Young and feels like giving up.

dancerhas

dancerhas

New member
Hello everyone! :waving: I found this forum hoping to see if anybody has any advice with the problem I have.

I'm only 18, 5'2 1/2 and weigh around 157. My goal right now is to get down to at least 125 but I feel pretty much like a failure at this point. I think I've basically tried everything I possibly could. I weighed this same amount back when I was 13. So I decided to lose some weight, which I did. I dropped down to 130, I was very pleased with myself. I kept the weight off until this past September. My weight slowly starting to go up again and honestly, I couldn't tell you why. I'm very active, I take dance classes 3 nights a week and the nights I don't dance, I usually jog or take a walk. For Christmas I got Wii Fit, hoping I could do some indoor exercises since it's cold out. I start out at 147 when I started wii fit, but since I've started it I've GAINED 10 pounds. I do not over eat, in fact, I've been told I under eat. I probably only take in about 900 calories a day. For the past month I've been trying my best to take in 1200 calories a day with exercising, but I can't seem to maintain the weight or lose it, it just keeps going up! Can somebody tell me if I'm doing something wrong? Do I need more calories because I'm so active? I'm just at a loss right now. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

-Heidi
 
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Because you are so active, you probably do need more calories. My concern after reading your post is that you're under eating. Something that a lot of people don't realize is that, when you eat too few calories, your body thinks that it is going to starve. Your body can't read your mind, only the signals you send it, and when you eat too few calories, then your body will cling to fat storage in an effort to sustain itself and will burn muscle instead. If you're exercising, that's only going to increase your body clinging to the fat storage, because it will be missing the calories you're burning off.

If you don't mind, could you provide an example of what you've been eating? I can give you some suggestions to help up your metabolism as well as suggest how to stop your body from clinging to stored fat, but it would be good to get an idea of what you've been consuming, as that may also be contributing to the problem.
 
Well, my diet varies every day. Usually for breakfast I have a glass of V8 and a bowl of cereal. Usually lunch, I'll have a ham sandwich. For dinner, it's something different. I can a sub from subway, or one of my mom's dinners, which are usually low fat recipes, since she's trying to lose weight also. I don't snack to often, and if I do snack, it's either a fiberplus bar, or pretzels. I'm not into like chips or anything. The thing I don't understand, since I've been trying to be healthier with my eating, my weight has increased, but back when I was 130, I ate horrible things, but never gained. As soon as I said "I'm going to cut back on the sweets and soda's, the gross stuff" I've continued to gain weight. So I don't know if that could be a cause or not.
 
Hmm, that definitely is a little strange! What are your portion sizes like? Eating smaller portions on your meals but adding more snacks will help your metabolism run properly, and since you'll be eating more frequently, your body will stop thinking that it's starving and stop clinging to the fat storage.

I would suggest adding more snacks to your meal plan...so try having breakfast within half an hour of waking up, then around 3 hours later have a snack (ie: a cup of yogurt or pudding, or a small chocolate milk, some nuts/rasins, something like that), then have your lunch about 3 hours after that, followed by another snack 3 hours later, and then dinner should fall around 3 hours after that. Then, right before your go to bed, eat something with citrus (an orange or kiwi or something like that). This will encourage your metabolism to be working all day and one of the few foods that can be digested overnight without fat being stored is citrus, so that will help your metabolism work while you sleep. Also, avoiding carbs during dinner is a good idea, since carbs give us energy and we don't really need energy if we're going to bed in a few hours after dinner. Make sure your carbs come from your breakfast and lunch meals, then stick to lean protien and vegetables for dinner. Also, make sure you're drinking lots of water throughout the day, this will help flush out unwanted excess and keep you hydrated so that your body can work at its peak. (Your mom can try this too, if she's looking to stimulate her metabolism and increase her weight loss!)

Give that a try for a few weeks and see if it makes a difference. If you're still not seeing results, then I'd do what GaelicGirl suggested and see your doctor. Something medical could be contributing, it's hard to say. Let me know how/if this works for you!
 
Thanks for the replies!

I could maybe have a thyroid problem, my mom has mentioned that, and I've got checked for it, but I have a lot of the symptoms of it. *Shrugs*

I'll try the eating every three hours method and see how it goes! It's really hard for me though, because I'm away in the evenings, so my dinner always is at a different time, but I'll definitely give it a try.

And is it also true you shouldn't eat like 3 hours before bed? Except for citrus stuff.
 
Yes pretty much anything you eat within 3 hours before you go to bed doesn't have time to get digested properly and thus will be turned into fat storage. Citrus is one of the few foods that can be digested over night without turning into fat storage, so it will encourage your metabolism to work over night.

The 3 hours thing isn't set in stone, basically if you work out your waking hours and put in the six meals as best you can, it should help. If you're only up enough to do every 2 hours or every hour and a half, you can do that too...trying to regulate your eating will help your body regulate its self as well, but as you said, sometimes that's very difficult.
 
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