How to have energy on 1200 calories?
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I have to chime in about certain medications for example Beta Blockers and other BP meds. I have been on these medications for about 4 years (I used to be normal weight) And I know it messes with my metabolism. I have been doing DDPY for 3 months everyday except one. The last 24 days, logged into this site counting calories and intake about 1750 daily or less ( I am now down to 1500 a day. And not 1 pound lost. Not even half a pound. I have tried over the last 4 years: Keto, Paleo, Vegan, Vegetarian, all meat. No weight loss. Talk to the doctor? They say get more active and talk to a nutritionist. I basically am a nutritionist now after 4 years of this lol. Most Doctors just want you on more meds!13
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What medication caused this?
The medication is fluoxetine.
This person explains the complexity of weight gain/loss on SSRIs better than I can:
https://www.quora.com/Do-antidepressants-lead-to-weight-gain/answer/Mark-Dunn-64
https://www.quora.com/Will-tapering-off-SSRIs-cause-weight-loss/answer/Mark-Dunn-64
I'm almost positive that there have been numerous threads on MFP in which people have said they've been able to lose weight while on fluoxetine (among others SSRIs). This also this study (click the link in the upper right hand corner for the full text).
Everyone responds to SSRIs differently. It's been observed that an equal amount of people lose, gain and maintain on Fluoxetine. Anyway I am losing the weight now, but it's taken a 1200 calorie diet to do so. My standard 1500 calories doesn't cut it with this med for me.10 -
So what happens if you eat 1300 or 1400? There aren’t only two numbers to choose from here.. you said you maintain at 1500 but you exercise, so you’re eating back those calories? So 1500 isn’t your maintenance. How many exercise cals do you burn? Also, how are you measuring your intake? Using a food scale?9
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To the original question, how is your salt and potassium? Are you tracking (and meeting!) those daily goals?1
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rhunwelshbowman wrote: »I have to chime in about certain medications for example Beta Blockers and other BP meds. I have been on these medications for about 4 years (I used to be normal weight) And I know it messes with my metabolism. I have been doing DDPY for 3 months everyday except one. The last 24 days, logged into this site counting calories and intake about 1750 daily or less ( I am now down to 1500 a day. And not 1 pound lost. Not even half a pound. I have tried over the last 4 years: Keto, Paleo, Vegan, Vegetarian, all meat. No weight loss. Talk to the doctor? They say get more active and talk to a nutritionist. I basically am a nutritionist now after 4 years of this lol. Most Doctors just want you on more meds!
Thanks for your response. I totally understand your struggle. I actually caught my doctor out recently. First he tried to convince me that my weight gain was a result of Christmas and that Fluoxetine doesn't cause weight gain. Then he completely backtracked a few minutes later and admitted it can. I think he was trying to get me to stay on it cause he saw how much it helped my anxiety.
But it's really frustrating when people don't understand that in some cases you have absolutely no control over your weight when on certain meds. I'm part of an SSRI support forum that's full of stories identical to yours, so every day I see posts reminding me how prevalent it is4 -
What medication caused this?
The medication is fluoxetine.
This person explains the complexity of weight gain/loss on SSRIs better than I can:
https://www.quora.com/Do-antidepressants-lead-to-weight-gain/answer/Mark-Dunn-64
https://www.quora.com/Will-tapering-off-SSRIs-cause-weight-loss/answer/Mark-Dunn-64
I'm almost positive that there have been numerous threads on MFP in which people have said they've been able to lose weight while on fluoxetine (among others SSRIs). This also this study (click the link in the upper right hand corner for the full text).
Everyone responds to SSRIs differently. It's been observed that an equal amount of people lose, gain and maintain on Fluoxetine. Anyway I am losing the weight now, but it's taken a 1200 calorie diet to do so. My standard 1500 calories doesn't cut it with this med for me.
That's an understatement if I've ever seen one. Of course everyone responds to SSRIs, among other classes psychotropic medication differently - I never said otherwise. That said, earlier you mentioned the existence of studies about weight in relation to SSRIs and I supplied one as well. Never mind that there are some psych' meds that have been shown in various academic articles to aid in weight loss (or at the very least, not inhibit weight gain). Here's another abstract about bupropion SR (the full article is behind a paywall).
And before anyone tries to say otherwise - yes I have been on SSRIs, SNRIs, and tricyclics (among other classes of psychotropic medications).5 -
Hey OP, sorry to hear about your struggles! I do hope it gets sorted.
@WinoGelato asked the question I have yet seen answered and has been on my mind as well. How do you go about calculating the number of calories you are consuming per day? Are you using a food scale to weigh everything you eat?
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Really we are all getting caught into semantics, a bit, and you, OP, are getting caught into your mind-*kitten* issue of having had this medication that has messed you up.
It really doesn't matter what or how caused your weight gain. and it really does not matter what you may know or think you were eating in the past... what matters is what you're DOING NOW.
#1: You've lost 16lbs in two months this indicates either a water weight drop or a fat drop commensurate with a 1000 Cal a day deficit or some combination.
#2: You feel like **kitten**. This is not a desired result independent of anything else.
#3: you do not have a medical life threatening need to lose the weight today. You're losing weight, one would think, in order to feel better. Feeling like **kitten** is not accomplishing your goal, not really!
So what can you do?
You can:
Use a weight trend application. It doesn't sound like you have been. Feed back all your weight data and concentrate on your trend. Consider your trend to be your weight.
EAT MORE OF YOUR CURRENT TYPE OF FOOD AND CALORIES. If you've been counting 1200 now under your current conditions and you've been losing at a rate commensurate to a 1000 Cal a day deficit, eat 1700 of the current type of calories and cut that deficit in half.
WHAT IS THE WORSE THAT CAN HAPPEN? You will either lose slower while feeling better (mission accomplished), or you will NOT lose while feeling better (mission will need to be tweaked in a few weeks in order to get you back into losing without feeling like **kitten**).
I mean, honestly, you can always go back to eating 1200 and feeling rubbish if this eating a bit more and feeling better backfires... right?
Missed this the first time. Thank you for this2 -
Have you considered upper your calorie intake and exercising to burn more calories? I wear a fitbit and days that I am really active I can burn over 3,300 calories, on days where I am lazy and just work I can burn as little at 1,700 calories. That's 1,600 difference in a day.
While I dont don't have time to burn that many extra calories every day, even having 2 or 3 really active days a week helps (these days for me consist of hiking 5+ miles while baby wearing plus rock climbing for around 3 hours). Of note, I am 5'5 140 lbs.
Thank you. I was wondering if this would help0 -
RunnerGrl1982 wrote: »Hey OP, sorry to hear about your struggles! I do hope it gets sorted.
@WinoGelato asked the question I have yet seen answered and has been on my mind as well. How do you go about calculating the number of calories you are consuming per day? Are you using a food scale to weigh everything you eat?
I was thinking about this as well. It was especially on my mind because a. it's very easy to go over the amount of calories it takes to sustain one's target weight if you're not counting accurately and b. the first article I linked to flat out said that the reason they found the people in the group who were taking Prozac gained weight was because they were eating more as their depression had effectively caused them to eat fewer calories (yes this is a thing for many people - myself included).5 -
RunnerGrl1982 wrote: »Hey OP, sorry to hear about your struggles! I do hope it gets sorted.
@WinoGelato asked the question I have yet seen answered and has been on my mind as well. How do you go about calculating the number of calories you are consuming per day? Are you using a food scale to weigh everything you eat?
I was thinking about this as well. It was especially on my mind because a. it's very easy to go over the amount of calories it takes to sustain one's target weight if you're not counting accurately and b. the first article I linked to flat out said that the reason they found the people in the group who were taking Prozac gained weight was because they were eating more as their depression had effectively caused them to eat fewer calories (yes this is a thing for many people - myself included).
I have anxiety not depression, so this is not relevant to me. I do weigh my food, but I'm not really concerned about why I gained weight as I know the reason. And the issue is also in the past
But thank you RunnerGrl19829 -
What medication caused this?
The medication is fluoxetine.
This person explains the complexity of weight gain/loss on SSRIs better than I can:
https://www.quora.com/Do-antidepressants-lead-to-weight-gain/answer/Mark-Dunn-64
https://www.quora.com/Will-tapering-off-SSRIs-cause-weight-loss/answer/Mark-Dunn-64
He doesn't explain it better because he explains nothing, he merely asserts.
I've been on Fluoxetine / Prozac, I've been on Escitalopram / Lexapro, I've been on Buproprion / Welbutrin - even for the last one that isn't an SSRI, this isn't how antidepressants work or interact. SSRI's are going to impact the reupatake of serotonin primarily in your brain, which has a pretty substantial blood-brain barrier that limits how much serotonin in the rest of your body will be impacted.
What an SSRI will do is alter your behavior around food. Generally, it can make food more rewarding by lowering the kind of anhedonia that depression brings where nothing seems rewarding. It can also alter self-regulating behavior by reducing anxiety, and for some people, anxiety is unfortunately one of the regulating mechanisms that keeps weight in check. It can also alter activity level, reducing figiting / unconscious movement. That isn't what would be generally called metabolism, but that can accumulate in burning less calories per day.15 -
Frankly, if there was a metabolic path that could be altered so substantially that it could save 1,000 calories a day, it would almost certainly be exploited already. Evolutionary forces would greatly favor any mutant that could save that kind of calories and put them towards survival.
In more recent times, there are a plethora of agricultural researchers who would breed some massively depressed cows if they could have a variety that reliably reacts to being on prozac by saving 1,000 calories a day per ~100 pounds.13 -
RunnerGrl1982 wrote: »Hey OP, sorry to hear about your struggles! I do hope it gets sorted.
@WinoGelato asked the question I have yet seen answered and has been on my mind as well. How do you go about calculating the number of calories you are consuming per day? Are you using a food scale to weigh everything you eat?
I was thinking about this as well. It was especially on my mind because a. it's very easy to go over the amount of calories it takes to sustain one's target weight if you're not counting accurately and b. the first article I linked to flat out said that the reason they found the people in the group who were taking Prozac gained weight was because they were eating more as their depression had effectively caused them to eat fewer calories (yes this is a thing for many people - myself included).
I have anxiety not depression, so this is not relevant to me. I do weigh my food, but I'm not really concerned about why I gained weight as I know the reason. And the issue is also in the past
But thank you RunnerGrl1982
Given the typical comorbidity that is depression and anxiety and how incredibly common fluoxetine is in terms of meds used to treat depression, there's honestly no way that we would know most of this information. Add to that that it seems that at least three people were wondering about weighing food. And that's ok, no one is asking you to bear your soul, or your medical history, to the internet. I will note that decreased appetite is also a symptom of anxiety but it is what it is.
Either way, good luck on getting things sorted.7 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »What medication caused this?
The medication is fluoxetine.
This person explains the complexity of weight gain/loss on SSRIs better than I can:
https://www.quora.com/Do-antidepressants-lead-to-weight-gain/answer/Mark-Dunn-64
https://www.quora.com/Will-tapering-off-SSRIs-cause-weight-loss/answer/Mark-Dunn-64
He doesn't explain it better because he explains nothing, he merely asserts.
I've been on Fluoxetine / Prozac, I've been on Escitalopram / Lexapro, I've been on Buproprion / Welbutrin - even for the last one that isn't an SSRI, this isn't how antidepressants work or interact. SSRI's are going to impact the reupatake of serotonin primarily in your brain, which has a pretty substantial blood-brain barrier that limits how much serotonin in the rest of your body will be impacted.
What an SSRI will do is alter your behavior around food. Generally, it can make food more rewarding by lowering the kind of anhedonia that depression brings where nothing seems rewarding. It can also alter self-regulating behavior by reducing anxiety, and for some people, anxiety is unfortunately one of the regulating mechanisms that keeps weight in check. It can also alter activity level, reducing figiting / unconscious movement. That isn't what would be generally called metabolism, but that can accumulate in burning less calories per day.
Just like you're asserting? I have spoken to many doctors that are in agreement with him. I've been on multiple SSRIs too. So what makes you an expert and not me? SSRIs are extremely complex and work in thousands of different ways for different people.
And like I have said NUMEROUS times, I track my diet and exercise religiously, even taking extra care when on meds as I know the potential effects. There was never any change in this. And I never experienced an increase in appetite. How about you respect my individual experience? But no, you a stranger on the internet knows more about what I've been living with every day.
Losing control of my body as a result of medication has been a huge, heartbreaking battle for me - especially hard as I make such an effort with diet and exercise. Only for it to be in vain as soon as I went on meds, the scales mocking my efforts. So I don't appreciate strangers on the internet telling me that everything I'm saying about my personal experience is false. Again, my experiences are corroborated by my doctors. And I trust them on their opinions on how medicine works over some strangers on the internet with no medical qualifications and who have never met me.
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Again, I never had depression. And the meds didn't make me less anxious, hence one of the reasons I stopped taking them4
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Like I said, good luck on getting things sorted. While some of the posts I and others wrote may not have been useful to you (just an assumption - I could be wrong), I'm sure they will be helpful to others in the future.7
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RunnerGrl1982 wrote: »Hey OP, sorry to hear about your struggles! I do hope it gets sorted.
@WinoGelato asked the question I have yet seen answered and has been on my mind as well. How do you go about calculating the number of calories you are consuming per day? Are you using a food scale to weigh everything you eat?
I was thinking about this as well. It was especially on my mind because a. it's very easy to go over the amount of calories it takes to sustain one's target weight if you're not counting accurately and b. the first article I linked to flat out said that the reason they found the people in the group who were taking Prozac gained weight was because they were eating more as their depression had effectively caused them to eat fewer calories (yes this is a thing for many people - myself included).
I have anxiety not depression, so this is not relevant to me. I do weigh my food, but I'm not really concerned about why I gained weight as I know the reason. And the issue is also in the past
But thank you RunnerGrl1982
Given the typical comorbidity that is depression and anxiety and how incredibly common fluoxetine is in terms of meds used to treat depression, there's honestly no way that we would know most of this information. Add to that that it seems that at least three people were wondering about weighing food. And that's ok, no one is asking you to bear your soul, or your medical history, to the internet. I will note that decreased appetite is also a symptom of anxiety but it is what it is.
Either way, good luck on getting things sorted.
I've said many times I never experienced a change in appetite. And the medication - during the short time I was on it - was unable to treat my anxiety.
I didn't go into much detail because this was not supposed to be what this post was about.
Thank you.7 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »Frankly, if there was a metabolic path that could be altered so substantially that it could save 1,000 calories a day, it would almost certainly be exploited already. Evolutionary forces would greatly favor any mutant that could save that kind of calories and put them towards survival.
In more recent times, there are a plethora of agricultural researchers who would breed some massively depressed cows if they could have a variety that reliably reacts to being on prozac by saving 1,000 calories a day per ~100 pounds.
Not everyone has this response, so you're talking nonsense.16
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