“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”
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DeeDeeMee
Posts: 133 Member
Sorry about the length here, I'd say it's more of an account of my experience rather than a simple discussion post.
“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”
This statement is both profoundly true and extremely damaging.
It’s been a couple of years now since I’ve been on ‘maintenance’ and I think I’m finally ready to post in this section. Not that I would consider myself a ‘success story’ per se. I tipped the scales in my GP’s office at 100 kilos (around 220 pounds) about three years ago. I’d tried to lose weight by various means but nothing seemed to work. I honestly thought that something was wrong with me. My metabolism was broken, or something. The stories we tell ourselves. We’d moved a few months before and so I had a new GP, as well as being close enough to my workplace to walk every day (half an hour each way, a decent amount of exercise). We also now had a scary jungle of a yard that I was hacking away at with a number of specially designed cutting implements. Despite the extra exercise I was still gaining weight. Even more of a reason to think that something was wrong with me.
Previous GPs had not really taken my distress at my weight gain seriously. They had various ineffective recommendations, including simply cutting down on fat intake or, in one case, cutting out all gluten and pretty much all carbs entirely. I actually had one GP tell me that weight gain was perfectly normal “at my time of life”, referring I assume to the fact that at the time I was newly married. I honestly can’t think of any other reason she’d say something like that to a woman in her 20s. That was quite a while ago now. Honestly, where do these people get off? They call themselves medical doctors but don’t know the first thing about human physiology?
My new GP was different. He’s an extremely intelligent and talented man who recognised my own intelligence and pragmatism straight away. He sat me down and gave me a physics lesson – energy in, energy out. No one had ever explained it to me like that before. Suddenly it all seemed so obvious. His advice to me was to eat 20% less every meal, every day, no holidays and no exceptions. Well that’s not so hard. In fact, I found that the hardest part about it was sticking to the 20% - who’s going to have 20% less of, for example, two eggs? 50% less is way easier! And so I embarked on my often 50% less eating plan, logging everything into MFP so that I knew exactly how much energy I was consuming and burning. Ten months later I was down 25 kilos, and rapidly shrinking.
I guess this is where the quote comes in. I’d become a bit obsessed with tracking my calories. I was on a 1200 calorie allocation, and rarely did I eat back any of my exercise. I’d arrived at a stage where I would spit something out if it didn’t taste good enough because I didn’t want to ‘waste’ the calories on it. On top of this, I was logging around 1200 calories every day but not actually eating 1200 calories. It became rare for me to eat a full meal, I felt full very easily and hated the feeling of being ‘over-full’. I could barely finish an entire apple. I started to realise that something was wrong when my husband began stressing out about my unfinished meals. “Just three more bites” became a common encouragement at dinner time, and it distressed me that he was distressed.
At this stage I was in the depth of completing my PhD and extremely busy at work, and I was having trouble getting to sleep. I attributed this to the stress of course. I was also often light-headed, again something that I attributed to stress. At one of my regular GP visits he advised me that most people in my situation would be using food as a sedative and he recommended that I try having a piece of toast before bed as the extra carbs would help me to get to sleep. This is the day I had a panic attack in front of my GP over the number of calories in a piece of toast. Do you know how many calories there are in the average slice of bread? Around 90. Not something that would ‘break the bank’ of someone struggling to even eat 1200 calories a day. It was as if I was watching myself freaking out about this, and I looked at my GP and said “I think I have a problem.” His response: “Yes, you do.” Over the next two months, despite my efforts to eat more, I lost a further 6 kilos. Slower loss than previously, but still loss. I was now past the bottom of my goal range and had lost 30% of my body weight.
The final two kilos (included in the six listed above) came one day when I got food poisoning and had to be hospitalised. I’d eaten a piece of liverwurst that had been in the fridge at work over the weekend. The look the MD at the hospital gave me when I told her this said “You’re an idiot, you know that, don’t you?” I agreed with her completely. The letter she wrote my GP dripped with the same sarcasm without actually spelling it out. Following that I didn’t eat for three days.
At this point it was clear that I wasn’t well overall. My GP pronounced that I was officially ‘undernourished’ and had the blood test results to support the case. I’ve always had a pretty good diet so the nutrition was there, but there just wasn’t enough of it. I’d reached 69 kilos, and I don’t think I’d been in the 60’s since high school. I’m actually a pretty large build, tallish with a dense frame. At 69 kilos you could see my hip bones and I’d begun to develop ‘thigh gap’. I started to make an effort to gain a few kilos. For those of you still on the weight loss journey I know it sounds unbelievable but I can tell you with complete confidence that for someone who has had such a limited intake gaining weight is way harder to do than losing it.
It’s funny, but I don’t think my GP expected me to be quite so good at following his advice. Even he was really worried at the end there.
Here’s the scary thing though, I really loved being skinny. In my head, my ideal weight is 65 kilos, and that’s actually what I currently (and unrealistically) have my MFP goal set to. Since the lowest point in my weight I’ve now gained back 8 kilos and I hate it. I hate it with a passion. It feels as if I’m wearing a bulky skin suit or something, but I’m also afraid. I’m afraid that I liked not eating so much that if I do what I did before I really will develop an eating disorder this time. If I lose ten kilos from here will I be able to stop? At 77 kilos I can’t feel my bones as easily and I miss them. I’d developed a habit where I’d sit with my fingers kind of tucked into my collarbone and that’s not as easy at this weight. I love the feel of my collar bone, and of the triangle of bones created by my hips and rib cage when I rub my hand around my stomach. You know the bone at the front of the lower leg? I think it’s the fibula? I liked that I could feel the side of that bone, not just the front. I loved having skinny wrists.
I’m now struggling to find a balance between the all-in that I did previously and maintenance. Something that will help me to lose a few kilos without taking me into obsessive starving-myself-land. I never want to have another panic attack over toast but at the same time I know that I’ll never lose the weight again if I don’t stop eating the toast. It’s a frustrating predicament. Part of me wants an eating disorder, to truly believe that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” because while my rational brain tells me that that’s a dodgy thing to think, part of me really does believe it. Being skinny feels amazing! And when you’re that skinny you can’t really fit the food in anyway so it sort of solves the problem. You know, except for the light-headedness and nutrient deficiency.
The other factor complicating my future weight loss is that from a starting point as low as I am currently at, losing weight is a more difficult endeavour. For all of you reading this who are just starting out on your weight loss journey from a larger starting point, you don’t realise how lucky you are. The larger you are the more calories you need to burn in order to simply live, so cutting down just a little bit is going to show greater results. From there it’s a matter of cutting back on your intake gradually. Cut back to 1400 calories from 1600 at an already pretty decent weight range and your body kind of goes, “so what?” Have one extra piece of chocolate and you’re back up to maintenance again. You certainly can’t anticipate loss at the rate of a kilo a week which, let’s face it, is what most of us want to see. I know that my expectations are unrealistic, but I’m impatient. I’ve had the experience of losing weight very quickly and noticeably so to sustain a subtle loss over a long period of time is unbearable. 1200 calories now feels normal to me, and I really don’t seem to lose weight at that allocation any more. I know that this is an illusion, and that I should be happy to lose a few hundred grams a week, but I honestly don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied with that.
So I don’t think I’d call myself a ‘success story’, but I have certainly had the experience of losing the weight and struggling with maintenance etc. I’m sorry that this ended up being such an enormous post, but I hope that my experience can be of some help to the journey of others.
For those in the US wondering about the measurements, 1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds.
“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”
This statement is both profoundly true and extremely damaging.
It’s been a couple of years now since I’ve been on ‘maintenance’ and I think I’m finally ready to post in this section. Not that I would consider myself a ‘success story’ per se. I tipped the scales in my GP’s office at 100 kilos (around 220 pounds) about three years ago. I’d tried to lose weight by various means but nothing seemed to work. I honestly thought that something was wrong with me. My metabolism was broken, or something. The stories we tell ourselves. We’d moved a few months before and so I had a new GP, as well as being close enough to my workplace to walk every day (half an hour each way, a decent amount of exercise). We also now had a scary jungle of a yard that I was hacking away at with a number of specially designed cutting implements. Despite the extra exercise I was still gaining weight. Even more of a reason to think that something was wrong with me.
Previous GPs had not really taken my distress at my weight gain seriously. They had various ineffective recommendations, including simply cutting down on fat intake or, in one case, cutting out all gluten and pretty much all carbs entirely. I actually had one GP tell me that weight gain was perfectly normal “at my time of life”, referring I assume to the fact that at the time I was newly married. I honestly can’t think of any other reason she’d say something like that to a woman in her 20s. That was quite a while ago now. Honestly, where do these people get off? They call themselves medical doctors but don’t know the first thing about human physiology?
My new GP was different. He’s an extremely intelligent and talented man who recognised my own intelligence and pragmatism straight away. He sat me down and gave me a physics lesson – energy in, energy out. No one had ever explained it to me like that before. Suddenly it all seemed so obvious. His advice to me was to eat 20% less every meal, every day, no holidays and no exceptions. Well that’s not so hard. In fact, I found that the hardest part about it was sticking to the 20% - who’s going to have 20% less of, for example, two eggs? 50% less is way easier! And so I embarked on my often 50% less eating plan, logging everything into MFP so that I knew exactly how much energy I was consuming and burning. Ten months later I was down 25 kilos, and rapidly shrinking.
I guess this is where the quote comes in. I’d become a bit obsessed with tracking my calories. I was on a 1200 calorie allocation, and rarely did I eat back any of my exercise. I’d arrived at a stage where I would spit something out if it didn’t taste good enough because I didn’t want to ‘waste’ the calories on it. On top of this, I was logging around 1200 calories every day but not actually eating 1200 calories. It became rare for me to eat a full meal, I felt full very easily and hated the feeling of being ‘over-full’. I could barely finish an entire apple. I started to realise that something was wrong when my husband began stressing out about my unfinished meals. “Just three more bites” became a common encouragement at dinner time, and it distressed me that he was distressed.
At this stage I was in the depth of completing my PhD and extremely busy at work, and I was having trouble getting to sleep. I attributed this to the stress of course. I was also often light-headed, again something that I attributed to stress. At one of my regular GP visits he advised me that most people in my situation would be using food as a sedative and he recommended that I try having a piece of toast before bed as the extra carbs would help me to get to sleep. This is the day I had a panic attack in front of my GP over the number of calories in a piece of toast. Do you know how many calories there are in the average slice of bread? Around 90. Not something that would ‘break the bank’ of someone struggling to even eat 1200 calories a day. It was as if I was watching myself freaking out about this, and I looked at my GP and said “I think I have a problem.” His response: “Yes, you do.” Over the next two months, despite my efforts to eat more, I lost a further 6 kilos. Slower loss than previously, but still loss. I was now past the bottom of my goal range and had lost 30% of my body weight.
The final two kilos (included in the six listed above) came one day when I got food poisoning and had to be hospitalised. I’d eaten a piece of liverwurst that had been in the fridge at work over the weekend. The look the MD at the hospital gave me when I told her this said “You’re an idiot, you know that, don’t you?” I agreed with her completely. The letter she wrote my GP dripped with the same sarcasm without actually spelling it out. Following that I didn’t eat for three days.
At this point it was clear that I wasn’t well overall. My GP pronounced that I was officially ‘undernourished’ and had the blood test results to support the case. I’ve always had a pretty good diet so the nutrition was there, but there just wasn’t enough of it. I’d reached 69 kilos, and I don’t think I’d been in the 60’s since high school. I’m actually a pretty large build, tallish with a dense frame. At 69 kilos you could see my hip bones and I’d begun to develop ‘thigh gap’. I started to make an effort to gain a few kilos. For those of you still on the weight loss journey I know it sounds unbelievable but I can tell you with complete confidence that for someone who has had such a limited intake gaining weight is way harder to do than losing it.
It’s funny, but I don’t think my GP expected me to be quite so good at following his advice. Even he was really worried at the end there.
Here’s the scary thing though, I really loved being skinny. In my head, my ideal weight is 65 kilos, and that’s actually what I currently (and unrealistically) have my MFP goal set to. Since the lowest point in my weight I’ve now gained back 8 kilos and I hate it. I hate it with a passion. It feels as if I’m wearing a bulky skin suit or something, but I’m also afraid. I’m afraid that I liked not eating so much that if I do what I did before I really will develop an eating disorder this time. If I lose ten kilos from here will I be able to stop? At 77 kilos I can’t feel my bones as easily and I miss them. I’d developed a habit where I’d sit with my fingers kind of tucked into my collarbone and that’s not as easy at this weight. I love the feel of my collar bone, and of the triangle of bones created by my hips and rib cage when I rub my hand around my stomach. You know the bone at the front of the lower leg? I think it’s the fibula? I liked that I could feel the side of that bone, not just the front. I loved having skinny wrists.
I’m now struggling to find a balance between the all-in that I did previously and maintenance. Something that will help me to lose a few kilos without taking me into obsessive starving-myself-land. I never want to have another panic attack over toast but at the same time I know that I’ll never lose the weight again if I don’t stop eating the toast. It’s a frustrating predicament. Part of me wants an eating disorder, to truly believe that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” because while my rational brain tells me that that’s a dodgy thing to think, part of me really does believe it. Being skinny feels amazing! And when you’re that skinny you can’t really fit the food in anyway so it sort of solves the problem. You know, except for the light-headedness and nutrient deficiency.
The other factor complicating my future weight loss is that from a starting point as low as I am currently at, losing weight is a more difficult endeavour. For all of you reading this who are just starting out on your weight loss journey from a larger starting point, you don’t realise how lucky you are. The larger you are the more calories you need to burn in order to simply live, so cutting down just a little bit is going to show greater results. From there it’s a matter of cutting back on your intake gradually. Cut back to 1400 calories from 1600 at an already pretty decent weight range and your body kind of goes, “so what?” Have one extra piece of chocolate and you’re back up to maintenance again. You certainly can’t anticipate loss at the rate of a kilo a week which, let’s face it, is what most of us want to see. I know that my expectations are unrealistic, but I’m impatient. I’ve had the experience of losing weight very quickly and noticeably so to sustain a subtle loss over a long period of time is unbearable. 1200 calories now feels normal to me, and I really don’t seem to lose weight at that allocation any more. I know that this is an illusion, and that I should be happy to lose a few hundred grams a week, but I honestly don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied with that.
So I don’t think I’d call myself a ‘success story’, but I have certainly had the experience of losing the weight and struggling with maintenance etc. I’m sorry that this ended up being such an enormous post, but I hope that my experience can be of some help to the journey of others.
For those in the US wondering about the measurements, 1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds.
20
Replies
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It was a great read, very honest.
Your GP sounds great BTW, I havent had that type of positive relationship with a GP for over 10 years. I've tried a few but never clicked. I remembering bringing up weight with 1 who was quite dismissive and I came away embarrassed. Another who thought only ordered tests because I insisted, She turned out to be wrong but still didnt give me the best treatment. The last one I saw was great, so great that she's done a lot of follow up over phone so I havent even seen her again. I am hoping she sticks around for a while.3 -
If you want to look smaller, work on building muscle and toning up. You will need to eat more, but you will feel stronger and healthier. You can weight 20kg more and look the same size as before because muscle takes up less space than fat.
Sorry about your weight loss experience. I hope you find peace.5 -
30kgin2017 wrote: »It was a great read, very honest.
Your GP sounds great BTW, I havent had that type of positive relationship with a GP for over 10 years. I've tried a few but never clicked. I remembering bringing up weight with 1 who was quite dismissive and I came away embarrassed. Another who thought only ordered tests because I insisted, She turned out to be wrong but still didnt give me the best treatment. The last one I saw was great, so great that she's done a lot of follow up over phone so I havent even seen her again. I am hoping she sticks around for a while.
Thanks! If you've found a great GP definitely keep her. I suspect that many of them have the social concern that you shouldn't admit that someone is overweight because you might offend them. I understand that, but i don't think it's appropriate in a medical professional.1 -
Very well written, thank you. It leaves me slightly confused. It's like you recognise the undereating and low weight are unhealthy, but you still have your goal at a lower weight than the weight you previously thought was unhealthy. It's like you're still cherishing the notion that it might be possible to be that skinny, despite knowing that that's fiction.
I agree with @healthypelican, have you considered building muscle? That's a more health-positive approach than pursuing protruding bones, but will still give you a firmer, more sculpted look.
The fact is inescapable that as a woman you can't be healthy without a layer of subcutaneous fat, and by toying with the fantasy that you can, you are doing yourself no favours.2 -
healthypelican wrote: »If you want to look smaller, work on building muscle and toning up. You will need to eat more, but you will feel stronger and healthier. You can weight 20kg more and look the same size as before because muscle takes up less space than fat.
Sorry about your weight loss experience. I hope you find peace.
I'm sorry that you interpreted my post in an entirely negative light. It wasn't intended that way. I had a very positive experience overall, but like everyone i faced certain challenges and still do.
Thanks for your suggestion, but other types of training aren't really an option for me. I've found that i really enjoy some types of exercise and despise others with a passion. Running for example. I've tried, for quite a while, and hated it. I could walk all day but will never run. Probably sounds strange to someone who enjoys that type of exercise, but i know my limitations. There's no sense in pushing ahead with something that makes you miserable when there are alternatives that you quite enjoy.
Besides which it's not the weight loss itself that i struggle with, it's the intake balance. That will always be a struggle no matter how much exercise i do.
☺1 -
healthypelican wrote: »If you want to look smaller, work on building muscle and toning up. You will need to eat more, but you will feel stronger and healthier. You can weight 20kg more and look the same size as before because muscle takes up less space than fat.
Sorry about your weight loss experience. I hope you find peace.
I'm sorry that you interpreted my post in an entirely negative light. It wasn't intended that way. I had a very positive experience overall, but like everyone i faced certain challenges and still do.
Thanks for your suggestion, but other types of training aren't really an option for me. I've found that i really enjoy some types of exercise and despise others with a passion. Running for example. I've tried, for quite a while, and hated it. I could walk all day but will never run. Probably sounds strange to someone who enjoys that type of exercise, but i know my limitations. There's no sense in pushing ahead with something that makes you miserable when there are alternatives that you quite enjoy.
Besides which it's not the weight loss itself that i struggle with, it's the intake balance. That will always be a struggle no matter how much exercise i do.
☺
You could get muscle from lifting weights, with something like strong lifts. I don't know if running would necessarily give you muscle (unless its in your legs). I actually quit personal training recently, for one reason was because I didn't like the toning type work we were doing. So yeah I get it.
But you could do half an hour of exercise you don't love, then have more calories to play with because muscles burn more calories, so that's worth it.1 -
[quote="healthypelican;39059010"You can weight 20kg more and look the same size as before because muscle takes up less space than fat.[/quote]
@DeeDeeMee Opps that was meant to say "10 kilos more" not 20... 20 is a lot...0 -
If you don't mind me asking, how tall are you?2
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From what I hear, you are torn between wanting to be healthy and wanting to be skinny. I truly hope you can find the strength to choose health and still be happy with your body. Don't fall prey to the allure of the eating disorder- it can ruin your life. I'm speaking from experience. Design a meal plan with sufficient calories and stick to it. There is more to you than bones; you are a smart woman with a PhD- feed your brain!2
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I just want to give you a big hug because I KNOW exactly what you are feeling and desribing. I developed an eating disorder towards the end of high school and it flourished in college. The only reason my weight ever went up was due to my pregnancies. I had made a promise to God that if he blessed me with a child I would not starve myself because of causing harm to the baby. I kept true to my word which leads me here....at this point trying to lose the baby weight, but fighting my mental demons. I want the weight off now and I get frustrated doing it the slow healthy way...I also love the feelings of my bones the way you described, and honestly I would feel a certain high off of not eating. I have no real answers for you, because these mental demons have never left me...my husband (who was with me through it all in highschool/college) keeps an eye on me and checks in with me to see how I'm feeling, if I'm being healthy, or if I'm slipping downhill. I just keep telling myself I'll be so proud of myself for being healthy over rail thin and that I want to feel strong not just be paper thin. So far it's working, but there are days I feel it's just too much effort to eat. *hugs*5
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