I wish I didn't have to eat.

I'm not going to tell you to "toughen up" or change your whole orientation, but I have questions/comments about a couple of your specific points. I hope that's OK. Like others, I'd truly like to be able to help, but I agree that this is a tough situation.

Tiptoetherat wrote: »

Ok, first and foremost I need to say thankyou for all the effort I see in the replies. Its...well... its nice, thanks everyone.

I guess, I feel the need to elaborate a bit more.

"You should see a professional"

On this I agree, its just that I have not found one that seems to help. I have seen people for both the physical and mental sides of this. I honestly get the feeling that they are not listening to me when I talk to them. I say I hate food and the VERY NEXT thing so many of them do is ask me for a list of foods I like so they can teach me how to cook. I have been put on a few medications to try and level my head, curb my appetite, etc. Not only have they not worked, some of them actually made things worse, contrave for example made my hunger much worse. Its soured me on looking for help to say the least, not that I have given up its just going to be hard for me to put much trust in another professional.

"Why are you doing the same thing over and over?"

Its the only thing that has ever worked for me, Ive lost over 60 pounds this way. Its not that I want the calorie count to be so low, after years of doing this, that is the tipping point for me. I don't want to spend so much time in the gym, I have to or the scale doesn't move. Nothing else seems to work and I have spent years trying to find something else that does. I don't want to live like this anymore, I just don't know what else to do, I'm not even sure what it would mean to "give up" at this point. Its not like I would enjoy eating tomorrow if I said F*** my health and weight.

"Its impossible to..."

I have heard this so many times about so many of my issues. I guess I don't know what to say at this point, if I do action "X" then I get "X" result. Eat a cheat meal?? All progress gone. Eat out with friends? Gain 3 pounds. Skip the gym one day? Don't loose any weight that week. A close relative to this is all the times people have accused me of lying. No one has done that here, but that's what I often get when I show people my food logs or gym routine.

What kind of time horizon are you talking about here? Reason I'm asking (begging your patience with a long-ish background explanation):

I'm a non-big woman 5'5", 120s pounds, age 66. My gross calorie intake with normal exercise for maintenance is 2000-2500 calories. Occasionally, I do enjoy an indulgent day, and that may be in the range of 2-3 times my maintenance calories. (Quick note: I'm not saying you ever do that. Most people don't, probably.) I also log my weight daily, have done so for well over a decade, even when not trying to lose weight.

So, if I have a indulgent eating day (I don't call them "cheat days" because they're intentional, in my general plan), even if it's only a few hundred over maintenance calories, I will see a multi-pound scale jump the next day, and it will hang around in whole or part, routinely for maybe up to a week, occasionally more. Ditto for eating out, if the meal is higher sodium/carbs than my usual, even it it's calorie-appropriate. Skipping exercise is weirder, for me: I may gain or lose scale weight, depending on the situation; and it may reverse fast or gradually (multi-day), depending on what comes next.

So, I don't think you're lying, but I'm wondering if you may be a person who has more dramatic water-weight swings, maybe ones that are more persistent, compared to the average person. Anecdotes on threads here suggest that some people have longer-lasting water retention from unusual eating/exercise than others do. Also, we do see people here - again I'm not saying you are one for sure - who react to their individual relatively big, dramatic water weight shifts as if they were fat gain/loss, when they actually aren't.

In my personal experience, and in the evolving experience of some of those people if we can get them to go back to reasonable habits and exercise patience for a week or two, the longer run average body weight trend (multi-week) tends to track with calorie intake. Day to day scale weight absolutely doesn't.

"Why are you forcing yourself to eat foods you don't like?"

I NEVER enjoyed healthy food, ever. There is no making it OK or dressing it up to make it at least tolerable. A lot of people can dive into a tuna and spinach wrap, add some seasoning, maybe a mango salsa and get get the best of both worlds. I can't. I USED to enjoy junk/bad foods, but after years of fighting food I don't like that anymore either. I out and out resent that I have to eat these days. So the choice is food that is bad tasting, worse tasting, or just skipping a meal and dealing with hunger.

"you say you are disappointed by weight loss of 1-2 pounds a week. That is the maximum sustainable weight loss recommended for anyone. You say you are achieving that at 1500 calories. I don’t know how much you exercise or your height or weight, but that may be an aggressive long term target for you to maintain."

I'm 6 foot 3 and right now I'm at 205 pounds. So... I'll need to loose another 15 to be at my goal weight. The reason I'm upset by the one pound a week loss is that I SHOULD be loosing 3 plus pounds a week with how extreme I'm going. I feel like I'm putting in the work and then some...for not much reward. Furthermore one or two days off the plan and the weight comes right back and then some. To put it another way, if you imagine in your head what a guy looks like that eats food he hates all day, does extreme calorie cutting, hits the gym 5 days a week. Can you see him? He doesn't look like me.

I'm sure you know if you were losing 3 pounds a week, that would be a high health risk situation, given your current height/weight and amount left to lose. I understand that you aren't losing that fast.

I wonder if your history includes bouts of extreme calorie cutting and exercise, maybe yo-yos in weight over the years. I feel like there are some hints of that possibility in your comments. Again, not sure, not accusing you of something. I'm just mulling.

If those things have happened, adaptive thermogenesis may be part of your picture, depressing your calorie expenditure (in subtle ways). There is a good thread here explaining that in a scientific way (not the "starvation mode" nonsense). If you haven't read it, it might be worth considering.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1077746/starvation-mode-adaptive-thermogenesis-and-weight-loss/p1

The potentially-useful information spreads over the first several posts in that thread (the initial few written by the thread's OP).

I want to say more but I think I need to stop it here, I'm already being too negative, and DAMN is this one long. So, I will end it on a positive note.


I know I already said thanks for the time people have put into the replies but I will say thanks again. SO MANY people on other sites have told me to "toughen up!!" or "Quit if its too hard for you!" and much much worse. You folks atleast WANT to help and I can honestly see some insight in some of the things said. Well done.

Personally, I do think nutrition is important, and do think adequate/non-excessive calories are part of nutrition (the foundation, really). I also think there's individual variation in calorie needs, sometimes to a surprising extent. Personal results (in the trend line more than the daily) can be indicative. Statistics suggest that being far from average in calorie needs is quite rare, but it can happen, either high or low. (I'm quite non-average myself, in that way, based on personal experience/results.)

However, I think the "must eat healthy food" message is often very oversold. Nutrition is more about overall intake, and how it adds up (calories, macros, micros). Which individual foods are the pieces of that puzzle can vary quite a lot. Common beliefs about "healthy food" vs. "bad foods" don't always hold up, IMO, on close examination.

I understand that you're now in a spot where neither so-called "healthy" or so-called "junk" food are appealing to you, and that's unfortunate, would be difficult. I guess, though, I'd encourage you not to let what I think of as more like "food religion" become a roadblock going forward. It's useful to get decent-ish overall nutrition, but if you can do that with foods that are relatively more tolerable to you, easier to prepare, whatever . . . that would be reasonable, IMO.

Sincere good wishes, for accomplishing your goals, both weight and subjective factors, as you go forward.