Feeling Sad and Confirming My Suspicians
Ok, so this post is going to be a downer. If you need to be lifted up, you might want to skip it.
But the very thing I suspected has happened. My weight is slowly creeping right back up. I know I'm a daily weigher, but I always have been and I don't use a creep up as an excuse to eat more and give up. I just don't understand it at all, except I've been eating less than I had been. While I was losing these last three weeks, I had been eating at least 1700 calories a day and around 100 net carbs. But the last 3 or more days, my calories have been closer to 1400-1500 and my carbs were down to like 50-75 a day.
Some people say there is no such thing as a "starvation mode", but my brilliant 16 year old daughter explained it to me. Here is how the conversation went (yes, I do think she's bright enough to ask her about all sorts of things):
Mom: So, Kassie, tell me, do you think there is such thing as a "Starvation Mode", you know a point when you are eating too little that you stop losing weight. Because I've heard that isn't true, just look at the people in Concentration Camps. There weren't any fat people there.
Kassie: But see mom, here's how you and them are different. They got NO food most of the time, you are at least eating, albeit less than a regular eating person gets. So your body DOES have SOME fuel, where they had none at all, so it had to eat at their body.
So I wonder, if maybe since I'm eating too little, I AM holding on to whatever it can.
I just know something has got to work, something has got to change. I'm at my wits end.
I guess it's kind of like this. How many times do you keep doing something that isn't working and keep doing it, hoping maybe this time it will work. Does that make sense? I once heard someone say "Only an insane person, keeps doing the same thing expecting a different result the next time".When do we say enough is enough. When after doing something over and over and over again, that doesn't work, do you stop and say "I've had enough". I'm not at that point, but I can't keep doing something forever that isn't working. Since I've tried low-fat, low-calories, low-carb, lowfat with lowcarb, low calorie with lowcarb and none of those worked, and I've had doctors tell me, my body is "too broken" to work, when do I cry uncle and stop. Hope that all make sense.
I know I'm not nuts, I know I've tried the very best I could, so it's not from lack of trying. And I have lost 70ish pounds. So I'd call that fairly successful, but I'm just still really pretty fat and now I have so much hanging skin and rashes that no prescription or home remedy has been able to fix.
I have a doctor that won't recommend me for plastics until I've lost at least another 50ish pounds. And the weight doesn't seem to want to budge much past the weight I'm at no matter what lifestyle I'm living. So it's sort of like a sentence to suffering for a LONG time. I truly suffer every single day with rashes and itching and burning. But since I can't seem to get the scale to move with any real success, so even with all my "compliance" I'm punished to live with the health problems I have. It's just rather discouraging. That's all I'm saying.
4 comments:
I understand your frustration with the rashes, etc. I'm still having an ongoing battle to have my PS gone. I'm sure you have tried about everything under the sun. Have you tried Zeasorb yet? It has helped me.
As far as the weight loss goes, have you actually set down and figured out how many calories you really need to be eating?
I recently did a blog post concerning the Kimkins diet. In it I showed how people tend to cut their calories way too much in order to lose weight. I even did a couple of examples. It is all based on your BMR. It takes a few minutes to do the calculations, but this approach has helped me maintain my 200+ lb weight loss after my WLS.
Losing weight the right way......
Hi hon, thank you for such open and honest posting. I can SOOO identify with many of the things you've written about.
Starvation mode definitely exists. I think there are different gradations, too. For example, the Holocaust victims/survivors actually did eat, but quite insufficiently (I want to say around 1500 calories, very little protein, no EFAs). Ancel Keyes ran a study to try to estimate the European diet post-WWII---there's a book about it called The Great Starvation Experiment. The conscientious objectors he got to submit themselves to the experiment were placed on a similar diet as the Holocaust victims/survivors. They were all young healthy males when the study started. Most lost weight, though not all; some maintained. However, much more disturbing were the psychological effects of that starvation. You can google semi-starvation neurosis. One guy, while chopping wood, cut off several of his fingers, basically in order to be released from the experiment. (Except when he was offered the release, he didn't take it, for pride, basically.)
Anyway, my point is that these low calories (yes, even 1500 is biologically "low", imo) have many worse ramifications than what we call starvation mode. BUT---at least for me, the low calories (and low protein and low EFAs, along with low saturated fat) and reading about starvation mode and semi-starvation neurosis---it made me wonder whether a large part of my personality (what I've always thought of as a bent toward pessimism and negativity) wasn't actually effectuated by 20+ years of poor diet and nutrition.
Starvation mode exists. Obesity and malnutrition hold hands as twin maladies. As much as we despair of losing weight (I'm back up to 200 lbs or so to lose), it's so very important that we nourish ourselves for health first, and not get too bogged down only thinking about the weight loss.
Have you read Schwartzbein Principle I and/or II? I haven't yet, but from what I've heard about it, it's quite similar (if not IS) to what you're doing with the lowER carbs and eating to BMR.
Stay the course, hon. Heal. HEALTH is what we're after, as much as we can get!
Ugh. I'm so very sorry! Thank you for being so honest. With my FM and other (non-weight-related) health problems, my weight loss is very slow, even with the Band (45 pounds in 9 mos). But I'm hoping "Slow and Steady wins the race".
Can you go back and get more fill? (two posts ago you talked about a big unfill that left you wide open). I got an unfill and then lost only another 5 lbs, but those 5 lbs seem to have made a big difference in my band - I've already had one refill and am at my highest fill level, but it's still not enough - I feel like I did months ago. I have another appointment next Wed.
I hope you find some encouragement to help you through!
Hey, first of all, welcome back to blogging! I am fighting with this myself as I find I have very little appetite and just don't feel like eating much at all. I have to make myself! I know I'm not consuming enough whole foods and my weight loss has slowed WAY down to just a bit of moving up and down in a range. My musculature keeps changing but the numbers don't change much!
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