Insight/opinions would be much appreciated!

L

lschune

0
Hi everyone. I have not been on this forum in years, but I am in a rough spot and figured I could get some good advice from members here.

My story: 22 year old (23 in February) female graduate student

I've been fat my whole life, at 5'6" and my heaviest was 180. After my freshman year of college, I started losing weight (which I attributed to exercising diligently and modifying my eating habits). After 6-8 months, I was down to 130-135 and was very happy. I kept that weight without issue until fall/winter of 2010, when something started happening. I italicize 'something' because it did not make sense - my exercising was still the same and my diet had not drastically changed, but I started gaining weight at a steady incline. Over this past summer I was training to run a half marathon, and even after running 6 days every week, I was still gaining (I ended up not doing the marathon due to a week-long URI and an injured knee from a camping trip).

So now I am at 148, probably 150, and this cannot continue. I was working very hard before the new year, so this is no routine Oh-I'm-going-to-lose-weight resolution. Quite frankly it scares me to death, because if I get to my old weight or anywhere near it, I don't know what I will do. I've gotten both a TSH test and a fasting insulin test done within the past two weeks, and both results were normal (although I am curious as to what my T3 and T4 level are, which were not part of the TSH test).

I've recently started using FitnessPal on my Iphone to count my calories, and it's put me on 1200 calories a day. I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with a snack in between if I am hungry. I do not like to eat fast food, if I do it's once every two months if I'm hurting from a hangover. I do drink, but socially at dinner or out with friends (no binging or getting drunk night after night). I generally stop eating as soon as I'm full, as I do not like the feeling of being overfully feel.

I'm still running, trying every other day for roughly 40-45 minutes, which logs about 3-3.5 miles. I'm also going to start spinning twice a week for an hour (after I get a gel seat cushion, lol), and fit in ab and arm work and maybe yoga/pilates in the mix if it works with my work and class schedule. I really do not like weight training for my lower body, which I have tried in the past (both by myself and with a personal trainer) - I got bigger/bulkier and gained weight that was not 'lean' muscle.

Right now I guess I am just frustrated and looking for impartial advice.

Thanks
:)
 
You might need to consider that your calorie intake is too low for the amount of exercise you are doing. This will slow down your metabolic rate and will mean that your body will cannibalize lean muscle tissue to use as fuel if you are not giving it enough calories. It may seem bizarre to think that you can eat more in order to lose weight, but a lot of women make the mistake of thinking the less they eat the better. This is simply not true and can cause you to put on weight, which looks like what has been happening to you. It is interesting to note that your weight gain happened when you were training hard for that marathon. If you were only eating around 1200 calories then that would explain why your metabolism would have slowed down.
The best thing to do is to go online and use a proper calorie calculator to work out how many calories you should be eating for weight loss. Make sure you are realistic about your activity level.

You should only be creating a deficit of approximately 500 calories a day in order to lose weight at a safe rate and avoid slowing your metabolism down. To be the most accurate you can work out your BMR using an online calculator and then use a heart rate monitor to track exactly how many calories you are burning during exercise. If you don't have a heart rate monitor and don't want to purchase one you can use an online calculator that works out how many calories you burn for various exercises (just google it). Once you know roughly how many calories you are burning from exercise you can make sure that your food intake and exercise expenditure add up to your BMR minus 500 calories. Don't make the mistake of reducing your food intake by BMR minus 500 and then exercising on top of that - as this once again will mean you are reducing your calories too drastically. You either use exercise to create the calorie deficit or reduce your food intake - NOT both!
make sure you are eating little and often, 5-6 meals a day. This will speed up your metabolism. Also make sure you are doing enough weight training to build some lean muscle mass. Muscle is your best friend - it will help your body burn more calories even at rest. Muscle takes up less space than fat, so don't get scared of bulking up. As long as you are losing fat due to the calorie deficit, your muscle will just make you leaner and smaller.
Lastly, make sure you eat protein with every meal so that you are feeding the muscle you are creating.
Hope that helps :)
 
workoutdvdworld said:
You might need to consider that your calorie intake is too low for the amount of exercise you are doing. This will slow down your metabolic rate and will mean that your body will cannibalize lean muscle tissue to use as fuel if you are not giving it enough calories. It may seem bizarre to think that you can eat more in order to lose weight, but a lot of women make the mistake of thinking the less they eat the better. This is simply not true and can cause you to put on weight, which looks like what has been happening to you. It is interesting to note that your weight gain happened when you were training hard for that marathon. If you were only eating around 1200 calories then that would explain why your metabolism would have slowed down.
The best thing to do is to go online and use a proper calorie calculator to work out how many calories you should be eating for weight loss. Make sure you are realistic about your activity level.

You should only be creating a deficit of approximately 500 calories a day in order to lose weight at a safe rate and avoid slowing your metabolism down. To be the most accurate you can work out your BMR using an online calculator and then use a heart rate monitor to track exactly how many calories you are burning during exercise. If you don't have a heart rate monitor and don't want to purchase one you can use an online calculator that works out how many calories you burn for various exercises (just google it). Once you know roughly how many calories you are burning from exercise you can make sure that your food intake and exercise expenditure add up to your BMR minus 500 calories. Don't make the mistake of reducing your food intake by BMR minus 500 and then exercising on top of that - as this once again will mean you are reducing your calories too drastically. You either use exercise to create the calorie deficit or reduce your food intake - NOT both!
make sure you are eating little and often, 5-6 meals a day. This will speed up your metabolism. Also make sure you are doing enough weight training to build some lean muscle mass. Muscle is your best friend - it will help your body burn more calories even at rest. Muscle takes up less space than fat, so don't get scared of bulking up. As long as you are losing fat due to the calorie deficit, your muscle will just make you leaner and smaller.
Lastly, make sure you eat protein with every meal so that you are feeding the muscle you are creating.
Hope that helps :)
Click to expand...

Thank you!

When I was training for the 1/2, I know I was consuming a lot more than 1200 (I've only been on 1200 recently, before that I just ate when I was hungry but didn't really think about how many calories it actually was).

I do make sure to eat protein, I almost always have eggs with something else in the morning, and grilling chicken or salmon (yum) is something I do as well.
 
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