Not losing weight doctor lowered calories and done tests

equidivine wrote: »

[snip]

My family all have same issues and suffer either crones. Hashimoto. Thyroid issues. Hence I’m being tested now. Although one side of my family is skinny the other is overweight. I gain muscle easily. The only thing iv noticed on my keto is my protein intake is high where I need to eat more fat apparently. I don’t eat any sugar or carbs.

The impression I got from your initial post was that testing on these issues had already been completed and everything was within normal ranges. The impression I get from this is you're still being tested and waiting on results. If it's the latter, then your test results might give you some insight moving forward.

If the situation is really so particular and individual, you might not be able to get the help that you are seeking here - not because we don't want to help you, but because we can't. I can only say, as I said before and as others have said earlier, in MOST circumstances, for MOST people, there is a very obvious answer. If that answer does not apply to you, then feel free to disregard.

OP, you've repeatedly accused people of bullying. Please don't throw around that serious accusation so casually. Nobody is bullying you. Everyone wants to help. As someone said, we see threads like this almost daily and it's always, always, a case of someone not being in the deficit they believe they are, for various reasons typically inaccurate and/or incomplete logging, and over-estimating exercise calories.

You'll have to forgive us being skeptical about your claim that you are the first person in the history of the world to be able to, in your own words, "I SURVIVE OFF FRESH AIR". I suspect your doctor is skeptical too.

Coincidentally, this seems similar to the plot of a recent Netflix movie with Florence Pugh, "The Wonder".

I looked at your diary. I couldn't see anything in your profile on my Android app, but it's there on the computer. On Monday 23rd you only have an entry for dinner, 728 cals total. Tuesday 24th, just dinner plus a small lunch snack, 753 cals total. Wednesday 24th, only dinner again, 497 cals total. Thursday 26th, only dinner again, 539 cals total. Is this really accurate, four days in a row of OMAD plus one small lunch snack one time? That's an average of 629 cals per day over four days logged.

You gave the names of some potential diseases. Maybe so, but what do you want us here to do about that? I'm sure people will offer sympathy and similar experience stories if you are diagnosed with something specific. Until then, what do you want to hear? Do you not understand why people are skeptical, when someone comes in here claiming they survive on air?

You say you gain muscle easily, but the only exercise you have logged is a grand total of 31 additional calories over the entire last week. I'm not going to advise someone with a specific health condition who is apparently consuming a dangerously low amount of calories to exercise more, but I will say that generally exercise and muscle gain will help with fat loss.

OP, I definitely hear your frustration! It is very, very common to have logging mistakes. I have been logging calories daily 10 years (sometimes even on vacation but sometimes not on vacation, 1-2 vacations per year) and maintaining my weight almost 40 years. I use the same database entries over and over for the stuff I eat regularly, and I STILL catch myself making logging mistakes. It happens. It’s not personal. No one is accusing you of intentionally lying. It takes a little practice and like PAV said it’s tedious finding correct entries for items but it gets quicker and more accurate as you stick with it.

Also relating to PAV’s note about scale weight variation due to glycogen-water stores, are you using a weight trend app like “happy scale”? Lots of us drive ourselves crazy over scale weight fluctuations which, by the way, are totally healthy and normal. It takes several weeks of weighing every day (undressed in the morning) to see a trend.

OP, we ARE trying to help. I asked some questions to try to get additional information so we can make some suggestions. Can you please answer each one so we have more information?

Are you eating whole foods (meat and produce aisle) vs processed foods (boxes, tins and cans)?

Do you eat mostly homemade vs restaurant or prepackaged food?

Weighing every single thing you eat (including added oil, butter, etc?

What data sources are you getting calorie counts from (food label, MFP database?

Are you exercising? What type and how much? Do you account for the calories expended?

How long have you been eating at your current deficit?

I agree with those who say that your best route is to seek out a different doctor's opinion, and seek referrals to specialists. We really don't have the expertise to help with very rare conditions.

Therefore, the link I'm about to offer may not apply to you at all - I'm reaching, when I think about what could be causing what you're experiencing. With that caution, this is a possibility to consider, when not losing as expected on ultra-low calories.

https://bodyrecomposition.com/research/dietary-restraint-cortisol-levels

I'm not diagnosing you. I'm not criticizing or accusing you of anything. I'm trying to help. The link is about something unusual, but it's a thing that can happen. If and when it does happen, it's very discouraging and difficult for the person for whom it is an accurate diagnosis. You may not be that person. I know you've been tested for cortisol levels, and found that to be within a normal range. Therefore, this may not apply. But I suspect different people could have different degrees of sensitivity to a given cortisol level. The differences described in this article are surprisingly small, to me.

I hope you can find a solution. I can barely imagine how frustrated you must feel.

@equidivine I can tell this situation is really distressing and frustrating for you,I'm sorry you feel unsupported.
No-one on here is a medical expert that really knows you, that much is true. There are many medical disorders that affect weight.
Unfortunately on MFP you will get advice from people that can only offer advice with what you present to them. I really feel for you here, and I also don't think this is the best platform to get advice for this issue.

In your frustration I think you may have missed the part where your loss and regain of weight on keto was answered with my second post. It is also FAR from impossible to have more than one or two issues going on at the same time.

It sounds as if you work with horses and have been athletic. So there is the potential that you actually have less fat available to lose than simple weight and height would indicate.

You are POTENTIALLY on medication that may be affecting you. You mentioned ADHD for example. You are also waiting for test results that you don't yet have.

I am NOT saying that my suggestion is psychologically appropriate for everyone.

In fact it would be COUNTER PRODUCTIVE for someone who would become obsessive about it and would not be able to walk away or disengage. Open cards: I most certainly DO NOT do this anymore and these days I usually log after the fact and even from memory including not even writing down the weights of most things after I put them on the scale and relying on recall to log the items.

However, the thinking still shows. If you were to ask me I won't tell you that I had peas and carrots and sweet potatoes yesterday. I will tell you that I had 747g of peas and carrots and 396g of sweet potatoes.

Are these 7g even remotely relevant to anything? Way more than probably they are NOT. But they indicate to me that I continue to care which helps me decide NOT to have an extra slice of pizza that would put my intake above my TDEE, even though the extra slice may feel like a good idea at the time.

Where am I going with this? I mentioned a "rule" about not eating anything that was not already logged. By weight. Which is what I did early on. Increasing what is affectionately known as "dietary restraint".

I very specifically did NOT say: log it while I am eating it.

Really. It is a small change in timing in terms of what you are doing.

And it shouldn't really matter, should it?

If you are taking snacks with you to eat later... you open the snack, you weigh it, you log it, and then you re-package it. If you don't consume it that same day, you just copy and paste it to the next day.

If you made 747g of peas and carrots and 396g of sweet potatoes and 8g of butter, plus 3g of vegetable knorr powder, you pack all 1154g of "veggy meal" in your container and you log the combo as a recipe or meal on MFP. You then come back home with your leftovers. And you dump them in another container on the scale. And CHANGE the 1154g of pre-logged item to the correct value, while moving the remainder to the next day. Ready to be eaten since it is already logged. You do that with your pot of this or your pot of that or with anything.

Is it time consuming? yes. especially in the beginning. Does it mean that you are going to catch yourself ready to put something in your mouth and you're going to have to stop and either eat something else that is already pre-logged (THAT my friend is why I re-discovered apples, because hey, it was much faster to log 297g of apple and eat it while still figuring out the other stuff to log. And if the apple filled me up then I could delay the rest of the food for later or eat less of it. Allowing me to adhere to my calories. Dietary restraint in action.) I believe you understand that the short answer is YES. It is behaviour modification in action.

Again. Psychologically this may be damaging to some/many people. You COULD argue whether it was damaging to me. I don't happen to think so because I deeply believe that being Class III obese was way more damaging than being less willing to eat out every day, sometimes twice a day. At all you can eat places. And hey, it saves money too! In other words the level of "damage" for me is minimal given the results. And I am still having two restaurant meals this weekend plus a big mac yesterday 🤷‍♂️ all logged. At maintenance. 8+ years since I joined MFP.

So, I did not suggest or comment on whether you do or do not; or believe or believe not that you are truly logging everything you eat. I suggested specifically something that has additional value than even correctly logging.

And that is that you do not insert in your mouth ANY DRINK or FOOD that is not logged per constituent ingredients on a scale. At least for a while. As a complex exercise that impacts more than just logging. Assuming your psychology can support this without causing larger issues. and it is something I've suggested to people before. And I am sure that most have not taken me up on it.

You know what's funny about logging? This is coming from the guy who wrote this whole thing you've just read, right? At maintenance. I mean I am logging for my own "joy that I am taking care of myself" and all that jazz, right? I don't even remember the exact weights now but I had a more than 1kg (by recollection, I am not going to swear it wasn't smaller or larger) bag of oh henry 4:25 bar miniatures. That I was logging BY WEIGHT as I was eating them. Dutifully like the good little logger who I am. All of them. Till the bag was gone!

And then, once the bag was gone, I just had the fancy idea of adding up all the logs from the previous week.... and came up like 20% short! OK: that's a made up number. The true, unknown number, is that what I came up was not just a bit short, but SIGNIFICANTLY short. So much so that we are not talking under-full bag. We are talking MISSED ITEMS while logging them while I was eating them after having them weighed. For my own entertainment, not even to cut down on them when eating almost 3000 Cal in total per day. How could it happen?

IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE TO BE AN ERROR THAT YOU'VE MADE. Do you know that the other day as I was logging something my eye caught a very brief flash of words to the effect of "offline what you entered didn't go through"? How many times I've gone back and not seen something I was sure I logged; but, apparently, I never did successfully press the enter button?

Anyway. Long story short. :chortle:

You've got the doctor looking into things. That's good. Advocate for yourself. No logging will fix an underlying health problem so that's an avenue you absolutely have to pursue.

BUT, also, give yourself a bit of a shake and consider how you are determining your weight. It doesn't sound as if you're using a weight trend app or web site. Use one. It will help distinguish weight change from signal noise.

Understand that your keto loss and regain was just water weight manipulation. It doesn't sound to me as if you truly lost 14lbs and regained 14lbs with that experiment (I don't doubt that SOME of it may have also involved underlying fat level change; but MOST of it was probably playing with glycogen stores and water weight). Even when you're "doing keto", your CALORIC intake AND EXPENDITURE matter.

I also wonder how much continuous time you give to each experiment, way of eating, effort that you make. Genuine question. I've been on MFP a year or two longer than you. And I have re-started maybe a total of zero times? MAYBE a couple of times I've said: hey I should start watching what I'm logging a bit more because I'm trending up? But why zero restarts? Because weight management doesn't stop. I may experiment a bit with what could provide satiation to me at this time for more or less calories. More veggies, or more fats, or more protein. But really... it is a continuum. At least for me.

AND I've also discovered and advocate that more moderate changes work better for me. Large deficits, large overages. Both of these tend to end up being counterproductive... at least for me.

If this doesn't help you, maybe it will help someone else who is struggling? :shrug:

I do hope you figure this out

@PAV8888

7 4 7 grams of peas and carrots?

You're a beast.

neanderthin wrote: »

Are you experiencing any signs of, for example: chronic fatigue, hair loss, nutrient deficiencies, skin problems, menstrual disruption or feeling cold.

Also, why hasn't your Doctor taken this more seriously than to just tell you to try keto and reduce your calories further, sounds rather unprofessional to me.

I'll ask this again.