Feeling sick while dieting

First of all, you didn’t gain 5lbs “overnight.” Remember, 1 lb = 3500 calories. You didn’t eat 17,500 calories of fruit in one day. Likely your weight went up because of the mass of the food in your stomach, since it probably hadn’t fully digested yet. If you were feeling sick, bloating or constipation could also contribute to this fluctuation on the scale. It should even back out in a few days.

Secondly, if you binge on enough of anything, your body will likely reject it afterwards. When I was 10 and got my tonsils out, I ate nothing but banana flavored popsicles for a week straight. Now the scent of bananas still makes me gag.

Thirdly, you are less likely to binge if you “diet” with the appropriate calorie goal (not too low), the appropriate macros (getting sufficient protein, fats, and carbs), and overall not being too restrictive. For weight loss, you can really eat anything (including pizza) as long as you log accurately and make it fit into your calories for the day. For overall health you obviously shouldn’t eat pizza or similar foods every day. But for weight loss, it’s all about the calories.

What is your current calorie goal? What is your height & weight? Usually when people have trouble sticking to their calories or binging, it’s because they have too aggressive of a weight loss goal and aren’t eating enough calories and/or they are completely restricting groups of foods

Sounds like your "diet" is overly restrictive to begin with, and that you are falling into a lot of common weight loss myths which are unnecessary and potentially detrimental to long term success.

What are your stats - height, weight, age?
What is your goal weight?
What rate of loss did you choose?
Do you exercise? What kind and how often?
What calorie goal did MFP provide?
Are you logging accurately, using a food scale?
Are you eating back exercise calories?

The key to successfully losing weight lies in your answers to the questions above. It has nothing to do with whether you eat fruit, chocolate or pizza (you can eat all of them and still lose weight) or have a cheat day. You don't need to "trick your body into fat burning mode". You need to set a reasonable calorie goal, eat a variety of foods you enjoy that provide nutrition and satiety, exercise for physical fitness, and ensure you are in a calorie deficit by logging accurately. That's it.

First...use periods, please. They help us read your comments.

Second, I would guess it's all mental. Your body isn't rejecting natural foods b/c it's poison, thus why I think it's all in your mind. I expect you to feel sick AFTER eating junk, not before eating wholesome natural foods.

On gaining 5 lbs, most of it is probably water. I have seen 2-4 lbs difference from day to day just b/c I had a high salt day and was retaining water. Also, don't know if you weighed in the morning or night, but if you put a backpack on and stuffed it with a 12 oz sirloin, a baked potato, a 32 oz drink, and a slice of cheesecake, of course the weight is going to show up on the scales. Just because your stomach is the 'backpack', doesn't mean the food you eat magically loses it's weight. So you may have a lbs or so added just in food weight, and won't lose it until it comes out the other end.

dustinjbrock wrote: »

Bodybuilders use this technique alot. Carb loading, carb cycling or Carb refeeds.

The idea is your metabolism becomes a little lax which is why you plateau, having a "refeed" or Carb loading day supposedly kick starts your metabolism back into high gear.

I have found this community a little close minded in regards to any weight loss theory that is any more than calorie reduction but there are loads of people that use this technique with amazing results.

I don't practice it as I'm weak and everytime I've fallen off the diet wagon, it's been after a cheat meal. My wife stalled out weight loss for over a week on keto then after dinner at the in-laws full of carbs, the weight started falling off again.

Best suggestion is not to beat yourself up. The sickness will pass and maybe you can use it as motivation to stay on track.

After reading several articles, this makes sense to me- what I've seen suggested is to do about 12-16 weeks cal. deficit and then go up to maintenance calories for 7-10 days- and then return to deficit. I'm going to try this after 12 weeks (I've got 9) I think this will also provide a nice mental break from being so vigilant for so many weeks. But, as you mentioned, one needs to have the discipline to revert to cal. deficit.

Bro-science

The best thing I've heard all week! And so accurate!