Making The Transition

O

ocd

New member
A bit about me.

I have posted on this forum here and there throughout my weight loss journey, and come here for general advice and motivation.

I have for all intents and purposes reached my first goal. I started May 2009 at 340 pounds and at my lowest in June of 2010 I reached 155 pounds. Currently I am sitting at about 165 pounds.

I took the approach that I wanted to strip my body like an old car then work on building up muscle again after. Counter productive in the end I realize and I can see the benefits of where I would have been better off taking the advice to move to resistance training sooner to maintain muscle mass. Nevertheless here I am and I am attempting to make the transition to building back a toned level of muscle mass.

I have loose skin, theres no way around it other than to wait a year and see if it tightens up. It's done pretty well I think considering Ive dropped about 20 inches of waist in a year. I should get to the question though and where I am seeking advice.

I am struggling a bit in the transition in a couple key ways. Getting my brain used to going from full on hard cardio and very low calorie intake, to my weight routine is one. I currently do 3 days a week of a beginner level upper body strength routine for an hour a day, with off days doing running or biking for my legs and cardio. I have seen an improvement in strength, and a modest improvement in my arms (yeah they are still pretty twig like and wimpy though.)

The other way I am struggling that I am really hoping someone has some advice for is sugar cravings. Along the way I never had bad sugar cravings, and when I do simply cardio I am fine. But since I started the resistance routine I find that especially on the days I do resistance in the morning I get an absolutely insane craving around 7pm. I have tried flat out increasing calories which isn't helping in the least. Things I have read have led me to believe maybe because of my extremely low fat diet I am not getting the right fats I need and causing the cravings that way. I should add that I did start supplementing protein as well, I take 50 grams of pure whey isolate a day along with my normal diet, and have tried to add more protein as well in the way of canned tuna.

For some actual numbers I was at first trying to stay around 1800 calories a day, I increased into the 2000-2200 range without any improvement in the craving arena. I am male, 33 years old, 6 foot 1 inches tall. My goal with the resistance training isn't really to bulk up, but to build strength particularly in the core for a stronger back and abdomen, get a reasonable muscle tone and try to keep it while continuing to burn fat and wait and see if my skin recovers over the next six months to a year.

Perhaps someone with some experience on strength training can offer their insight or share their experiences with this kind of thing?

Thanks in advance.
 
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Well I just wanted to say well done on a very massive weight loss.

I can't help with advice to the sugar cravings- I et carb cravings in the evening, slightly worse on rest days or resistance days (1 day a week of each) but still bad when I do cardio (5 days a week). I find that really hard cardio reduces the cravings but it has to be really hard, like interval training or similar for any sort of impact. I tend to think its hormone changes rather then anything else. Losts of stress hormones - not good for belly fat but put my adrenylin levels high enough to suppress my appetite. Thats my theory anyway.

I just wonder if weather your body isn't in some form of shock- anything more then 2lbs a week is a big deal for your body to lose and your weight loss would have to be more then this. I'd imagine your body thinks its in some form of famine and is balling out for more calories- not just a few hundred, but a few thousand- it wants to go back to where it was before. I read somewhere that your body adopts a sort of level where you spend the majority of your time, say your naturally thin, your body learns to accept this and if you eat too much one day, you lose your appetite the next. The same thing can apparently happen if your over weight, your body learns to accept this as the norm. You under eat one day, it goes mad with cravings the next. It could take a very long time to get over as your body needs to accept a new weight and if your constantly still losing weight, it has no stable thing to accept as normal.

Maybe look at your macros: are you eating enough protein? 1gram for every 1kg of body weight. Are you eating enough complex carbs? (stay well clear of the refined/white stuff or brown bread which is just coloured white bread, as it leads to blood sugar irregularities which can bring on strong cravings). Fresh fruit, steamed veg and no condiements, sounds miserable but then so does a life full of sugar cravings in my opinion.

Drinking well? plenty of plain water every day. And vitamins and minerals- do you take omega 3 oils? if you do take anything like that, make sure the quality of the oils is good as the bad stuff has been shown not to work as well as the reputable stuff. Just look for quality over cheap and cheerful as a good rule of thumb.
 
I definitely avoid the refined carbs. I almost never eat anything with enriched white flour in it. I try to avoid potatoes even.

I think I maybe have a too carb heavy low fat diet though. For example I eat oatmeal everyday with a banana sliced in for breakfast, basically a big fat carb sandwich, high fiber whole wheat wraps are the only grains I intake, tons of vegetables The only fat I get is from the tablespoon of peanut butter I put in my oatmeal, the tablespoon of tzatziki i like to put on my lunch wraps, or light mayo in it's absence, and whatever is in what meat dish I tend to have for dinner. Usually I alternate between boneless skinless chicken breast, lean top sirloin, sometimes pork tenderloin or chops, salmon when I can get it.

I eat a ton of vegetables, and quite a bit of fruit, lots of apples(overdo it on those sometimes perhaps), salad pretty much every day often with lunch and dinner. I had been using the "fat free" store bought dressings, but having realized that they just replace fat with sugar I ended up cutting that out in favor of olive oil based light vinaigrette. I think I will start making my own home made actually. I make my own lunch meats as well by roasting leaner cuts of meat and slicing them with a meat slicer then freezing them.

Water I drink borderline too much of, I get a minimum of 12 cups of water a day sometimes more. I say too much because it's not uncommon for me to wake up 4 times a night to go to the washroom. Fiber I think I get too much of as well, I use these high fiber whole grain wraps I get at the grocery store that are like 100 calories each for sandwiches, and they have like 48% of the daily recommended fiber intake in a single wrap. One of my vices is to make a peanut butter banana wrap with those so I'm pretty sure I have been getting an excess of fiber from those and have been trying to cut back.

One dot I did connect tonight though is I commonly have grilled vegetables for dinner dashed with olive oil then cooked on the barbecue, and the days this week I had problems with cravings I didn't have that so I missed that hit of olive oil at dinner. I did basically a high protein day today with a tuna omelet for breakfast, beef wrap for lunch, steak for dinner, got the grilled vegetables in. I calculate I was probably in the 1700-2000 calorie range today and did go for a moderate intensity bike ride after lunch as well, knock on wood but no crazy cravings this evening so maybe I am getting to the bottom of it with the healthy fats angle.

To answer regarding how much protein I am getting it's definitely at least 1 gram per KG but I thought it was 1 gram per pound was the recommended? I get 50 alone from the isoflex powder, and the steak I had for dinner was probably another 30, not to mention breakfast which was probably over 30, and I am about 77 kg's or so. Typically I would get less with breakfast, but my usual oatmeal breakfast still has a few grams too.

Anyway yeah massive wall of text from me here, sorry for that, but thanks for your input and suggestions.
 
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@ocd,

First, a huge congrats on the weight loss. No worries about having started resistance training sooner (water under the bridge). You've already accomplished a great deal.

On the cravings...

I believe your cravings are physiological (not just mental). You've been dieting (in a caloric deficit) for so long that you're hormone levels are exhausted (leptin and thyroid levels drop due to prolonged caloric restriction, which in turn causes cortisol levels to rise, etc.) And this brings metabolism way down and puts you in starvation mode (cravings kick in). You might be in need of a full blown "diet break". (see this post) This will reset hormone levels, reset/raise your metabolism and get you out of 'starvation' mode (which might be driving the hunger cravings.)

Not to mention that by adding exercise (which is definitely the way to go) you are adding an additional energy demand. Even more reason for the diet break. Keep in mind that the diet break is not a time to "binge" (so don't worry about that.) Just eat at Maintenance Levels for a while to square away everything. I see that you've increased the intake to 2200 kcal/day, but after a year of hard dieting, you may need to be at ML for a longer stretch before you're "reset". To me, this all sounded completely wrong, but when I started to plateau and started getting cravings when I never had before, I started doing a strategic "cheat day" once per week (where I would come out of the caloric deficit) and that was exactly what worked for me. I don't think the rate of weight loss is a factor (since your TDEE is driven mainly by your overall weight, and at 340 lbs, that is naturally going to yield a high TDEE). If I had to do it all over again, I would have done a "diet break" once per week to keep my metabolism from downregulating due to the extended caloric restriction.

On the strength training...

I think I can speak directly to this as well, because I was obese when I started, had zero fitness level, and could not even jog half a lap. My simple workout routine when I started was simply a combination of Resistance Training (using bodyweight and dumbbell weight exercises) followed by HIIT-style cardio. It wasn't truly HIIT because I didn't have the conditioning for it, but I would walk, then try jogging for a few seconds, then go back to walking, then after a few minutes, I would try jogging again... etc. I continued with this and was able to gradually increase it over time. I did the resistance training and cardio with intensity (for fat burning and muscle gaining.) I wrote the details of my routine in another post (here).

Hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions. Good luck.
 
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The question I would have for you on the concept of a "diet break" would be did you stop your exercise routine in that time and just kind of chill out with a maintenance level of calories for a while? Or just keep a solid routine but bring the calories up to meet it at maintenance?

Because I have definitely taken more breaks from exercise as I've been reaching the lower weight levels. Actually I just came off of about a 4 or 5 day break that was a result of injury (face planted on pavement over the handlebars of my bike at full tilt and banged up my knees and shoulder fairly good.)

I know one thing that is an emotional trigger for me and something I need to do is take a sledgehammer to my bathroom scale. I weigh myself daily and I need to stop. I've made a pact to only weigh myself on Sundays but I am having some trouble getting my mind adjusted to that too after a year of obsessing about seeing that needle move downward. This is where I have a disconnect. I know logically I have to see it go up to gain muscle, but my brain keeps going into panic mode when I do and I instantly think it's fat gain. I know logically I need 3500 calories excess to gain an actual pound of fat and that swings in the scale are mostly water weight but It has the power to scare me like nothing else when I see the scale jump 10 pounds in a short time. I keep telling myself I need to change my scale of success to whether my clothes fit right and whether I am gaining strength rather than what I weigh, but it's still a tough mental transition for me.

Thank you for the congratulations and the advice, as well as just having a place to vent these thoughts and share with people who understand and are going through it.
 
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Hi ocd,

I have to be careful when giving you specific information on what I did because the problem sometimes arises that people take diet advice from person "A" (because it worked for person A)... then they take exercise advice from person "B" (because it worked for person B)... then the one taking the advice will attempt to mesh diet "A" with exercise "B" ... and that can be a problem sometimes if the diet doesn't work well with the exercise plan. Your exercise plan and diet plan have to work together.

For example, someone on a VLCD (500-800 calories a day) would be crazy to attempt daily rigorous exercise (i.e. resistance training, plus HIIT cardio, etc) because THAT kind of exercise regimen can't be done (long-term) on that kind of extremely low calorie intake. Make sense?

In my case, my daily caloric deficit was running averaging 1000 kcal per day (I'm 5' 5") and so I had to restrict my "structured" workouts to just 3 days a week. It was taking 48 hours or so for enough "calories" to get stored in the muscle before I would feel like I could do a good workout.

To answer your question about how I did my diet breaks, keep in mind that how one goes about doing a diet break will entirely depend on how large or small, or prolonged their caloric deficit is. If someone is running a small deficit of 250 cal/day beneath maintenance, and only a few days a week, then a diet break is hardly necessary. In my case, with a dieting plan as mentioned above (1000 calorie deficit per day) a 1-day a week diet break did the job for me. Then again, I was doing vigorous exercise 3 times a week too.

Just remember what you're trying to accomplish with a diet break. You're trying to "reset" hormone levels (leptin, thyroid, etc.) by bringing calorie intake up to ML or above (i.e. coming out of the caloric deficit) in order to get your metabolism squared away. No one can tell you how often to do a diet break, without knowing the details of your daily routine and diet. The larger your daily deficit, the more often you'll probably want/need to do a diet break. Again, I did it once per week, where I would eat at ML for that one day. Some call it a "cheat" day or a cheat "meal". But why call it a "cheat" anything if it's a strategic and planned event? :)

As for exercising during my diet breaks, I continued my exercise regimen of 3 times per week while doing the diet breaks. If anything, your exercise becomes easier due to your diet breaks.

And with regards to the weight scale, I weighed myself every day. Know this... there's a LOT of debate on how often to weigh yourself, and if you're doing it for the wrong reasons, daily weighing won't help you. I personally chose do weigh daily so I could learn just how large a variance weight can be from day to day, even when my diet and exercise were pretty consistent day to day. I could see, based on my own data, that variances of 2-3 lbs per day sometimes were normal, and thus, I should not fret over it. On the flip side, this data would also tell me when it DID matter. Seeing that the largest daily variance over a period of 7 months was no more than 3 lbs (from one day to the next)... it would then be a red flag to me if I ever saw an increase of (let say) 5 lbs. In other words, it would let me know if I was on the upward trend, which would obviously be a signal to do something different.

Don't be overly concerned about the increase in weight being due to muscle right away. Gaining true, lean muscle takes TIME. You might take 12 months to pack on 5 to 10 lbs of solid, real, dense muscle (not counting water weight). So just be careful about attributing weight gain to muscle, especially if you're not training really heavy with weights.
 
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Well, I haven't fooled myself into thinking I am gaining pounds of muscle at all in the short time I have been doing this. I seem to be able to gain weight really really fast when going over on calories, alarmingly fast. So much so that everything I have read contradicts the thought that it can even be fat gain. After all to gain 10 pounds of fat you need what, 35000 excess calories? That's just impossible to gain in a couple days without accounting for water weight gain right?

Still I look at it and think man, I can't have swung that far in water weight alone, and it takes a long time to come back off. I think I may be suffering from some bloating on account of excessive fibre perhaps as well. The high fiber wraps I mentioned that I tend to put away too many of are my suspicion as the culprit there.

Granted last week was a very bad week. I can't lie, there were some serious binges on sweets in the form of baked goods and those glorified chocolate bars known as granola bars. It's been stifling to me to encounter for the first time in a year something I haven't been able to overcome with sheer willpower. I simply can't remember ever having a craving so strong even when I was overweight.

It seems so much like it is tied to resistance training though. For example today I was planning to take a day of total rest. Long story short I put in 3 hours and about 20 miles on my bike instead. For the day I probably hit around 2200-2400 calories I would estimate and despite the level of cardio I did I feel fine, no insurmountable cravings.

Anyway, all I can do is move on right, pick myself up and keep on moving forward. On to another week with better results than the last.
 
Hi ocd,

Hmmmm... not sure if this will help, but from my perspective, based on the fact that you are still exercising multiple times a week (both RT and cardio) and you are still watching your diet (as far as overall calorie intake and quality)... I can't see how this can be characterized as a "failure" that you should have to pick yourself "up" from. :)

(Just saying...)

However, I fully and completely understand your frustration with the plateau and temporary gains.

I would still consider taking a full diet break, by coming out of your caloric deficit completely (and eating at Maintenance Levels for a week or so) to reset metabolism. Before you say that you're already eating at ML, I took a few seconds to run some rough numbers on your stats:

To figure your RMR, visit this .

Based on height of 6' 1", 165 lbs, age 33, male... your RMR is estimated at:

1,741 calories a day

Now, using the Harris Benedict Formula to account for your other energy expenditures (livestyle and exercise), I used the 1.55 multiplier (since you're working at at least 3 times per week.)

TDEE = RMR x 1.55
TDEE = 1741 x 1.55
TDEE = 2,699 calories a day

So basically, this says that based on your specific body stats, your current Maintenance Level calorie intake is in the neighborhood of 2700 calories a day. This isn't perfect since it's based on overall weight rather than lean body mass (LBM), but it's close enough to know that the intake you mentioned of 2200 calories a day is slightly below maintenance (especially considering the 3 hours of bike riding!)

In the grand scheme of things (long-term view) taking 1 or 2 weeks to REST where you eat at ML and dial down the exercise to 3 times a week (moderately) is probably all you need. No weight loss for 1 week is not failure, is all I'm saying.

Rest is just as physiologically necessary as food.

You're doing well mate.
 
I may have given the wrong impression. I don't consider myself to be on a plateau really. My intention at this point is just to keep my weight in the 160-170 range while continuing to work on muscle tone and giving my skin the 6 months to a year it probably needs to see if it is going to make any gains toward recovering on it's own, or require surgery.

Failure to me would be last week as I gained a bit of weight but far more importantly than that I went really overboard on sweets on account of these new cravings, which is one place frustration comes in. Even after a year of sheer willpower and positivity one can be humbled by how human they are and how the chemicals of the brain can bring them to such negativity and self doubt with a snap of the fingers. That fear of going back to being close to 400 pounds kicks in and does irrational things to an otherwise rational mind.

I know I am at a point now where I am just not going to see the big gratifications that I did along the way when I was losing 20 pounds a month, as now I am measuring success on muscle tone, and the correction of loose skin, as well as the correction of my bad posture. So this is what I speak of when I talk about things being more difficult, especially encountering something like these cravings which I have never come across this badly till now.

But as far as good news goes the week seems to be off to a good start so far. Feel good today, eating reasonably, no crazy cravings. I will see how it goes after my strength routine tonight. I am hopeful that going back to evenings yields good results as well. If it seems like it's not working after this week I will consider halting things for a week or so and taking a breather.
 
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