3lbs per week.

Is this about not knowing what to trust, or is it about the motivational culprit most of us fight - impatience?

i don't think it's impatience... at least it's not anymore.

think of it this way... say you have a car that is supposed to get 30 miles to the gallon, but when you actually track the miles using the odometer and divide that by how many gallons of gas you're getting every time you fill up, it turns out that you're only getting 18 miles per gallon, WAY below even an acceptable margin of error.

you'd figure one of two things is happening... someone screwed up when they printed and distributed the specs on the car (not likely), or something is wrong with your engine and it's not working the way it's supposed to.

since i can't exactly pop open my own hood and see what's out of whack, i can't trust that my body is going to perform as per the generalized expectations. if i was 10% below the calculated rate of loss, i'd probably be ok with that. unfortunately i'm hovering somewhere around 40% - 50% below where i should be, and i'm NOT ok with that.

Isabelle_1929 wrote: »

I don't understand this "I don't trust my body" statement.

First of all, why do you rely more on what "programs" tell you than what you own body and weight loss have been telling you?
What are these programs anyway? Who made them? Who told you they are supposed to work universally for every one?

Why don't you focus on FACTS instead of projections, stats, and whatnot.
Here's one FACT: You are losing weight, at a rate of 0.5 lbs per week.

You're getting there, but it is slow.

What I see is that you are disappointed because you thought it would go faster, and I totally understand.

because you cannot create projections, stats, and whatnot without facts first. those facts, gathered from who knows how many thousands of individual data points, are what create the various calculations (4 that are generally accepted in the realm of human physiology, from what i can tell) that allow us to predict human metabolic rates under varying levels of activity.

in any science, when you're gathering data points and you have one point that's WAAAAAAAY off in left field someplace, you can do one of two things: you can ignore it, or you can determine what other factors are influencing the data to push it so far off from the norm. if i was the one collecting the data, i'd mostly ignore any severe outliers but i'd keep track of how many there were so that i could say "this calculation will work for XX% of the population of adults." even if i wasn't dead on with the calculations, i would expect that the accepted margin of variation would be within 10% or so.

however in this case, i AM the data point that is off in left field, so i'm more inclined to find out what the other factors are that is influencing my data to be so far outside the accepted margin of variation.

so if i ignore the calculations and go by what my own body is telling me, based on my activity level, it's saying that my BMR is somewhere between 1,000 and 1,100 calories a day... which is the equivalent of someone my height and age at roughly 70lbs. i work out 4-5 days a week, alternating circuits daily (total body & ab), and i do cardio on my ab days.

What's you current weight, and how much do you want to lose ?

i'm 5'3", currently 210 (thank you weekend bounce of 2lbs, which may just be water weight but when you fight for every pound, that hurts). my 1st goal is to get down to 180... after that we'll see what happens.

i've already seen an endocrinologist once and have about a month to go before i get another set of bloodwork done and another visit. yes, i've seen some progress, and i'm not discounting that... but because my progress is so far off from where i should be, then something is wrong. something is hindering me. that's why i can't trust my body... i can't trust that it will do what it's supposed to given all the steps i'm taking to lose weight, and i can't trust that it can tell me what part of this i'm missing or deficient in or that's causing the roadblocks.

thatsleepyguy wrote: »

If I felt that my progress was too slow, I would simply lower daily caloric intake further, if I could take it.

i'm already averaging a daily intake of about 1400ish (based on the last month's numbers), which ends up being 180 below my cutoff. when i plugged my loss rate into MFP, at 1580 calories a day i should be losing 1.3lbs per week, and that's based on a "lightly active" setting. it's just under what my BMR is supposed to be (as per the standard calculations). this is where the frustration lies. my oTDEE calculates at 1.06. in other words, working our 4-5 days a week becomes the equivalent of not getting out of bed in the morning.

the answer of "oh just eat less" is a rage- and ED-inducing trigger for me. it's not a solution, because i have the willpower to eat absolutely nothing all day. someone of my weight and activity level should not have to create a 1,000 daily calorie deficit where someone else of my height, weight, and activity level only needs to create a 650 daily calorie deficit to have the same results.

After that, you might need to consider not subtracting calories used up in exercise. I work out 3 times a week. If I tell MFP that I'm "lightly active", then my TDEE is 3k kCal, which seems extraordinarily excessive. Further subtracting calories burned in those workout sessions would be a redundancy. leading me to eat more than I should.

*most* of the time, i don't. it's counter-intuitive to me anyway. i stay under the deficit line that MFP creates for weight loss without exercise. if they end up being a buffer because i know i will want to eat more that day, so be it.

That might not apply to you, but if you aren't happy with your weight of rate loss, again, consider being more strict with how many calories you allow yourself. You are still in fact losing weight, so you know that your body isn't incapable of it.

if i drop myself down to equal the rate of loss i should be getting right now, i'm well into the "DANGER WILL ROBINSON" range. i'm not medically cleared for that, and honestly shouldn't have to.

However, one more thing to keep in mind is that fitness is most definitely not a sprint. Your rate of half a pound a week may seem slow, but if you sustain that over months or years it would unequivocally become significant, and it may even be a blessing. Trying too hard over a relatively short period of time is how people burn themselves out. I've had friends give up because their insane diets of 500 kCal a day were just too rough to sustain for more than a week at a time. I myself couldn't fathom eating 1000 or fewer calories a day, so I stick with around 2000. Sure, you might not end up where you want to be come summer, but that will still be an improvement over where you are now.

define "relatively"? is it unrealistic to think that in 4 months i should have lost at least 20lbs? especially at the deficit i'm supposed to be creating based on all the understood and accepted metrics?

the reason i can't trust myself is because i have no way of currently identifying what mechanism is not working within my metabolism that's preventing it from burning the fat that i have stored at the generally accepted rate.

look... i get that this isn't a race. this is a lifetime change. but this is also a determination of my overall health, and i'm now seeing a giant neon sign saying "SOMETHING IS WRONG."

Isabelle_1929 wrote: »

That's what I was saying: There is no way in hell you are ready to consider that maybe, perhaps, who knows, there is a possibility that those programs are somehow flawed.

However, you KNOW that there is something "not working within your metabolism".

Ok, then.

those programs are the same ones that MFP, and every other RMR/BMR and TDEE calculator uses in order to determine the proper caloric intake for weight loss, maintenance, and weight gain. those calculations are well established as good, solid guidelines, and as i stated before, if my observed TDEE was within 10% of those guidelines, i wouldn't be complaining.

you might as well start saying "it's not that i'm chronically late to work, it's that the clocks at my office, my home, my car, my phone, and at the 3 banks i pass every day on my way to work are all off!" or better yet... "it's not that i'm always cold, it's that the thermometer is wrong!"

i've already had one round of bloodwork that's given me some answers. sometime next month i can get another round of bloodwork done and compare the results to see if i'm still deficient in some things, high in others, and if yet other culprits arise.

yoovie wrote: »

this is one of those situations where there is a problem for every solution.

pretty much, yeah...

yoovie wrote: »

I give you permission to give up. See if that helps

yay!! i'll go dive head first into taco bell!