Morbidly obese but have no appetite

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?

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 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.

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.

OP, I think before you change anything about your food selections or adding more calories, you should take a period of time when you commit to using more accurate methods to measure your intake so you can know what you're currently eating. If you're like most people, it's possible that you're underestimating your actual intake. This isn't specific to you and it has nothing to do with deliberate deception. It's that accurately measuring intake is HARD for people and it's a skill that we often have to learn.

Good luck.

sheiladerksen wrote: »

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.

Deleted, wasting my breath aren't I 🙃

I’d add in, look for sources of fat in the diet that aren’t making it into the diary… there’s no dressing listed in the salad. There’s also no fruit and very little carbohydrate listed in the diary examples given.

One might want to cross-reference shopping receipts and bank statements/ credit card statements with the diary to see, if indeed, that what is being logged is all that is being eaten. It can be easy to forget to log a quick stop at a corner shop for a snack, for instance. Or, if one buys a jar of peanut butter monthly but only logs one tablespoon weekly on their Sunday toast, then there’s a fair bit of peanut butter missing, isn’t there? There might be some “quick bites” that are thought to be harmless that actually add up calorie-wise by months end. (I speak from personal experience, not being accusational 😉👍🏼)

And I offer insight as someone on medications that cause weight gain and limit weightloss, with medical issues that interfere with exercise and metabolism. It complicates things, and yes, causes extra layers of frustration. I’m so sorry you’re dealing with all of this.

sheiladerksen wrote: »

milenazh37 wrote: »

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.

Thank you so much for your post! Yes it is true I am not weighing things, just going by what is said on product info and what my 2 dietitians have suggested and recorded. I will now be the person walking around weighing everything lol. Did you by chance have hypothyroidism after taking amitriptyline?

and there we have the problem.