The Conundrum

[Pinecone]

I find myself in an interesting dilemma.

I'm not a *noob* to healthy eating and exercising. In fact, for many years I have cross-trained in an effort to lose fat (note I said fat and not weight, as weight is not a measure of the composition of your body).

Anyway, I have struggled for many years and a few years ago I FINALLY got down to a reasonable size 12 (still not to goal, but it felt good to qualify as *normal* in the size department). I was a 20 when I started. In terms of weight, it took me 3 years to lose 48 lbs (according to the scale). I cross trained 3-5 days/week and ate probably a 50/20/30 split of protein, fat, and carbs respectively. Basically I lived on water, protein, green stuff and either a slice of toast or cereal in the morning.

I got pregnant; instead of gaining the requisite 25-35 lbs, I ballooned up 80 lbs.... not from bad eating... heck I couldn't eat for the first 2-3 months roughly bececause I felt so awful. How I gained 22 plus lbs in 2 months is beyond me, but hey, that's hormones for you I guess.

So, I am training again and eating well and for some unknown reason, I am GAINING mass. This does not make sense to me. I've had bloodwork done and everything seems more or less normal (except my cholesteral overall which was very silghtly elevated). Personally I think I have a thyroid problem, but I have no so-called clinical proof.

I want my f***ing body back!!!!!!! And am I bitter and angry? Ohhhhh don't even get me started. Like it's not bad enough that if/when I lose 50 lbs I'll still need plastic surgery to fix my f***ing stomach >:{}

I'm trying to figure out why I find myself in this position and/or how to fix it. Most people can easily lose 4 lbs/month ior let's say 1/2 inch of fat, with some concerted effort in the nutrition and exercise department... I seemingly cannot. So what do I do? Stop doing weights and just do mad cardio for 2 hrs everyday????? I had always thought that a combination of weights (moderate to heavy) and HIIT cardio was the right approach but now I"m questioning everything since NOTHING seems to be working. I just want to look like a normal person again! Sheesh!! Results..... I need results.... kind of demotivating to see NO results for your efforts whatsoever.

Thoughts, comments and suggestions welcome!

Thanks

Pinecone

 

[chubbygirl]

It all comes down to calories - how many are you eating? How many are you burning? Try writing a food and exercise log for a week and have the experts see where you are going wrong. If you don't measure your food it is very easy to over estimate. For example I bought a turkey breast and just by looking at it I would say it was 6 oz - turns out it was over 10! that's a lot of uncalculated calories. Writing it all down really helps with being accountable and accurate. Good luck.

 

[Pinecone]

I don't believe in calorie counting per se, but I have tried it..... kept dropping food from 1800 cals, down 100 every 2-3 weeks to see if I could starting seeing some results. Over roughly a 6 month period, I wound up going as low as 700 cals/day (yes good foods like veggies, lean meats, etc)

No results.

At that point I decided it was just ludicrous and I was beginning to feel really, really awful. Plus I'm hypoglycemic which doesn't help.

That being said I have continued to randomly count calories on a given day just to spot check myself and I seldom find myself higher than about 1750/1800 cals - that's actually a bad day for me. An average *good* day puts me at about 1450/1500. In theory, I should be losing about 1 lb/week just with diet alone.

Thanks for mentioning this though - I had forgotten to include it in my initial post. And thanks for the encouragement.

Pinecone