Giving another try…Help!

It doesn't matter what you eat as long as your food keeps you happy, healthy and full. All that is important is being in a calorie deficit for weight loss. And lots of patient. Eating at maintenance or a calorie surplus doesn't lead to weight loss, regardless of what you eat. And giving up after a too short amount of time obviously doesn't help either. Weight loss takes time! Look at the setup. The highest rate of loss you can chose is 2lbs per week. The lighter you get, the smaller your deficit will be as a smaller body needs less energy to run. So if you could lose 2lbs per week consistently while losing 100lbs, then you'd be looking at 50 weeks. But as I said above, your calorie deficit, and hence your loss will get smaller. Thus remember: it's not a sprint, but a lifestyle and longterm change.

joslinsimons wrote: »

I appreciate the insight. Do I need to worry about macros? Or just focus on the deficit?

Well .. here's how I see it regarding macros and calories ... Macros help you track that you are not overeating on one particular kind of food ... Calories helps you track that you don't eat too much. .. They both have a place but to lose weight, calories are probably the more important ones.

Do you know what macro's are? They are the 3 primary components of all the foods we eat .. they are fat, protein, carbohydrates. Some people will tell you that you only need fat and protein for a healthy body because your body can manufacture carbohydrates from the fat and protein. Other people will tell you that since your body's primary form of intake of energy is the carbohydrate, that you need at least some of that. ... The harder part comes into play when you look at food and try to classify it ... carbohydrates are plant based and most of them contain trace amounts of fat and protein as well. However, it's common for people to forget that vegetables and fruits are carbohydrates just as much as is flour and sugar or rice or pasta ...

My advice would be to make modifications to what you eat and how much you eat in small steps and in ways that you can live with for the rest of your life.

Hi Joslin. The reason there's so much confusion in my opinion is because we are each quite unique in our needs. I have not experienced PCOS but have successfully treated it in my practice. What I've observed is that if we don't target nutrition based on our own unique needs, we run around in circles. For example, if your core body temperature is low, you would not benefit from raw, cold or frozen foods; but you would likely do better with cooked and perhaps even slightly spicy foods. This is a prominent feature of Eastern medical systems which we're missing in our brand of medicine. If your core body temperature is low, that also means that your metabolism is low and stagnant. Warming it up would increase absorption of nutrients from the foods you eat and help raise metabolism. On the other hand, if you're hot or warm all the time and your core temp is higher than normal, you'd benefit from raw veggies and avoiding spicy foods. Most people confuse common with normal and many of my patients say that 97.1 is "normal" for them, but I advise them that that's not normal and is actually too low since normal is 98.6. This is just one parameter out of many, but it's a big one that many people don't realize. I don't know if that will help you, but it has helped many of my clients over the years. Best wishes on your journey!