A Broken Man, But Better...

ShatteredLady wrote: »

The other thing I want to briefly touch on -(lol, as if I am ever brief)- is the things you said about my trust issues. You are correct. It is one of my real problems. I know I've hurt my partner because I get too wrapped inside my anxiety. I try to tell him that I love him and it isn't his fault, but he would "feel" more loved if I could show trust a little more. I am working on that in my own therapy right now. You know what, your words opened my eyes a little too, because they come from a place where you were trying to be open, honest and reaching out to find support and no one cared enough to reach back for your hand to pull you beside them and simply be there with you as you talk or perhaps just feel the comfort of quiet companionship. I realize I am lucky in this regard. My partner is my world in every sense of that word. He has stuck with me through so much...

I wanted to say thank you. You were paying attention there, seeing that trust issue thing as more than a passing comment. It is a main point and focus in my life right now.

Also, I hope that you will find some deeper friends when you can. Your gym seems like a good place to meet some like minded people to maybe get to know better (maybe if more people will become fully vaccinated, I am also a germaphobe too and have panic attacks about that issue a lot). But even online and here too. Find some small group that you don't mind chatting with, even me if you want.. although I have to admit, I get (LOL) "tight lipped" sometimes. (I am laughing so hard right now, you don't even know)... When I have something to say, Imma say it. If I am feeling something really negative though, Imma swallow it and hold it down for as long as possible until I explode and no one knows what made me "crazy all of a sudden". I like talking with you on here though. And wouldn't mind if you friended me. I would accept that. I usually don't accept friend requests. (trust and all).

Anyway, have a good night. or day... whatever it is where you are. I understand if you don't want to friend me. I wouldn't.. (lol). Take care. I appreciate the time you've taken to read through my weirdo thoughts and rough journey. It's not always pretty, but I try to be as honest as I can be without becoming (hopefully) too overwhelming for others all at once.
-Heather

Trust is a difficult thing. I can't remember where I heard it or from whom, but I remember a quote that goes something like "betrayal hurts so bad because it can only come from someone you trust." Trust is often intimately associated with pain, but it is also intimately associated with so many good things as well. It's hard to know who you can trust but if you have people in your life putting in the work to earn it you should try your best to extend them some. Even if you have to compartmentalize it by trusting them with issues A,B, and C but not with issues X,Y, and Z. It would at least be a small step on the path.

As for the rest of what you said... friend request sent.

nexangelus wrote: »

Way to go, the only thing concerning me is your maintenance cals...2100? How do you arrive at this figure? Are you active, sedentary, how much exercise do you do and do you train with weights at all (resistance training)...?Are you afraid to gain water weight when increasing your cals to maintenance? How many calories have you been consuming daily up to this point? You mentioned 1100 to1200 (oh my dear gosh, what the hell?!), but nothing after that apart from mentioning not under-eating anymore? How tall are you, plug your stats into a TDEE calculator which will give you figures for varying activity levels, bearing in mind estimations all round, even the cals on food packets are not 100 % accurate....

I am female, 5 foot 5, 47 years old, weigh in at 63 ish kg (140 lbs) and I maintain on 2500 cals a day. Yeah yeah we are all different, yada yada, just using it as a reference point...I see so many people on MFP undereating after years of heavily over consuming (they could be being dishonest in the tracking obviously)....it just does not make sense to me. Consistency, balance, flexibity, life...

These are great questions and it is important information. I had planned on including this info in my original post but I got self-conscious about how long that post was getting so I chickened out and didn’t add it.

I am a 6 feet tall 37 year old male with a fairly broad/athletic frame currently weighing in at 168lbs (~76kg).

When I started on this journey my first step was to stop living on delivery pizza and sandwiches. March 2020 through May 2020 I started cooking for myself and lost ~20lbs in roughly three months. If I had to guess I was probably eating 2,000 – 2,500 calories a day at that point. I don’t have any way to know for sure but I wasn’t doing anything special other than trying to eat better food in general. Since shopping at that time was difficult due to pandemic related shortages, my diet mostly consisted of rice and beans, pasta, eggs, and vegetarian meat substitutes.

When I started going to the gym in June 2020 I also tried to “optimize” my diet for weight loss. I did this by cutting back on carbs, switching eggs for egg whites, and eating a lot of vegetables and fiber. June 2020 through August 2020 I lost an additional 25lbs or so but I would routinely get light headed and dizzy. It was only occasionally at first but as I started to be able to work harder at the gym it became more and more of a problem. I tried to address what was pretty obviously too large of a deficit by adding rice back into my diet but that only helped so much. Eventually I started looking at the nutrition info on what I was eating, having never counted calories before I was pretty shocked to see how few calories I was getting. As I mentioned, I would estimate in that three-month period I averaged 1,100 – 1,200 calories prior to adding in the rice and maybe 1,300 – 1,400 after. I was also not eating additional calories to offset what I was burning at the gym, which was significant as I was prioritizing cardio at that point.

I want to be clear about this, I was not intentionally starving myself nor do I recommend anyone try to maintain that large of a deficit without it being prescribed and monitored by a doctor. I was eating 5 or 6 times a day and was never hungry to the point of concern. If I got hungry, I ate. I was simply naïve about high volume/low calorie foods and took my being satiated as a sign that everything was fine when it wasn’t.

In September 2020 I knew that if I wanted to do this safely and in a way that would last I needed to start tracking calories, which is when I joined MFP. I had worked my way down to 202lbs at that point and when I went through the set-up steps here it assigned me a 1,500 calorie goal. I imagine it would have been higher had I joined when I was 50lbs heavier. That is what I stuck with until only a few months ago. On top of the 1,500 base calories I tried to take in additional calories to match what I burned off while exercising. This was the same time period that I stopped going to the gym so it wasn’t as much of a concern but I if I worked out at home I did my best to offset it.

Maintaining that 1,500 calories allowed me to continue losing weight (although the pace slowed down as one would expect) until I hit just over 170lbs in late February of this year. After that my weight stabilized and didn’t change more than a pound or two for a couple months (normal variance). I had maintained a deficit, at times a fairly large one, for over a year at that point and my metabolism had slowed down so that 1,500 was my new “normal”. I knew then that I needed to start eating more to hopefully reboot my metabolism. From probably late April I started eating 1,700 -1,800 calories with the intent of titrating up form there. When I started eating that amount I unexpectedly started to lose weight again, which was a good sign for my metabolism. Earlier this month I started eating 2,100 calories and going to the gym again. I am not doing too much differently with my diet other than increasing my protein intake to at least 130 grams a day. Other than that it is still my relatively healthy plant based diet with occasional treats.

The ~2,100 calorie goal came from two sources: that is what MFP now recommends for me since I have switched to maintenance mode as well as using the Mayo Clinic’s calorie counter (screen shot below). This number is when calculating for inactive or sedentary, which I largely am. Other than going to the gym I am almost always lying down. That being said, the last three weeks I have been going to the gym 4 – 6 times a week. I do an hour to an hour and a half of weight training, 20 -30 minutes of cardio, and 10-15 minutes of stretching. I am not currently offsetting my exercise calories since I am only burning ~150 from cardio and it is difficult to calculate for strength training. I am also very weak at this point and not able to do really heavy weights.

As I said before, my goal is no longer to lose weight but rather to get my body fat % into a better place. As I continue to add muscle, and hopefully start living a more active lifestyle again, my hope is that my metabolism will continue to rebound from the deficit and I will be able to increase the amount I eat. I only just started trying to dial in my maintenance calories so I need to keep an eye on it, monitor trends, and adjust accordingly. If my metabolism continues to recover and if I can peel myself off the couch more often and add muscle I imagine I will end up somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 calories for maintenance. I just need to give it at least 3 - 4 weeks after each adjustment to see how my body responds. I don’t want to add too much too soon and start storing fat again. I am not concerned about water weight but I am still in re-composition phase.

Once again I apologize for the lengthy post. I know that I could have just given some bullet points of the amounts and general time lines but I wanted to give context to the numbers so that nobody misunderstood and thought I might be recommending or advocating an unhealthy deficit. I am, or at least was, a scientist and I have a minor case of OCD so I am trying to go about this in a methodical and accurate way. I know a lot more about nutrition now than I did a year ago, but we all make mistakes and I certainly made one early in this journey by under-eating. All I can do now is try to do the right thing moving forward.



Here is a link to that calculator in case anyone finds it useful:

https://mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-depth/calorie-calculator/itt-20402304

nexangelus wrote: »

I am female, 5 foot 5, 47 years old, weigh in at 63 ish kg (140 lbs) and I maintain on 2500 cals a day. Yeah yeah we are all different, yada yada, just using it as a reference point...I see so many people on MFP undereating after years of heavily over consuming (they could be being dishonest in the tracking obviously)....it just does not make sense to me. Consistency, balance, flexibity, life...

Darn it, the OCD part of my brain wouldn't let me off the hook without making another point about this. I'm sure there are people out there that, intentionally or otherwise, don't accurately track their calories leading them to make false claims about how much they eat to maintain. But another possibility is what I touched on in my previous post. After adhering to a long term deficit my metabolism had slowed down to maintain my weight at 1,500 calories. That is definitely not ideal but it can happen over time. People that find themselves stuck at a certain weight after a long term deficit should consider looking into things like "re-feed days" or spending some time at a higher calorie intake to help their metabolism reset. I'm not saying that's the case for everyone who is stuck at a plateau, but that can explain some of the cases that look like a person is under-eating but claiming they're at maintenance calories.

Sorry, I'll shut up now.

jenilla1 wrote: »

I feel you, OP! 💛

salleewins wrote: »

Congratulations!! You have done well with all the obstacles you are dealing with!! We applaud your perserverance and many blessings we hope for you!! Never give up!! You are worth it always in the past and present!!

Thank you both for your kindness, I really do appreciate it.