Xellercin Member

It's quite simple: no, it's not a big deal to be underweight if you are optimally healthy and maintaining that weight while eating plenty of nutritious food, exercising, and easily maintaining good strength and muscle mass. Especially if you are taller. But in those cases, it's highly unlikely a doctor would bother telling…

Most things are easy to do for a few weeks. However, change takes effort and most people don't have a whole lot of extra capacity in their busy, demanding, stressful lives to permanently add more effort into their day. When life gets tough, which it does, something always gives. And typically, it's the newest added…

Paprika is the best thing ever. I've been heavily recommending it for many years. It takes some work to set it up optimally, but once you figure out your categories and get everything properly tagged, meal planning takes me under 5 minutes and I can just print a shopping list.

I personally take an extremely self-conpassionate approach. I'll ask myself: "why has it been hard for me to behave in a way that is consistent with my goals?" I'll identify the legitimate barriers and do something to address them. I always give myself the benefit of the doubt that I'm not stupid and I'm not lazy, so if…

Pretty much any vegetarian recipe from Budget Bytes. Plus then you will save a ton of money.

I'm disabled and can't move my legs much and I have no problem losing weight. I've never connected weight loss and exercise. I exercise to maintain my health. I do very gentle, small PT exercises to keep my body as stable as possible. I don't change that routine if I gain weight or if I lose weight. So it's not relevant.…

You can't just make more capacity, you only have the capacity you have. I'm now retired from practice and I never pressured myself to "hit the gym." What I did do was regularly see a PT who gave me lots of gentle exercises that could help with my pain from my work and maintaining my physical resilience in a job that was…

I *personally* don't relate eating and exercise, I find it confuses things. When I was obese and wanted to lose weight, I focused solely on getting my eating on point. I knew what eating pattern had made me obese and I knew my obese weight could not be sustained by a healthy diet. So that's what I focused on: maximizing…

I don't really feel like my day is complete if I don't eat raw vegetables.

The scale is going to go up sometimes, you have to be consistent for at least 6 weeks in order to even know if what you are doing is working. If you work in shorter timelines than that, you will have no idea what is going on in your body and you will be frustrated exactly as you are now. Week to week is virtually…

I have to say, as a doctor, I find this all very strange. It's my job to explain things in ways that people can understand. I base that on their responses to my questions, not what they are wearing. I've treated toothless homeless people who got more technical, detailed information because they wanted it and were very…

If eating is your go-to coping mechanism for managing stress, then a key issue is to develop alternative, healthier options for coping. You can't just remove a key coping mechanism from your challenging life and expect everything to be okay. You stress eat for a reason. That reason needs to be appropriately managed,…

My best advice is to start with small, incremental changes and stick with them until they're easy. You can radically overhaul your entire life this way and it's much more predictable and likely to work long term. What little change do you want to start with?

^agreed If you expect weight loss every week, you are setting yourself up for frustration. Sure, early on it can seem like it goes that way, but that doesn't last. I tracked my weight loss daily down from obese to very lean, and my results *on average* were incredibly consistent whenever my routine was consistent, but I…

My neurologist prescribed IF for me to try and get nerve pain under control. It didn't help. However, it radically helped with my energy levels, which significantly raised my calorie burn because I suddenly was able to lose weight while eating more calories. It's also substantially helped with digestive symptoms, and…

Perhaps instead of being mad at your body, try focusing on your responsibility to care for your body. If your body is weak, that means it hasn't gotten enough opportunities to build strength. If you want it to be strong, it's your responsibility to do the things you need to do to build strength. Being angry at your body…

Lol, nooooope. As has been said above, many athletes won't have the kind of lifestyle illnesses that the general population has, thanks to their exercise and generally superior diets, but they often have a slew of other health consequences. Plus there are exceptions. I have a patient who is a world-class athlete in a sport…

I agree with everyone, sometimes you need to take a break from losing. I lost a lot of weight steadily over time and never took breaks and it definitely damaged my metabolism. I regained a bit of weight due to meds, and this time around losing, I take breaks and ramp up my eating quite a bit for a few weeks at a time. It…

I do anywhere from 1-6 hrs, usually between 2-4, but that was after several months. I started with a 6-8hr window five days a week, with two "normal" eating days. I just listened to my body from there and ended up preferring something closer to OMAD. I typically keep my window open longer when I'm having beverages in the…

Yeah, come to think of it, I've seen this a lot in men. I've known many, many men who gained a lot of fat and insisted they were just very muscular with a bit of fat over top. An acquaintance who used to be an MMA fighter is now obese and has been for nearly a decade and insists he's always just 6 weeks away from having…

Yup. A lot of people eat for emotional reasons, and if they don't build more resilient replacement coping skills, then trying to "diet" just robs them of their go-to coping mechanism for emotional distress. If you learn healthier coping skills, then losing weight is much less difficult and stressful.

I've always said that the best diet is a really good therapist.

The percent number on your scale is useless and not telling you anything. Ignore it and start eating more. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Start focusing on sustainable habits that will serve you for the rest of your life, sustain a small deficit, and lose weight slowly and steadily. Being impatient is the main predictor…

I'm not quite understanding how tortillas are a major problem unless you eat whole piles of them on their own. You have to look at your overall diet and make adjustments there. If you love tortillas, then why would you focus on that as the thing to reduce? Are there other areas where you could lower your intake? Cheese…

If late night snacking is a major problem for you, then I would first assess what unmet need you are actually trying to meet with late night snacking? The human brain and body are pattern generators and followers, so it could be a simple fact that years of snacking at night has created a feedback system that triggers…

Atomic Habits is a decent book for explaining how to change behaviour. But basically, the idea is that you figure out what isn't working for you, why, and then adjust things slowly to make the way you want to live easier. So for example, one of the things I did was I kept raw, chopped veggies in water in the fridge at all…

I would be inclined to listen to your body, not try to force it. I'm guessing there's something in your protein sources that doesn't agree with you. I personally can't tolerate meat very well, so I just don't eat it. Have you tried a more plant-based diet? How do you tolerate legumes? Just because you lift weights doesn't…

Well, you're asking the right question: why *is* it so hard for you? What triggers are causing you to eat differently from how you want to? What needs are you trying to meet with food? What barriers are holding you back from the lifestyle you want? Figure those out and then step by step figure out how to remove them so…

I think it's been pretty well researched that perusing fitspo on social media is absolutely terrible for people's mental health. I just don't consider instagram a good source of literally any health info. That's not to say that there isn't good info on there, but there's so much bad info that it's not a good *source*. A…

Yup. Your weight doesn't dictate your exercise needs. You should be exercising all along regardless of what your body composition goals are. It is hard to build muscle bulk while losing fat, but that doesn't mean that you don't get enormous benefit or additional strength from exercise along the way. It's not like weight…