Restricting/binging cycles

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  • Tolstolobik
    Tolstolobik Posts: 78 Member
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    dmt4641 wrote: »
    Yes I think you should go right to eating your TDEE and fully expect to gain a couple pounds of water. Your body loses water while in a deficit and then gains it back when you aren't in a deficit. It is your body's natural reaction and nothing you can do to change that by delaying maintenance. You will just be losing even more fat delaying it to only gain the water back at a later date. You just have to accept two pounds or so of water in your body as part of being a human being.

    You are hungry from too much of a deficit and are binging and fanaticizing about food. The physical reaction won't stop at 1500 or 1600 or 1700. You need to feed your body maintenance or even a little above for the hormones to regulate again. Once the physical reaction to food restriction stops, it will hopefully be easier to deal with the mental aspect. Your fear of gaining weight, even natural water weight, needs to be dealt with the aid of a professional. I wish you the best of luck.

    In your experience, how long does it take for the hormones to regulate again?
  • tallbonez
    tallbonez Posts: 1 Member
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    https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/

  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,688 Member
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    Tolstolobik wrote: »
    In your experience, how long does it take for the hormones to regulate again?

    Well, I'm not @dmt4641 and I would love to hear her answer; but, as far as I know the answer of how long depends on the individual and their individual circumstances and there doesn't exist a universal answer.

    It can range from almost complete recovery of hormonal levels after a few days of eating at maintenance to... well... an extremely long time! With the vast majority of people somewhere in between!!!

    Maybe a new post with details of particular circumstances might help?
  • 7sorok
    7sorok Posts: 112 Member
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    Wow! I have the same situation, but I had decided to eat whatever I want without counting calories (I don't want to be upset and worse - be discouraged by knowing how much I ate) once a week. I do it on the day I weigh in (of course, after weighing in in the morning), so I have a whole week ahead of me to follow my plan and it works. I progress nicely. Your body needs a jolt and overeating does it, otherwise, it will be in permanent starvation mode, which is not good. As long as you're not throwing up, you're OK. Your mind plays "I'm guilty, horribly guilty" and this is not very good help in the situation when your mind is set to binge. Try my method: eat, but shut the guilty feeling, and who knows, it might work for you too. I'm not a doctor or a dietician but a person who deals with the same problem occasionally. Good luck!!!
  • Tolstolobik
    Tolstolobik Posts: 78 Member
    edited June 2019
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    PAV8888 wrote: »
    Tolstolobik wrote: »
    In your experience, how long does it take for the hormones to regulate again?

    Well, I'm not @dmt4641 and I would love to hear her answer; but, as far as I know the answer of how long depends on the individual and their individual circumstances and there doesn't exist a universal answer.

    It can range from almost complete recovery of hormonal levels after a few days of eating at maintenance to... well... an extremely long time! With the vast majority of people somewhere in between!!!

    Maybe a new post with details of particular circumstances might help?

    Thank you PAV for your reply. It's been about three months since I've entered maintenance. BMI maintenance range 19.3-20. I lost 50+ lbs. slowly over the course of 4+ years using several unsustainable methods. Only the last couple of lbs. we're lost by counting calories. I haven't figured out what my TDEE is. I thought my Fitbit would help but hasn't. I spend a good part of my day on my feet working with my hands, lifting things, putting things away. A lot of my activity is not step based. I recently discovered METs (Metabolic Equivalent of Task). I am trying it out to see if it would be somewhat a better estimator. Have you had any experience with METs?
    In terms of hunger. I've been averaging ~1900 calories over the course of this time. There are many days when I feel insatiable no matter what macros/high satiety foods I've experimented with.
    My gut feeling is that I have to be patient and wait longer for hormones to normalize(a good part of my weighloss was done by cycles of heavy restriction alternated with overeating). Thankful that I finally came to the truth of CICO! So thankful to this community. You, among several others, have been extremely helpful in solidifying this truth.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,688 Member
    edited June 2019
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    Tolstolobik wrote: »
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    Tolstolobik wrote: »
    In your experience, how long does it take for the hormones to regulate again?

    Well, I'm not @dmt4641 and I would love to hear her answer; but, as far as I know the answer of how long depends on the individual and their individual circumstances and there doesn't exist a universal answer.

    It can range from almost complete recovery of hormonal levels after a few days of eating at maintenance to... well... an extremely long time! With the vast majority of people somewhere in between!!!

    Maybe a new post with details of particular circumstances might help?

    Thank you PAV for your reply. It's been about three months since I've entered maintenance. BMI maintenance range 19.3-20. I lost 50+ lbs. slowly over the course of 4+ years using several unsustainable methods. Only the last couple of lbs. we're lost by counting calories. I haven't figured out what my TDEE is. I thought my Fitbit would help but hasn't. I spend a good part of my day on my feet working with my hands, lifting things, putting things away. A lot of my activity is not step based. I recently discovered METs (Metabolic Equivalent of Task). I am trying it out to see if it would be somewhat a better estimator. Have you had any experience with METs?
    In terms of hunger. I've been averaging ~1900 calories over the course of this time. There are many days when I feel insatiable no matter what macros/high satiety foods I've experimented with.
    My gut feeling is that I have to be patient and wait longer for hormones to normalize(a good part of my weighloss was done by cycles of heavy restriction alternated with overeating). Thankful that I finally came to the truth of CICO! So thankful to this community. You, among several others, have been extremely helpful in solidifying this truth.

    Hmmm.... I was talking about starting a new thread; but I misspoke and said post :blush: See how easy it is to say/imply the wrong thing in a moment of inattention? A new thread might get more answers for you from others!

    A quick note because I saw somewhere above about a 1 day re-feed. Optimal re-feeds seem to be 48 hours prioritizing carbs and diet breaks at least 14 days. Both at maintenance calories. See "on re-feeds and diet breaks" thread.

    Please note that unlike other people who do post on these boards who may happen to be physicians, or nurses, or dietitians, or PT's, or knowledgeable nutritionists, I am just a person who discovered MFP just about 5 years ago, and read the FAQ's and absorbed some knowledge that made sense from the boards, cross verified it with studies I could find online (and which I am barely able to validate as to whether they are of good quality or not), filtered it through my own biases and observations, and half-haphazardly satisfied my own curiosity about subjects that interest me! Because I found the boards very helpful when I "discovered" the "secret" of CICO I got involved with the community forums. But please don't expect gold in extremely complex situations! :smiley:

    METs are used by MFP and by Fitbit and by a lot of other devices in order to estimate calories spent. All the devices do is translate what they're able to detect into a MET value for a certain amount of time and use that as their basis of calculating the calories spent. Of course if they fail to detect the movement in the first place... well then, they don't assign a value!

    But both Fitbit and MFP appear to use the Mifflin formula for BMR and then use an Activity Factor to multiply it by and arrive at estimated calories out. On MFP this is derived from a selection of 4 values (sedentary, lightly active, etc) and on Fitbit it is derived using the detected movement, which is translated into a single MET value per 5 minute increment, and then the calories out are estimated by aggregating the 5 minute increments over the 1440 minutes of the day.

    In my personal experience Fitbit seems to under-estimate a little bit static/non sensing and over-estimate sensed movement. And I suspect they justify that as encouraging people to move more. Of course this is an n=1 observation. And an n=1 which is pretty well captured by Fitbit at that with a less than 5% TDEE over-estimate over several years.

    The truth is that our own logging of food intake and our own body's deviation from the mean influence just as much as anything the *apparent* accuracy of whichever device we're using!!!

    In the end the only thing that counts is what our weight does over time (see weight trend apps and web sites)

    And, as many people have found out, even the weight trend STILL doesn't tell us anything about body weight composition and long term water retention!

    And yes, long term water retention can happen. Ask me how I know about weeping edema and apparent weight given that my mom passed away after months of being unable to eat properly due to cancer. But extreme water weight issues are not only due to a terminal conditions! Extreme stress, long term undernourishment, extreme exercise, etc can all affect things.

    I don't have a full answer for you and I don't know that I have a suggestion other than to be patient and fight the good fight!

    @psychod787 's answer has been a slow and deliberate bulk and accepting some weight regain till he can get his body to a more long term sustainable state. Whether it is the increase in weight (and fat level) or that a long enough time has passed, he is starting to feel better and less famished and has accomplished that with a relative modest regain.

    The Minnesota participants resolved with time and varying levels of regain. The deficit that was used was 50% <-- how many people on MFP apply 50% of TDEE deficits? Apparently quite a few! The differentiating factor there is that they pushed the participants to very low weight and fat conditions through a combination of diet and exercise. The men WERE eating 1500 calories, right? How much does that have implications for MFPers at a sub 20 BMI? Especially if we accept that women require slightly more fat for a healthy hormonal balance.

    Minnesota strongly suggested that apparent ED symptoms resolve with re-feeding. As in physical re-nurishment may play a significant role in resolving ED ideation. From what I understand most protocols that deal with people who have an ED suggest a re-feed phase to at least a BMI of 20 in part because of that reason.

    I can personally contribute only a little bit of hope given that I took care to lose at a non extreme deficit that only exceeded 25% while I was obese and that only until I learned better! :blush: After almost 2 years at a good deficit (close to 1.5lbs a week) and a year at a much slower <1lb a month I will say that the next year which was a wash weight-wise was probably when I experienced a serious reduction to my "wanting to seek all da foodz" behavior and where my "binge" incidents became limited only to situations where lack of sleep or other stresses are involved.

    So all I can suggest is time at maintenance or a bit above.

    And I am not 100% convinced unless you're very un-tall and very light and very inactive that 1900 is maintenance for a person who is on their feet all day long and moving heavy objects :wink:

    So you may want to examine that with a view of looking at an average activity factor closer to 2, same as the OP doesn't sound like an activity factor of <1.65 based on their 3 hours of activity a day.

    My personal read on adaptive thermogenesis and hormonal tanking in response to under-eating was that it was a thing to avoid as there didn't seem to be complete agreement into how fast and how completely it resolves. I attempted to do that by using modest deficits but did not take advantage of more formal re-feeds and diet breaks, though I "naturally" did have several of both (just not *optimal* ones :wink: ) My personal estimation is that I did exhibit reduced NEAT (feeling cold etc) at the end of my weight loss phase and this HAS resolved with time and eating at TRUE maintenance.

    "True" maintenance in this case being the calories such that I'm not actually gaining via weight trend VS the calories such that I'm not actually losing. There is a 100 to 150 Cal "elasticity", at least for me, between the two>

    Not sure if any of this helps anyone... and sorry for the length <did I say that?!>!

    But there you go :-)

    The https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10300319/most-helpful-posts-general-health-fitness-and-diet-must-reads#latest threads really do contain a lot of information (and take a long time to even skim read!) Usually the first few posts contain the bulk of information
  • Tolstolobik
    Tolstolobik Posts: 78 Member
    edited June 2019
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    PAV8888 wrote: »
    Tolstolobik wrote: »
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    Tolstolobik wrote: »
    In your experience, how long does it take for the hormones to regulate again?

    Well, I'm not @dmt4641 and I would love to hear her answer; but, as far as I know the answer of how long depends on the individual and their individual circumstances and there doesn't exist a universal answer.

    It can range from almost complete recovery of hormonal levels after a few days of eating at maintenance to... well... an extremely long time! With the vast majority of people somewhere in between!!!

    Maybe a new post with details of particular circumstances might help?

    Thank you PAV for your reply. It's been about three months since I've entered maintenance. BMI maintenance range 19.3-20. I lost 50+ lbs. slowly over the course of 4+ years using several unsustainable methods. Only the last couple of lbs. we're lost by counting calories. I haven't figured out what my TDEE is. I thought my Fitbit would help but hasn't. I spend a good part of my day on my feet working with my hands, lifting things, putting things away. A lot of my activity is not step based. I recently discovered METs (Metabolic Equivalent of Task). I am trying it out to see if it would be somewhat a better estimator. Have you had any experience with METs?
    In terms of hunger. I've been averaging ~1900 calories over the course of this time. There are many days when I feel insatiable no matter what macros/high satiety foods I've experimented with.
    My gut feeling is that I have to be patient and wait longer for hormones to normalize(a good part of my weighloss was done by cycles of heavy restriction alternated with overeating). Thankful that I finally came to the truth of CICO! So thankful to this community. You, among several others, have been extremely helpful in solidifying this truth.

    Hmmm.... I was talking about starting a new thread; but I misspoke and said post :blush: See how easy it is to say/imply the wrong thing in a moment of inattention? A new thread might get more answers for you from others!

    A quick note because I saw somewhere above about a 1 day re-feed. Optimal re-feeds seem to be 48 hours prioritizing carbs and diet breaks at least 14 days. Both at maintenance calories. See "on re-feeds and diet breaks" thread.

    Please note that unlike other people who do post on these boards who may happen to be physicians, or nurses, or dietitians, or PT's, or knowledgeable nutritionists, I am just a person who discovered MFP just about 5 years ago, and read the FAQ's and absorbed some knowledge that made sense from the boards, cross verified it with studies I could find online (and which I am barely able to validate as to whether they are of good quality or not), filtered it through my own biases and observations, and half-haphazardly satisfied my own curiosity about subjects that interest me! Because I found the boards very helpful when I "discovered" the "secret" of CICO I got involved with the community forums. But please don't expect gold in extremely complex situations! :smiley:

    METs are used by MFP and by Fitbit and by a lot of other devices in order to estimate calories spent. All the devices do is translate what they're able to detect into a MET value for a certain amount of time and use that as their basis of calculating the calories spent. Of course if they fail to detect the movement in the first place... well then, they don't assign a value!

    But both Fitbit and MFP appear to use the Mifflin formula for BMR and then use an Activity Factor to multiply it by and arrive at estimated calories out. On MFP this is derived from a selection of 4 values (sedentary, lightly active, etc) and on Fitbit it is derived using the detected movement, which is translated into a single MET value per 5 minute increment, and then the calories out are estimated by aggregating the 5 minute increments over the 1440 minutes of the day.

    In my personal experience Fitbit seems to under-estimate a little bit static/non sensing and over-estimate sensed movement. And I suspect they justify that as encouraging people to move more. Of course this is an n=1 observation. And an n=1 which is pretty well captured by Fitbit at that with a less than 5% TDEE over-estimate over several years.

    The truth is that our own logging of food intake and our own body's deviation from the mean influence just as much as anything the *apparent* accuracy of whichever device we're using!!!

    In the end the only thing that counts is what our weight does over time (see weight trend apps and web sites)

    And, as many people have found out, even the weight trend STILL doesn't tell us anything about body weight composition and long term water retention!

    And yes, long term water retention can happen. Ask me how I know about weeping edema and apparent weight given that my mom passed away after months of being unable to eat properly due to cancer. But extreme water weight issues are not only due to a terminal conditions! Extreme stress, long term undernourishment, extreme exercise, etc can all affect things.

    I don't have a full answer for you and I don't know that I have a suggestion other than to be patient and fight the good fight!

    @psychod787 's answer has been a slow and deliberate bulk and accepting some weight regain till he can get his body to a more long term sustainable state. Whether it is the increase in weight (and fat level) or that a long enough time has passed, he is starting to feel better and less famished and has accomplished that with a relative modest regain.

    The Minnesota participants resolved with time and varying levels of regain. The deficit that was used was 50% <-- how many people on MFP apply 50% of TDEE deficits? Apparently quite a few! The differentiating factor there is that they pushed the participants to very low weight and fat conditions through a combination of diet and exercise. The men WERE eating 1500 calories, right? How much does that have implications for MFPers at a sub 20 BMI? Especially if we accept that women require slightly more fat for a healthy hormonal balance.

    Minnesota strongly suggested that apparent ED symptoms resolve with re-feeding. As in physical re-nurishment may play a significant role in resolving ED ideation. From what I understand most protocols that deal with people who have an ED suggest a re-feed phase to at least a BMI of 20 in part because of that reason.

    I can personally contribute only a little bit of hope given that I took care to lose at a non extreme deficit that only exceeded 25% while I was obese and that only until I learned better! :blush: After almost 2 years at a good deficit (close to 1.5lbs a week) and a year at a much slower <1lb a month I will say that the next year which was a wash weight-wise was probably when I experienced a serious reduction to my "wanting to seek all da foodz" behavior and where my "binge" incidents became limited only to situations where lack of sleep or other stresses are involved.

    So all I can suggest is time at maintenance or a bit above.

    And I am not 100% convinced unless you're very un-tall and very light and very inactive that 1900 is maintenance for a person who is on their feet all day long and moving heavy objects :wink:

    So you may want to examine that with a view of looking at an average activity factor closer to 2, same as the OP doesn't sound like an activity factor of <1.65 based on their 3 hours of activity a day.

    My personal read on adaptive thermogenesis and hormonal tanking in response to under-eating was that it was a thing to avoid as there didn't seem to be complete agreement into how fast and how completely it resolves. I attempted to do that by using modest deficits but did not take advantage of more formal re-feeds and diet breaks, though I "naturally" did have several of both (just not *optimal* ones :wink: ) My personal estimation is that I did exhibit reduced NEAT (feeling cold etc) at the end of my weight loss phase and this HAS resolved with time and eating at TRUE maintenance.

    "True" maintenance in this case being the calories such that I'm not actually gaining via weight trend VS the calories such that I'm not actually losing. There is a 100 to 150 Cal "elasticity", at least for me, between the two>

    Not sure if any of this helps anyone... and sorry for the length <did I say that?!>!

    But there you go :-)

    The https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10300319/most-helpful-posts-general-health-fitness-and-diet-must-reads#latest threads really do contain a lot of information (and take a long time to even skim read!) Usually the first few posts contain the bulk of information

    Wow! I am speechless! 👏Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to my post! Definitely will be processing what you wrote! Blessings to you fellow pilgrim!
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
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    I have nothing to add really, but I did want to say that I'm glad you realize that you need to see a therapist again and are going to try to go about doing so when you're back in your home country. So many people are put off by the idea of doing so (oh the joys of stigma) or just don't think they need to, so it's hopeful when someone is more or less saying, "yes this is on my to do list".
  • umbramirror
    umbramirror Posts: 256 Member
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    aokoye wrote: »
    I have nothing to add really, but I did want to say that I'm glad you realize that you need to see a therapist again and are going to try to go about doing so when you're back in your home country. So many people are put off by the idea of doing so (oh the joys of stigma) or just don't think they need to, so it's hopeful when someone is more or less saying, "yes this is on my to do list".

    Thank you. 💐 I'm not put off by the idea of therapy at all, actually, I think that everyone should go at intervals during their lifetime if possible such as check ups at a medical doctor.
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
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    umbramirror wrote: »
    aokoye wrote: »
    I have nothing to add really, but I did want to say that I'm glad you realize that you need to see a therapist again and are going to try to go about doing so when you're back in your home country. So many people are put off by the idea of doing so (oh the joys of stigma) or just don't think they need to, so it's hopeful when someone is more or less saying, "yes this is on my to do list".

    Thank you. 💐 I'm not put off by the idea of therapy at all, actually, I think that everyone should go at intervals during their lifetime if possible such as check ups at a medical doctor.

    Yeah I totally agree.
  • dmt4641
    dmt4641 Posts: 409 Member
    edited June 2019
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    There is a normal amount of additional water that will just stay put after going to maintenance that won't be released unless you cut again. But you can't perpetually be in a cut to avoid this water weight, you will just starve. So there has to be an acceptance of some water weight and whatever squishiness that brings. I love my abs more after I drink too much the night before, but I'm just dehydrated. That doesn't mean I should walk around hung over all the time to have great abs. I always gain some water weight starting a new lifting program, especially the day after leg day I usually gain a pound. That doesn't mean I won't continue to lift weights. Its just you body's normal functioning and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

    How long it takes for the hormones to regulate depends on a whole host of things and I am not qualified to opine on that topic. Since I am at a healthy weight I get some hormone issues pretty easily on a cut with ravenous hunger after several weeks. It just takes me a weekend of pizza to get back to normal. But if someone has ED issues or very low BMI, I would assume it takes quite a bit longer and some amount of weight gain.
  • umbramirror
    umbramirror Posts: 256 Member
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    dmt4641 wrote: »
    There is a normal amount of additional water that will just stay put after going to maintenance that won't be released unless you cut again. But you can't perpetually be in a cut to avoid this water weight, you will just starve. So there has to be an acceptance of some water weight and whatever squishiness that brings. I love my abs more after I drink too much the night before, but I'm just dehydrated. That doesn't mean I should walk around hung over all the time to have great abs. I always gain some water weight starting a new lifting program, especially the day after leg day I usually gain a pound. That doesn't mean I won't continue to lift weights. Its just you body's normal functioning and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

    How long it takes for the hormones to regulate depends on a whole host of things and I am not qualified to opine on that topic. Since I am at a healthy weight I get some hormone issues pretty easily on a cut with ravenous hunger after several weeks. It just takes me a weekend of pizza to get back to normal. But if someone has ED issues or very low BMI, I would assume it takes quite a bit longer and some amount of weight gain.

    Thank you for this information, it's very helpful. I actually didn't realize that water retained from maintenance could stay put. As an update, I seemed to have lost the water I was retaining, and dropped a total of 1.9 lbs. I am going to take a little "diet break" this week, by eating at or very close to maintenance and relaxing a bit with the foods I select, as long as I don't go overboard. After this week, I will continue to eat at maintenance but with "cleaner" foods simply because that's how I prefer to eat. This week, I'm letting myself relax and if I put on some water weight, so be it.

    Next, I'll focus on recomp which I'm actually very excited about. I have a good amount of muscle surprisingly from doing a consistent calisthenics routine, but I would love to start lifting again. It has been awhile and I used to love it and excel at it. LOVE deadlifts, for example. I'm looking forward to designing a program for myself. 😊 Thanks to all that have helped me. I appreciate it greatly!
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,688 Member
    edited June 2019
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    There are some exceedingly good and well-designed programs with built-in progressive overload and management that you can find listed in this excellent post / thread by @psuLemon that you may be able to search for:
    Which lifting program is the best for you?
  • umbramirror
    umbramirror Posts: 256 Member
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    PAV8888 wrote: »
    There are some exceedingly good and well-designed programs with built-in progressive overload and management that you can find listed in this excellent post / thread by @psuLemon that you may be able to search for:
    Which lifting program is the best for you?

    Thanks for mentioning this, I'll definitely check it out!
  • psychod787
    psychod787 Posts: 4,088 Member
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    PAV8888 wrote: »
    There are some exceedingly good and well-designed programs with built-in progressive overload and management that you can find listed in this excellent post / thread by @psuLemon that you may be able to search for:
    Which lifting program is the best for you?

    @PAV8888 lol yes, some days I am having moments of feeling human. As far as a lifting routine. As a professional told me. Always train for hypertrophy, unless you want to power lift. I love the info on the MSE, but the problem with using it as a basis for the obese and overweight weight is that the subjects were lean to begin with. There are other research studies that show no reduction in rmr. What happened with the MSE subjects show evidence that a bf settling range exist. They rapidly over shot their old weights upon refeeding and then slowly went back down. Same thing in many rat studies I have seen.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,688 Member
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    psychod787 wrote: »
    but the problem with using it as a basis for the obese and overweight weight is that the subjects were lean to begin with. There are other research studies that show no reduction in rmr. What happened with the MSE subjects show evidence that a bf settling range exist. They rapidly over shot their old weights upon refeeding and then slowly went back down. Same thing in many rat studies I have seen.

    Hence the uncertainty about how much of an impact and how soon and easily one recovers from it :wink: (and me being chicken I went about hedging my bets and avoiding the impact as much as I could once I 'discovered' the possibilities...) :blush:

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