I am afraid of eating.

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cornplastic
cornplastic Posts: 11 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I love food. Looove it. And it loves me; I have to maintain an extremely strict workout regime and food guidelines in order to maintain my weight. Nothing crazy, mind you, 125 pounds on a 5’3” frame. Well within normal weight, but man, does my body fight it. Basically, I will be the last human on earth if famine comes as my body uses approximately half a calorie every month. That is if I am working out.
After serious car accident injuries that prevented exercise and a regime of pain meds and steroids, I put on 60 pounds. It’s gross. I’ve been cleared to exercise and off the meds for a year now and have lost...two pounds. Two. In a year. Needless to say, I’m beyond frustrated.
I’ve brought it up with the doc and get told to do strength training and cardio and keep my chin up. I’ve been doing an hour of each FOR A YEAR. With various trainers, so I know I’m doing it right. At this point, I find myself struggling with food.
I eat well or I used to. Lots of steamed or roasted veggies and baked or steamed fish and leafy green things. A little fruit. Nuts. A few eggs a few days per week. A little cheese. But lately I feel like the plate is just fat waiting to happen.
I’ve kept it around 1400-1600 calories for most of my adult life. Yesterday and today, I didn’t have enough net calories to make MyFitnessPal happy, but I can’t bring myself to eat more. Eating what I’ve been eating isn’t helping me lose weight despite 7 days a week of exercise. I know that extreme deprivation isn’t healthy, but I am so desperate to get out of this fat body. Any ideas for how to get over fear of the plate? It’s a new phenomenon, so I figure now is the time to squelch it.
I’ve heard about focusing on other benefits of exercise like heart rate, blood pressure, reduced cholesterol, blah, blah, blah, and I know I should care about that, but I don’t. I’m supremely un-athletic, so focusing on my awesome jump shot isn’t a fix either.
Thanks for any ideas anyone has.

Replies

  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
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    You say you've eaten 1400-1600 cals all you adult life but how long have you actually been weighing and logging your food?
  • cornplastic
    cornplastic Posts: 11 Member
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    I’ve been weighing, measuring, and logging food since my teens. I used an actual food scale and a Weight Watchers calorie guide for years.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
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    What's your calorie goal currently?
  • cornplastic
    cornplastic Posts: 11 Member
    edited March 2018
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    1540.
  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
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    If you carry too much fat, you're eating more calories than you burn. That is simple to fix, you just have to eat fewer calories than your burn for a while. But it's not necessarily easy, because you have to do it for real, consistently, and for a long time (forever, in order to not regain).

    Maybe it will be easier if you attack this scientifically and logically and rationally. Everybody loves food. Everybody also gains weight if we eat too much. We live in a world of abundance, so most people need boundaries for eating, and some kind of conscious effort to get their body moving. But you also burn calories 24/7, just by being alive, at least 1900 calories per day. These are calories you somehow ingest, because you're maintaining your weight.

    Eat well doesn't mean much for weight loss, not directly - of course it's important to get in sufficient nutrition, but to lose weight, you have to eat less. You can eat less of anything. MFP is not the food police. Nobody cares how good you are. Your scales are telling you that you're just eating too much, and too much isn't even a moral jugdement, it just means that you're eating enough to maintain your current weight. If you want to lose, you need to eat less than that.

    Exactly how to do it, is up to you. Some people just cut back on sweets and soda, some people follow some diet, some people stop eating between meals. There are so many methods, but only one process: Eat less than you burn. Calorie counting is very straightforward, and effective if you do it right. This means that you haven't done it right, but it can be amended. There are tutorials on how to use a food scale and pick correct entries and logging in here, find them and use them. Then be patient and consistent. The most you can lose per week, and that is on average, and only in the beginning, and provided you do everything right, is 1% of your bodyweight.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
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    cornplastic wrote: »
    1540.

    if you have eaten 1400 to 1600 cals your whole adult life, then that is what you maintain on. you need to eat less to lose weight.

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