Keep getting ill-not enough calories?

lillipea
lillipea Posts: 7 Member
edited November 2024 in Introduce Yourself
Hi all, I'm jumping the gun a bit but I'm new to the forum and could do with some advice.I'm feeling so desperate to lose weight and get fit again.I keep getting ill(bear in mind I work in a primary school so that may not help) but this is a common theme which has repeated over and over,start exercising,get ill,wait a few weeks and start again,get fit,get ill and so on and so on and I was wondering if I'm not eating enough calories or can you overdo it by overtraining after not doing any for a long period of inactivity?I'm 3 stone overweight,which I hate as I used to be extremely fit and strong ex Kung fu and Chinese Lion Dancer,and I have a bad knee so I was desperate to lose weight.I lost a stone in 3 weeks,not on purposely was just me feeling desperate to help ease the knee problem.I'm also a newly qualified Zumba instructor,yeah ai know I don't sound like it but I can still hold my own stamina wise when dancing.Anyone got any ideas on what I'm doing wrong and how I can do this weight lose thing better? I have to put in the hours to learn new Zumba routines but would like to add some Cassey Ho pop Pilates, HIIT and yoga too. Any help would be appreciated.

Replies

  • lillipea
    lillipea Posts: 7 Member
    I usually get a heavy cold but I've had this weird dizzy feeling as well as a cold this last week.I had a virus before Christmas which floored me for a month.A friend of mine said nutrition is vital and I should try and eat as much spinach and carrots and to ease into it a bit easier,not so much exercise but it's really hard when you're knee feels dodgy.
  • gothchiq
    gothchiq Posts: 4,590 Member
    Might be time to see your doctor and get some basic bloodwork done. Iron levels, thyroid check, Vitamin D, all that good stuff.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,864 Member
    This is impossible to say without knowing what your calorie intake is like vs your exercise. Part of being fit and healthy is understanding how to properly fuel your body...you have to balance that with your weight control goals...but yeah...a lot of people just crash their diets and then go do a ton of exercise on top of that and that's pretty much going to make one feel rather crappy and I could see how it could result in illness...not that the exercise is making you ill but because people don't leave themselves enough energy (calories) for general bodily operations like immune system function and whatnot.

    But really, without knowing what your intake is like and how much you're burning through exercise (on top of all of your day to day stuff) I'm just speculating.

    I'm going to go out on a limb though and assume that you did what most people do and you put "sedentary" as your activity level (even though you're probably not given that you work in a primary school...I'm assuming teacher)...and you probably selected 2 Lbs per week (most aggressive goal) and you do a bunch of exercise but don't eat back any exercise calories because you don't understand why someone who wants to lose weight would do that. Am I in the ball park? Again, I'm just speculating and basing these assumptions on my 2.5 years + on MFP.
  • lillipea
    lillipea Posts: 7 Member
    thanks for the info guys.I had blood tests done in Spain before which covered diabetes and I'm pretty sure it covered thyroid and lack of vitamins etc too.I do suffer from stress and anxiety so I guess that may be screwing up my immunity. Yep I did select sedentary as I don't consider being a teaching assistant very physical and I know you're supposed to have a certain amount of calories or your body goes into starvation mode but I don't know how I'm supposed to lose weight but eat enough to balance out the amount of exercise I'm doing.Is that something to do with what you meant by 'don't eat back any exercise calories'? Sorry if this sounds blonde I just feel confused about what to do for the best.
  • 2snakeswoman
    2snakeswoman Posts: 655 Member
    It could be that your body is fighting off viruses/bacteria that you're exposed to, but there's also a phenomenon having to do with the way muscles function. If you are stressing them too much beyond their capacity to perform, the extracellular space gets flooded with ions that are supposed to stay intracellular. You can get sick from this, and it feels a lot like the flu. The best solution is to back down to something that you know you can easily perform and build very slowly from there. For example, if you got sick the last time you exercised for an hour, back it down to 30 minutes and add 5 minutes each week or every few days, depending on how you are feeling. (p.s: I had classes in exercise physiology recently.)
  • foreverslim1111
    foreverslim1111 Posts: 2,663 Member
    lillipea wrote: »
    thanks for the info guys.I had blood tests done in Spain before which covered diabetes and I'm pretty sure it covered thyroid and lack of vitamins etc too.I do suffer from stress and anxiety so I guess that may be screwing up my immunity. Yep I did select sedentary as I don't consider being a teaching assistant very physical and I know you're supposed to have a certain amount of calories or your body goes into starvation mode but I don't know how I'm supposed to lose weight but eat enough to balance out the amount of exercise I'm doing.Is that something to do with what you meant by 'don't eat back any exercise calories'? Sorry if this sounds blonde I just feel confused about what to do for the best.

    If you enter your exercise into your exercise diary, MFP will give you credit for those calories burned and add them to your calorie total in your food diary. Then you can either eat all or part or note of them at the end of the day. It's your choice and you should go by how you feel. I typically try to end up with a deficit of about 200 cals per day. Your exercise cals are adding to the cal deficit that is already built into your program by MFP's suggesting how many cals you should eat. You're just adding to that with the exercise cals that you enter into your exercise diary on MFP. Hope this helps.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    OP, how many calories are you eating per day?
    How much exercise are you doing per day (type of exercise, for how long)?

    And are you getting enough sleep? Not sleeping enough can hammer your immune system...
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,864 Member
    lillipea wrote: »
    thanks for the info guys.I had blood tests done in Spain before which covered diabetes and I'm pretty sure it covered thyroid and lack of vitamins etc too.I do suffer from stress and anxiety so I guess that may be screwing up my immunity. Yep I did select sedentary as I don't consider being a teaching assistant very physical and I know you're supposed to have a certain amount of calories or your body goes into starvation mode but I don't know how I'm supposed to lose weight but eat enough to balance out the amount of exercise I'm doing.Is that something to do with what you meant by 'don't eat back any exercise calories'? Sorry if this sounds blonde I just feel confused about what to do for the best.

    Your calorie goal on MFP is a weight loss goal...it's not a maintenance goal...so basically, you could just eat to that goal and you would lose weight even without any exercise. Since you selected sedentary, your exercise is unaccounted for which is why you should log it and eat back a portion of those calories...you just have to be careful here because it's really easy to overestimate burn...it is one of the inherent issues with this methodology and one of the big reasons I don't like this methodology.

    Starvation mode is a myth, but if your set to sedentary and you're working out, it is highly possible that you are simply not leaving enough in the tank for your body to take care of base functions.
  • lillipea
    lillipea Posts: 7 Member
    Oh ok.Very useful and interesting. So do you think I should change it from sedentary to active?I can't remember what the options were now.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,864 Member
    lillipea wrote: »
    Oh ok.Very useful and interesting. So do you think I should change it from sedentary to active?I can't remember what the options were now.

    No, you should just log your exercise when you do it and eat a portion of those calories back. While I'm not a tremendous fan of the MFP methodology, it is beneficial in teaching one how to fuel their fitness and it allows one to lose weight even if they miss a workout or whatever...if you include that estimate in your activity level and thus account for those calories in your goal then you need to be very consistent with your fitness.
  • lillipea
    lillipea Posts: 7 Member
    Kimny72 I do try to get 8 hours sleep but I very often go to the toilet once during the night and I'm also sleeping in my Aunts conservatory so I do get disturbed to a certain extent even with headphones and meditation music playing. As I mentioned to cwolfman13 above I set my work to sedentary and this could be affecting things as I have been, up until last week, doing 70 mins of Zumba(which leaves me reasonably breathless but able to talk a bit) and I had just started adding pop Pilates too but I started adding literally a couple of minutes of ab exercises(following a month plan from the Blogilates website) and then every other day or when I felt to it I increased the workout to about 30 minutes which included other parts of the body I.e arms,chest,legs.I guess I pushed myself too soon on too little calories.I do also get up at 5.45 and commute across London which does tire me out no matter how early I go to bed.
  • lillipea
    lillipea Posts: 7 Member
    Hi Foreverslim1111.Thanks for the info.I think the worry about being so overweight and my knee being bad made me crazy and I just wanted to lose as much weight as possible but slowly is better but more frustrating. 2snakeswoman I'm not pushing myself aerobically to the extreme.I used to do a lot of intense cardio but Zumba and pop Pilates are quite easy going in comparison but I get what you mean, totally.I think I need to do what you suggested above and back off by 5 minutes if I start to feel tired.I pushed myself last weekend,Saturday,even though I felt fatigued and hey presto I felt terrible Sunday.I'm not feeling sick,wanting to vomit,I just get a cold or like before Christmas a virus and I'm ill from about one week to a month.

  • happygalah
    happygalah Posts: 343 Member
    How often do you wash your hands?
  • foreverslim1111
    foreverslim1111 Posts: 2,663 Member
    lillipea wrote: »
    Hi Foreverslim1111.Thanks for the info.I think the worry about being so overweight and my knee being bad made me crazy and I just wanted to lose as much weight as possible but slowly is better but more frustrating. 2snakeswoman I'm not pushing myself aerobically to the extreme.I used to do a lot of intense cardio but Zumba and pop Pilates are quite easy going in comparison but I get what you mean, totally.I think I need to do what you suggested above and back off by 5 minutes if I start to feel tired.I pushed myself last weekend,Saturday,even though I felt fatigued and hey presto I felt terrible Sunday.I'm not feeling sick,wanting to vomit,I just get a cold or like before Christmas a virus and I'm ill from about one week to a month.
    You're welcome. Logging my food and exercise on MFP has helped me very much to get control of my weight and fitness. Recently, I had a throat infection and had to back off all of the exercise for about 10 days. Then when I started back I did it slowly and gently and added a bit more each day. We all get sick and have setbacks. The important thing is not let it be the end of your aiming for your goal. Also, I'm using a HRM now so any time I exercise or do heavy work like gardening, or house cleaning I give myself credit on my exercise diary for the cals that the HRM tells me I burned. I believe that MFP gives you too high of a credit for cals. Because it is always much higher than my HRM and my pedometer. They are more in agreement with cals burned when walking then MFP.

    Another advantage of the HRM is that you can see when your pushing too hard during exercise and back off. For me when I see it go to 135, I slow down. It's different for everyone and depends on your age. But it's a great tool to help you work at safe level and not overdo it. By the way my HRM is the Polar ft7.
  • lillipea
    lillipea Posts: 7 Member
    I wash them every time I go to the toilet and if a kid sneezes on me, well the hands that is or any other part of the skin.
  • happygalah
    happygalah Posts: 343 Member
    Wash your hands a lot more with lots of soap and hot water and don't touch your face with your hands. You'll find you won't get as sick as much.
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