Thinking out loud about tweaking my diet.

madpiratebippy
madpiratebippy Posts: 20 Member
edited November 20 in Health and Weight Loss
So, former athlete from a family with four generations of eating disorders, with a weird health issue caused by not having all of a pancreas (I'm back to having about 80% of one, hooray!). That's the background.

I am loving myfitnesspal. This is the first time I've been able to track my food and eating without getting completely enraged. I have a lot of control issues around food. My poor husband learned this the hard way when he tried to 'help' me once by taking away a plate while I was still eating from it- he nearly lost his hand and there was screaming and crying for hours afterwards. My parents met in a eating disorder support group, and I had some pretty great coaches growing up who did messed up stuff with food, lots of screaming and shame if you ate off the plan, so logging was used as a weapon against me, not a tool to make me more accountable, if that makes sense.

It's actually been really great to see exactly what i am eating and to be able to check my macros so easily. I am stalled hard in my weight loss right now- I should have lost a lot more weight than I have been. I had to slow my workouts because I live in Texas and my A/C is dead, and heat stroke is not a good thing for meeting your health goals, but still- I'm like, GLUED to 240 pounds right now. I'm losing inches because I do a lot of weight training, but it's still VERY IRRITATING.

I'm trying to decide what I want to focus on next week- dialing in my macronutrient ratio to be lower in carbs than it has been, or focusing on lowering my calorie goal without sacrificing satiety? Because, frankly, f starvation diets, if I'm hungry I am going to eat. For me the trick is that I've been lowering calories but eating a lot more fat, so I stay feeling full longer. It's been working.

I've lost 80+ pounds on my own, and I think I can get the rest of the way to my goal with this nifty tool a lot easier. I've been stalled for over a year at 230-240 and I am REALLY looking forward to dumping the rest of the fat.

Thanks for listening to me ramble, I'm mostly thinking out loud because everyone in my life is tired of hearing me talk about my fitness and diet stuff. :)

Replies

  • healthygreek
    healthygreek Posts: 2,137 Member
    edited June 2015
    I'm almost to my goal but I've been stalled for awhile so I lowered my bread/pasta/dairy/sugar/booze intake and increased my fat and protein intake (I've always eaten tons of veggies and some fruit everyday).
    Anyway, it seems to have gotten the scale moving in a downward direction again so I'm pleased with that. I guess I was eating too much of the other stuff and too little fat/protein so now my diet is a bit more balanced.
    ETA-I'm also feeling considerably more full and satisfied.
  • madpiratebippy
    madpiratebippy Posts: 20 Member
    edited June 2015
    Oh, goals- I found I have a much easier time reaching them if I break them into steps and the ultimate goal.

    Weight:
    • Steady state around 220
    • Loose another 20 lbs, be in Onederland for the first time since high school
    • Reach long-term goal weight of 180, reasses there (between the weight lifting and my huge bones, that might be final goal weight, but I'm not as strong as I once was and lost muscle mass when I got sick, so I might be able to go lower).

    Cardiovascular Health:
    • Be able to do 500 continuous kettlebell swings with an 8 kg bell without taking a break.
    I can currently knock out about 80. When I started a month ago? 10. :) I am VERY happy with my progress here! I might add more goals as I get fitter.

    Strength:
    • Bench press my own body weight for 10 reps
    • Deadlift body weight x 2 for 5 reps
    • Squat 600 lbs, 1 rep

    Bodyfat: 19% BF is the long term goal, right now I'm somewhere at 30% if the online calculators are right (not likely).

    Note about my crazy bone structure: I have massive bones. I wear a men's EE shoe, I can't wear women's bracelets because my wrists are too big, and every time I've had xrays done the doctors comment on the fact I have the biggest bones they've ever seen on a woman. Yes, I am fat, but I also really am big boned! On the plus side, the size and density means I have zero risk for osteoporosis. On the down side, my weight is always going to be high for what I look like, and a lot of the easy BMI calculators and stuff put me at a lot higher percentage of fat than I'm really at.

    Now that I'm tracking things a lot more closely, I might actually break out the cash to get a Dexa scan or something, but I have other expenses for myself I'm going to do first.
  • madpiratebippy
    madpiratebippy Posts: 20 Member
    healthygreek wrote: »
    I'm almost to my goal but I've been stalled for awhile so I lowered my bread/pasta/dairy/sugar/booze intake and increased my fat and protein intake (I've always eaten tons of veggies and some fruit everyday).
    Anyway, it seems to have gotten the scale moving in a downward direction again so I'm pleased with that. I guess I was eating too much of the other stuff and too little fat/protein so now my diet is a bit more balanced.
    ETA-I'm also feeling considerably more full and satisfied.

    I did absolutely zero food or calorie tracking, I think that's why I stalled for over a year. There was also a bit where I didn't weight myself and didn't track anything in any other way, and not surprisingly, I got no results from that period of time. :#

    I'm hoping the myfitnesspal tool, since I am actually having fun using it, is going to keep me on a good track and let me tweak things. A month ago I wouldn't have been debating between tweaking my macronutrient or my calorie goals for the week, I had neither and no way to measure it.

    Drucker said it best- what gets measured, gets managed.
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,942 Member
    Welcome, @madpiratebippy.

    I feel for what you described in your background, but it sounds like you are taking charge.

    Congrats on losing 80 pounds. Remember weight loss slows down, it is not linear, and you are doing all the right things to get where you are now. Just keep working toward your goal, I have no doubt you will reach it. :)
  • maxit
    maxit Posts: 880 Member
    SLLRunner wrote: »
    Welcome, @madpiratebippy.

    I feel for what you described in your background, but it sounds like you are taking charge.

    Congrats on losing 80 pounds. Remember weight loss slows down, it is not linear, and you are doing all the right things to get where you are now. Just keep working toward your goal, I have no doubt you will reach it. :)

    Ditto above :) If it was me deciding where to "tweak" I might try a food substitution that would result in shaving, say, 100 calories a day but I would frame it as "this instead of that" rather than "I am going to deny myself 100 calories a day."
  • madpiratebippy
    madpiratebippy Posts: 20 Member
    SLLRunner wrote: »
    Welcome, @madpiratebippy.

    I feel for what you described in your background, but it sounds like you are taking charge.

    Congrats on losing 80 pounds. Remember weight loss slows down, it is not linear, and you are doing all the right things to get where you are now. Just keep working toward your goal, I have no doubt you will reach it. :)

    Yeah, but zero change in over a year means you're just not paying attention. :D Now that I'm not being a slacker and actually measuring things and paying attention to my health, I'm sure I'll start seeing results again.

    Funny how that works- that you get nowhere unless you work at it!
  • Dawn410
    Dawn410 Posts: 120 Member
    edited June 2015
    Are you seeing a counselor to help with your issues surrounding control and food? A counselor and a nutritionist might be your best bets for a healthy, long- term lifestyle goal.
  • madpiratebippy
    madpiratebippy Posts: 20 Member
    Dawn410 wrote: »
    Are you seeing a counselor to help with your issues surrounding control and food? A counselor and a nutritionist might be your best bets for a healthy, long- term lifestyle goal.

    Ish. I've done my own work on my own and have a physician friend who I talk through stuff with on occasion. but since a lot of my problems come down to control from people in authority positions- especially crazy parent stuff and coaches- grabbing someone in a coach/counselor position usually just restarts the resistance stuff again.

    I do mindfulness meditations and that seems to work fairly well, as well as reprogramming myself with EFT. I've had really great success with that and emotional eating or cravings.

    In other news, I'm thinking of paying to get hydrostatic testing done to see what my basal metabolic rate is, I might have cut my calories too low. It's not as much as I thought it was, and it's been years since I got my lean body mass tested. Last I checked it was around 170, and all the online calculators keep telling me I need to be at around 2,500 calories a day, but... I feel like that's an AWFUL lot for a woman and am trying to keep myself around 2k/day. If i'm not loosing weight because I'm not eating enough, well, thats just silly.
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