Morbidly obese but have no appetite

sheiladerksen · August 2021

In early 2019 I was put on Amitriptyline for pain. In less than 6 mos I gained almost 50kg!I'm now 150kg. I took myself off the medication and started my weight loss journey. It was found I have hypothyroidism so started levothyroxine and what I thought was a healthy diet plus exercising at least 3x a week. Since joining MFP I found out that my average caloric intake was 800 calories a day and I felt full. The app told me to go up to 2120 calories a day!!! I have tweaked it so it's only 1500 but still can't eat that much with the healthy choices I make for food unless I supplement with fast food which I hate. I'm feeling really torn about how weight loss works.. I thought that by going into caloric deficit and regular exercise I would get back to normal but I haven't lost anything! Anyone else in this position or was and found a way to get through and actually lose weight??

rheddmobile · August 2021

There are higher calorie foods which aren’t unhealthy fast foods. Healthy fats such as olive oil, nut butter, and avocado are examples. It’s common for people who are suddenly “eating healthy” to swap to a diet high in vegetables which has a lot of bulk and not a lot of fat. Make sure you are hitting all your macros.

That said, 800 isn’t a lot of food, even plain vegetables. How are you measuring your portions? Are you weighing them? You may be eating more than you think you are. If you really are eating 800 calories and not losing you should be speaking to your doctor about this. How long have you gone without a drop on the scale? How long since you added exercise?

MikePfirrman · August 2021

Please don't eat a lot of fast food. Keep at it. You're likely eating a lot more calories than you think, especially if you're full. That's a very common thing for a newer person to do.

You've been at it around 10 days? That's not any time. Way too soon to see patterns. I can guarantee if you stick with moving more and eating less, you will lose weight.

sheiladerksen · August 2021

I've been consciously watching my calories since Nov 2019, a small bowl (100ml)of plain porridge for breakfast, 100g salad with a bit of tuna or ham for lunch and 1/2 veg,1/4 protein and 1/4 carb for dinner on a small sized plate. No added salt, sugar or fake sugar. 1 coffee a day maybe and 2ltrs of plain water. I go medium paced water walking for at least an hour 3-6x a week. The app said I need 2120 cal a day PLUS another 500 if I exercise!! I do have hypothyroidism but have been taking meds for over a year now. The whole reason I went on this app is to see what I was doing wrong (after seeing 2 dietitians). It just said eat more and I find it's quite depressing because I don't want to eat more, I want to know why being in such a caloric deficit and exercising regularly isn't working!

I was hoping to find others with the same problem.....................

sheiladerksen · August 2021

rheddmobile wrote: »

There are higher calorie foods which aren’t unhealthy fast foods. Healthy fats such as olive oil, nut butter, and avocado are examples. It’s common for people who are suddenly “eating healthy” to swap to a diet high in vegetables which has a lot of bulk and not a lot of fat. Make sure you are hitting all your macros.

That said, 800 isn’t a lot of food, even plain vegetables. How are you measuring your portions? Are you weighing them? You may be eating more than you think you are. If you really are eating 800 calories and not losing you should be speaking to your doctor about this. How long have you gone without a drop on the scale? How long since you added exercise?

I've been doing this for almost 2 years with no drop or increase. Tried to see an endocrinologist through my GP but they refused to see me and said ' There is no magic wand for obesity, only a lifestyle change'.

sheiladerksen · August 2021

MikePfirrman wrote: »

Please don't eat a lot of fast food. Keep at it. You're likely eating a lot more calories than you think, especially if you're full. That's a very common thing for a newer person to do.

You've been at it around 10 days? That's not any time. Way too soon to see patterns. I can guarantee if you stick with moving more and eating less, you will lose weight.

I've been 'at it' for almost 2 years...

kshama2001 · August 2021

There are mistakes that people commonly make that cause them to not lose weight that we might be able to spot if you change your Diary Sharing settings to Public: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

ama3387 · August 2021

How frustrating! I’m sorry you’re experiencing this. Maybe try changing up the amount of different macros you get to see if that helps?

scarlett_k · August 2021

I suspect you're eating more than you think you are. Two years on 800 kcals you'd certainly be losing weight and possibly keeling over. Or dead.

MargaretYakoda · August 2021

Hello.
Hypothyroid here! (medicated properly at the moment but haven’t always been)
Also losing 50+ down with 60ish left to go.
I also don’t eat enough. It’s a struggle.
AND I am disabled so very sedentary.

It (expletive deleted) that you can’t see an endocrinologist. Keep pushing for that.
And, if possible, have your GP test for TSH and free thyroid. I had to have both cytomel and synthroid to get my levels properly managed.

However, you are where you are…. Under eating does make things harder. I will echo the advice for denser caloric foods. If you can manage them without feeling off.

Otherwise? My go to is protein shakes. Chug ‘em down or mix with sparkling water and sip.

If you have a good blender you can make all kinds of shakes and smoothies. For some reason they seem a lot easier for me to tolerate, and you might find the same is true for you.

callsitlikeiseeit · August 2021

truly, without seeing your diary, we can not help. no one will judge you, i PROMISE. the odds of you truly eating 800 calories and NOT losing weight are SO statistically slim, it would be phenomenal.

let me put it this way. I am on a medication and when I started on it a couple of months ago, it took away my appetite for the first few weeks. I had to FORCE myself to eat. literally. I was getting in 800 calories on average. I was losing a pound a DAY. with no activity. That side effect eventually wore off, and my appetite came back, though not quite to what it used to be (which isnt a bad thing lol) but that is what happens when a person is eating only 800 calories a day.

So, open up that diary. we might see logging issues you do not. we wont judge for what you are eating, We will try to educate you on the proper way to log or find correct diary entries so that you are logging correctly, if that is the issue.

I would also (if you have not) have your doc do a full blood work up. And if after letting us see your diary, and your doc doing a full blood work up, if there are STILL issues, and your doctor is not listening to you and believing that there is a problem (and not giving valid reasons why they feel there may not be), dont be afraid to find a NEW doctor. Your are your largest healthcare proponent!

kshama2001 · August 2021

callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »

truly, without seeing your diary, we can not help. no one will judge you, i PROMISE. the odds of you truly eating 800 calories and NOT losing weight are SO statistically slim, it would be phenomenal.

let me put it this way. I am on a medication and when I started on it a couple of months ago, it took away my appetite for the first few weeks. I had to FORCE myself to eat. literally. I was getting in 800 calories on average. I was losing a pound a DAY. with no activity. That side effect eventually wore off, and my appetite came back, though not quite to what it used to be (which isnt a bad thing lol) but that is what happens when a person is eating only 800 calories a day.

So, open up that diary. we might see logging issues you do not. we wont judge for what you are eating, We will try to educate you on the proper way to log or find correct diary entries so that you are logging correctly, if that is the issue.

I would also (if you have not) have your doc do a full blood work up. And if after letting us see your diary, and your doc doing a full blood work up, if there are STILL issues, and your doctor is not listening to you and believing that there is a problem (and not giving valid reasons why they feel there may not be), dont be afraid to find a NEW doctor. Your are your largest healthcare proponent!

Yes, when I had Anaplasmosis, I lost my appetite and energy, was mostly bedridden, ate 744 - 1431 calories per day, and lost 10 pounds that month.

sheiladerksen · August 2021

scarlett_k wrote: »

I suspect you're eating more than you think you are. Two years on 800 kcals you'd certainly be losing weight and possibly keeling over. Or dead.

Not helpful and basically saying I'm a liar..... If you actually read my post, I was looking for people who have taken Amitriptyline and gained massive amounts of weight in a very short time, not be criticized, analyzed and shamed for what I supposedly am eating! I have been through 2 dietitians who have analyzed my diet, so who are you to diagnose me?! It's people like you who totally put me off sites like this.

sheiladerksen · August 2021

callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »

truly, without seeing your diary, we can not help. no one will judge you, i PROMISE. the odds of you truly eating 800 calories and NOT losing weight are SO statistically slim, it would be phenomenal.

let me put it this way. I am on a medication and when I started on it a couple of months ago, it took away my appetite for the first few weeks. I had to FORCE myself to eat. literally. I was getting in 800 calories on average. I was losing a pound a DAY. with no activity. That side effect eventually wore off, and my appetite came back, though not quite to what it used to be (which isnt a bad thing lol) but that is what happens when a person is eating only 800 calories a day.

So, open up that diary. we might see logging issues you do not. we wont judge for what you are eating, We will try to educate you on the proper way to log or find correct diary entries so that you are logging correctly, if that is the issue.

I would also (if you have not) have your doc do a full blood work up. And if after letting us see your diary, and your doc doing a full blood work up, if there are STILL issues, and your doctor is not listening to you and believing that there is a problem (and not giving valid reasons why they feel there may not be), dont be afraid to find a NEW doctor. Your are your largest healthcare proponent!

I'm new to all this so don't even know how to 'open up my diary'. My food is fine, I'm wanting to find people who have taken Amitriptyline, gained 50kg in less than 6 months and can't lose it!!

callsitlikeiseeit · August 2021

on a PC

settings
Account Settings
Diary Settings
Public

On a phone, I can't help you, but I imagine it will be something similar. Play around with the settings.

The medication itself will not matter. Losing weight will be the same. Most antidepressants (and I have been on my fair share) do not CAUSE weight gain. what they WILL do is increase your HUNGER. Causing you to eat more. There are actually very few medications that will outright CAUSE weight gain with no 'input' from you. Lots of meds will make you FEEL hungrier. and eat more. This is where accurate logging comes into play.

rheddmobile · August 2021

sheiladerksen wrote: »

I've been consciously watching my calories since Nov 2019, a small bowl (100ml)of plain porridge for breakfast, 100g salad with a bit of tuna or ham for lunch and 1/2 veg,1/4 protein and 1/4 carb for dinner on a small sized plate. No added salt, sugar or fake sugar. 1 coffee a day maybe and 2ltrs of plain water. I go medium paced water walking for at least an hour 3-6x a week. The app said I need 2120 cal a day PLUS another 500 if I exercise!! I do have hypothyroidism but have been taking meds for over a year now. The whole reason I went on this app is to see what I was doing wrong (after seeing 2 dietitians). It just said eat more and I find it's quite depressing because I don't want to eat more, I want to know why being in such a caloric deficit and exercising regularly isn't working!

I was hoping to find others with the same problem.....................

Okay, well, if you aren’t losing weight, eating more food will not make you lose weight. It doesn’t work that way.

You have two stated goals which are incompatible. You want to eat more calories and you want to lose weight. You can do either one but not both. In order to lose weight, if you have been maintaining at your current weight for two years you are going to have to eat fewer calories or move more.

Your choices don’t make a lot of sense given your question. If you are having trouble eating enough because of lack of appetite, why are you eating plain porridge and salad? Salad has few calories and a lot of bulk. It’s good food for people trying to eat fewer calories, not more. Try adding high calorie dressing to your salad and nut butter and fruit to your porridge and you can easily eat more calories without adding much bulk. However, as I said, this would be the opposite of what will make you lose weight.

If you are being honest about your 800 calorie daily intake and your lack of loss for two years at that calorie intake, then you have a serious problem which can’t be addressed here. Have a work up done which determines your metabolism in a lab by measuring your oxygen consumption, because you are a serious outlier and need to be a case study in medical journals. You will not find anyone else in the same situation because there are no other people like you.

If, on the other hand, you are eating calories you fail to log and really eating more than 800 calories a day, then you need to address that.

I don’t know you. I’m a person on the internet, and I can’t say whether you are an honest person or not. I can only tell you what the science says, and it says that situations where people really fail to lose on 800 calories a day are so rare that they get written up in medical journals, and situations where obese people are dishonest about how many calories they eat are extremely common. I can tell you for sure though that the two dietitians you visited both assumed that you were lying when you talked to them, because they have seen a million obese people who claimed to eat nothing but plain porridge and salad, which is why you were not taken seriously.

kshama2001 · August 2021

sheiladerksen wrote: »

callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »

truly, without seeing your diary, we can not help. no one will judge you, i PROMISE. the odds of you truly eating 800 calories and NOT losing weight are SO statistically slim, it would be phenomenal.

let me put it this way. I am on a medication and when I started on it a couple of months ago, it took away my appetite for the first few weeks. I had to FORCE myself to eat. literally. I was getting in 800 calories on average. I was losing a pound a DAY. with no activity. That side effect eventually wore off, and my appetite came back, though not quite to what it used to be (which isnt a bad thing lol) but that is what happens when a person is eating only 800 calories a day.

So, open up that diary. we might see logging issues you do not. we wont judge for what you are eating, We will try to educate you on the proper way to log or find correct diary entries so that you are logging correctly, if that is the issue.

I would also (if you have not) have your doc do a full blood work up. And if after letting us see your diary, and your doc doing a full blood work up, if there are STILL issues, and your doctor is not listening to you and believing that there is a problem (and not giving valid reasons why they feel there may not be), dont be afraid to find a NEW doctor. Your are your largest healthcare proponent!

I'm new to all this so don't even know how to 'open up my diary'. My food is fine, I'm wanting to find people who have taken Amitriptyline, gained 50kg in less than 6 months and can't lose it!!

So it looks like the mechanism for Amitriptyline (and other tricyclic antidepressants) leading to weight gain is increased appetite.

The good news is that your appetite is currently decreased.

There are mistakes that people commonly make that cause them to not lose weight that we might be able to spot if you change your Diary Sharing settings to Public:http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings

Fflpnari · August 2021

Open up diary and that will help us help you. Are you using a food scale?

PAV8888 · August 2021

I have a question for my fellow MFPers:

What exactly will be accomplished by the OP opening up her diary?
She has already STATED that she is not weighing her food.
She has already STATED that she is "watching" her food and not measuring it with precision.
Clearly stated.
In her post where she describes eating a bit of porridge and a 1/4 small plate of this or another.

So. For those of us who would like to give her pointers on how to log properly: why would we need to look at her diary to do so given the above information which includes the fact that she does NOT log accurately?

To the OP I have only one suggestion: Do not eat less than 800 Calories. Do not eat less than 1200 Calories. Do not eat or drink ANYTHING until you've put it on a scale, measured it, recorded it, and only then allowed it to enter your mouth.

Yes this includes milk going in your coffee and using a scale (conversion tables switching weight of milk to ml exist. the temperature and fat content has a smaller effect than the eyeballing involved in measuring ml visually as opposed to using a scale)

Yes. Until you learn how to do this weighing and recording fast a LOT of food will be eaten cold while you keep salivating and feeling pretty dang uncomfortable BUT, NOT allowing yourself to eat before you complete your mission.

So yes. You will win and weigh every single morsel and bite, recording it, moving your plate to your table, and sitting down to eat your food undistracted by TV, books, or anything other than logging

Try this while eating 1200 Calories a day. Weigh yourself when you wake up, naked, after using the washroom. Plot your weight on weight trend app... and let me know in 4 to 6 weeks that include a full menstrual cycle what your weight trend change has been!

Best of luck.

milenazh37 · August 2021

I'm someone who is currently fighting amitriptyline-induced weight gain. I was put on it in December for depression and neuropathic pain, 50mg a day. I was in the second trimester of my second pregnancy and by the end of pregnancy I didn't gain much more than I did in my first pregnancy. So, everything seemed fine until couple months after birth when I realised I haven't lost a single kg (I was literally the same weight as I were just before birth) and I was staring at a 15kg haevier person than I ever was. For almost 40 years of my life I was able to eat whatever I wanted and never to have any serious problem with body weight. To cut the long story short, after many careful observation of my current lifestyle, it turned out that amitriptyline ridiculously increased my apetite. What was normal for me during my whole life (like, being able to only eat two squares of a chocolate bar in one go) was suddenly increased like five fold or so (I could now eat the whole chocolate bar). The only thing that helped was a meticulous measuring of everything I ate and using fitbit to ensure I'm in a calory deficit. I'm down ~3.5kg in two months, this is painfully slow, but at least it's showing that I have some control over it (I really don't want to stop amitriptyline because the effect it has on my neuropathic pain is really life changing). So, if you want an advice from a fellow "amitriptyline-suferer": measure everything meticulously! As someone said, nothing goes into my mouth unles it was on a scale. Yes, I was that person who took a kitchen scale to a dinner with friends, but I was super determined to figure out what the f was going on - I'm overweight for the first time in my life. And if you want an example of what amitriptyline does to apetite - I realized that if I were to eat as much as my current appetite demands, I would be eating upwards of 1000 Cal over my daily needs... That is horrifying. And it explains how I managed to gain about 5kg within a month after birth, roughly all the weight that I "lost" when they took out the baby, placenta etc. I know you said you had no apetite, but I also thought there was nothing wrong with my apetite for two months, while eating at a ridiculous calorie suficite. So, start measuring and logging religiously to get an idea of exactly how big is your deficit/suficit. That's my honest advice.

milenazh37 · August 2021

sheiladerksen wrote: »

I've been consciously watching my calories since Nov 2019, a small bowl (100ml)of plain porridge for breakfast, 100g salad with a bit of tuna or ham for lunch and 1/2 veg,1/4 protein and 1/4 carb for dinner on a small sized plate. No added salt, sugar or fake sugar. 1 coffee a day maybe and 2ltrs of plain water. I go medium paced water walking for at least an hour 3-6x a week. The app said I need 2120 cal a day PLUS another 500 if I exercise!! I do have hypothyroidism but have been taking meds for over a year now. The whole reason I went on this app is to see what I was doing wrong (after seeing 2 dietitians). It just said eat more and I find it's quite depressing because I don't want to eat more, I want to know why being in such a caloric deficit and exercising regularly isn't working!

I was hoping to find others with the same problem.....................

Ok, look, 100ml of something is a really, really small volume (I know, I have a formula fed baby

). That's like, 4 spoons of porridge and you are done. I strongly suspect that you are underestimating how much you are eating, the same way I did until I started measuring and logging.

A note on the metabolism: some 9 years ago, when I started lifting weights, I did, just for science and curiosity, a measurement of RMR, the one where they look at O2 to CO2 exchange. It turned out I have RMR that is 30% less than what you expect for someone my age, weight, height. This explains e.g. why I never needed breakfast - I simply don't burn as many calories while sleeping. I believe this is mostly genetics and I think I am still on a much slower end of the spectrum. However, this "slow metabolism" have never caused me to gain weight in my life. Amitriptyline-induced apetite increase, however, did.

Morbidly obese but have no appetite

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