The 1200kcal diet

angelexperiment wrote: »

Jacq_qui wrote: »

kshama2001 wrote: »

emilystammitti wrote: »

Hi both, thanks for the input. I do weigh my food, down to the gram (as in, zero cheating by sneaking an extra noodle or cheeky half cup of whatever). I definitely feel like I’m in a deficit... to be honest, I’m constantly hungry or thinking about food, wake up in the night with hunger pangs and am probably more weight loss obsessed than is “healthy”.

Anyway thank you both so much. I’ll review and see if I can find any I consistencies, etc. Lots of love and health to you!

At 5'8" and 1200 calories, sounds like you are undereating, which is stressful, which can raise cortisol, which can lead to water retention, which can mask fat loss.

When's the last time you had a diet break?

Does the following resonate with you?

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/dietary-restraint-and-cortisol-levels-research-review.html/

...a group of women who scored higher on dietary restraint scores showed elevated baseline cortisol levels. By itself this might not be problematic, but as often as not, these types of dieters are drawn to extreme approaches to dieting.

They throw in a lot of intense exercise, try to cut calories very hard (and this often backfires if disinhibition is high; when these folks break they break) and cortisol levels go through the roof. That often causes cortisol mediated water retention (there are other mechanisms for this, mind you, leptin actually inhibits cortisol release and as it drops on a diet, cortisol levels go up further). Weight and fat loss appear to have stopped or at least slowed significantly. This is compounded even further in female dieters due to the vagaries of their menstrual cycle where water balance is changing enormously week to week anyhow.

And invariably, this type of psychology responds to the stall by going even harder. They attempt to cut calories harder, they start doing more activity. The cycle continues and gets worse. Harder dieting means more cortisol means more water retention means more dieting. Which backfires (other problems come in the long-term with this approach but you’ll have to wait for the book to read about that).

When what they should do is take a day or two off (even one day off from training, at least in men, lets cortisol drop significantly). Raise calories, especially from carbohydrates. This helps cortisol to drop. More than that they need to find a way to freaking chill out. Meditation, yoga, get a massage... Get in the bath, candles, a little Enya, a glass of wine, have some you-time but please just chill.

Wow this really resonated with me. This pretty much describes me from September up to last week. The less I lost, the more I worked out, walked, lifted, whatever. When I started gaining, I ate less and my weight basically went up, and my stress levels went through the roof. (I've unlinked my fitbit and I'm eating nearly all my exercise cals back now)

That is bc of cortisol which increases with too much high impact exercise and stress on body tells body to keep the weight. There are foods to fight cortisol I forget as I was looking into this. But you might find short spurt high instensity exercise might benefit you better than long duration high impact exercises. Something like sprints, of hiit or tabata.