S
sparrow
Guest
Hello all,
I have really enjoyed this site. Its SO informative!
First of all I want to give stats to help those posters who chose to respond to anything I'm going to write
I am 28 yr old female 5'6 130 pounds. BF is 15.7%.
Some background. I was always a very chubby kid. I weighed what I weigh now when I was 4 foot-something. Not cool. When I was a bit older my parents put me on a swim team to get me active and I began losing a lot of that baby weight without a conscious change in diet. Older still, in high school I was very engaged in year round competetive swimming. In my drive for excellence I developed anorexia. It started as a desire to be as lean as possible and be healthy but later became more when my weight was all I cared about and a drive for perfection outweighed a drive for health.
I was hospitalized 8 months into it for 2 weeks and then I began gaining the necessary weight so I could get back to the pool.
In my struggle for weight gain I was at one time at 4000 cals and still losing!
Somehow between then and now I dwindled my cals down very very low. I have always been a very healthy eater but as each child came ( I have 3) and life became busy I found myself eating less and less and maintaining a very active lifestyle of running and swimming. I never lost weight I just ended up in starvation mode without knowing it. most recently I became very tired of my rabbit food. I eat loads of salad, veggies and lean protein but after doing a food diary for a week I found I eat an average of 600-800 cals a day. not good. I also gain weight practically at the smell of food. If i even eat anything "normal" for any length of time I gain weight and it shows in my tight clothes. Makes it hard to socialize!
I talked to someone about my situation and they recommended increasing cals and backing off on cardio while increasing weights. SO because I'm willing to do anything to be back to "normal" I've been doing it.
I do weights 4 days a week hitting all body parts once. I lift challenging weights and do a pyramid. I do cardio 4-5 times a week for 30-40 minutes at different intensities. This is all much less than I was used to before but it seems to be way more effective.
I started my cals at 800 and have increased over the past 3 weeks to 1300. I try to bounce around so my body doesn't get cozy with that number but mostly it hovers there and I increase a bit weekly. My goal is to get near 1800-2000 and be able to add a bit more cardio, cause I like it! I started out at 19% bf so I'm happy with whats happening. I also haven't gained weight in this process. I eat clean 5 times a day and incorporate a complex carb, lean protein in each meal. I do fruits sometimes in the morning in addition to my complex carb.
I am SO full all the time but I think that just comes with the territory. I would love feedback as I post things in this diary. I ultimately would like to lose just a bit...to 125 and decrease body fat even more to maybe 13-14%.
I am having a hard time getting past this 1300 mark. I know some of you are totally laughing at me right now...1300..WHAT is she crazy? who can eat that little! but its a TON more than I'm used to..believe me you would have gasped at what I could get by on daily and NOT lose a pound...even gain sometimes! Anyway 1300 seems like its just about as much as I can handle. I add peanut butter, almonds, olive oil etc to increase cals when I just can't handle more food...but its been hard.
SO thats that. I look forward to your responses and advice!
Sparrow
I have really enjoyed this site. Its SO informative!
First of all I want to give stats to help those posters who chose to respond to anything I'm going to write
I am 28 yr old female 5'6 130 pounds. BF is 15.7%.
Some background. I was always a very chubby kid. I weighed what I weigh now when I was 4 foot-something. Not cool. When I was a bit older my parents put me on a swim team to get me active and I began losing a lot of that baby weight without a conscious change in diet. Older still, in high school I was very engaged in year round competetive swimming. In my drive for excellence I developed anorexia. It started as a desire to be as lean as possible and be healthy but later became more when my weight was all I cared about and a drive for perfection outweighed a drive for health.
I was hospitalized 8 months into it for 2 weeks and then I began gaining the necessary weight so I could get back to the pool.
In my struggle for weight gain I was at one time at 4000 cals and still losing!
Somehow between then and now I dwindled my cals down very very low. I have always been a very healthy eater but as each child came ( I have 3) and life became busy I found myself eating less and less and maintaining a very active lifestyle of running and swimming. I never lost weight I just ended up in starvation mode without knowing it. most recently I became very tired of my rabbit food. I eat loads of salad, veggies and lean protein but after doing a food diary for a week I found I eat an average of 600-800 cals a day. not good. I also gain weight practically at the smell of food. If i even eat anything "normal" for any length of time I gain weight and it shows in my tight clothes. Makes it hard to socialize!
I talked to someone about my situation and they recommended increasing cals and backing off on cardio while increasing weights. SO because I'm willing to do anything to be back to "normal" I've been doing it.
I do weights 4 days a week hitting all body parts once. I lift challenging weights and do a pyramid. I do cardio 4-5 times a week for 30-40 minutes at different intensities. This is all much less than I was used to before but it seems to be way more effective.
I started my cals at 800 and have increased over the past 3 weeks to 1300. I try to bounce around so my body doesn't get cozy with that number but mostly it hovers there and I increase a bit weekly. My goal is to get near 1800-2000 and be able to add a bit more cardio, cause I like it! I started out at 19% bf so I'm happy with whats happening. I also haven't gained weight in this process. I eat clean 5 times a day and incorporate a complex carb, lean protein in each meal. I do fruits sometimes in the morning in addition to my complex carb.
I am SO full all the time but I think that just comes with the territory. I would love feedback as I post things in this diary. I ultimately would like to lose just a bit...to 125 and decrease body fat even more to maybe 13-14%.
I am having a hard time getting past this 1300 mark. I know some of you are totally laughing at me right now...1300..WHAT is she crazy? who can eat that little! but its a TON more than I'm used to..believe me you would have gasped at what I could get by on daily and NOT lose a pound...even gain sometimes! Anyway 1300 seems like its just about as much as I can handle. I add peanut butter, almonds, olive oil etc to increase cals when I just can't handle more food...but its been hard.
SO thats that. I look forward to your responses and advice!
Sparrow
