The Fat Loss TroubleshootThis is your place to troubleshoot your fat loss problems from nutrition to training. This section is led by Leigh Peele, author of "The Fat Loss Troubleshoot," the ultimate fat loss manual. If your results have slowed or stalled this is the place to come for advice for all your fat loss needs.
I want to write these feelings down. I have never been anorexia or bulimea, but have always been a compulsive obsessive "overeater." I am now identifying the messages in my head as Eating Disorder messages, which is a totally new concept to me, and i think that is a healthy growth for me.
Here are some thoughts going through my head:
1. I'm not losing on the scale, so:
a. You're eating too much variety and interesting foods, maybe if you eat plainer still, just turkey or chicken or egg whites, and no more than 1/2 C vegies at each of most meals, your body will react with a drop
b. You're eating too much food, maybe more fasting and 800-1000 cal days will cause weight drop as when you were in 20's and 30's
c. I'm doing something wrong.
d. I'm a failure
e. I should drop my calories
f. Maybe my exercise level is much more light than I realize g. OH, here's the big one: If I'm feeding myself all these healthy meals, no wonder I'm not losing weight: I'm eating 5-6 meals a day, not really depriving myself, so my body thinks it is being fed and is happily maintaining with what I am giving it (1350cal)
I am just now beginning to identify my unhealthy mind games. Like, since I'm "not losing scale weight," I want to drop my calories down. I think that is a red flag for me. I've just redone all my numbers using an online calculator for RMR, BMR and Harris Benedict, http://forums.jpfitness.com/training...tml#post719375 and it says, since I moderately exercise 6 days a week now (sweating, etc), that for a 30% deficit, I should be eating 1544cal. I am eating 1400cal average, and want to drop it to 1200cal. I think maybe that is not a healthy reaction; it sounds like my Eating Disorder (ED) talking. I have never thought of it in these terms at all.
Doing Leigh's REPAIR was only the beginning of learning all this. Now that I am in deficit and not getting the scale results the math would have me get, I see the tricks my mind is doing to get me to undereat. I have never thought of all this in terms of ED for me. I think this is good, especially if a goal is that when I finally get to goal weight, and maintenance calories, I could possibly actually eat food, eat 1700-2000 calorie and maintain a goal weight. Right now at my weight of 175, at moderately active, my maintenance computes to 2206 calories. That is a mind blowing lot of healthy food.
I think, rather than AN or bulimea, what I have done in the past, is a nice healthy deficit, with some cheats thrown in to slow it down further, some small frustrating weight drop, still feeling fat, binging, overeating, gaining 5 more pounds than I lost, feeling guilty, dieting, never reaching my goal, always feeling fat, always dieting, thinking about food 24 hours a day to the exclusion of thinking of creativity or what art projects I could be doing. I have let myself stay at a steady stream of chubby dissatisfaction, working hard to be a martyr but not moving into success. I remember when I got to 159 last time, I felt "small" and there were parts of feeling small I did not like. Feeling insignificant...
I'm posting this here to open up the conversation more broadly rather than just specific "about me"...
Etana
It is good that you identify these voices because you can counter them with truth. As for an ED? It is hard to know for sure. It sounds like maybe it could be a binge disorder(mild), but I am not sure. I know many who binge from time to time but they by no means have an ED. Sometimes I think many on weight loss journeys who get really caught up in it tend to neurose over it more so than the average person - especially if you are here reading/learning about weight losss and other peoples success stories. Even without an ED, it would make me feel like a failure just reading about how someone else can lose weight by being in a deficit while I do the same thing but I am stuck and scale/clothes being looser does not change. But those obsessive thoughts, if they take over your thoughts all the time (24/7), certainly would set off alarm bells for having issues.
Personally, for me, it was totally unconscious. I NEVER set out to lose weight. Looking back, it is like it never entered my mind. I just quit eating without any goal to lose weight. Then I started getting up at 5 in the morning to go walk - and I sped walked. I could do 5 miles in 55 minutes!! I HAD to do my 10 mile walk daily but I don't really remember becoming obsessed with food until someone pointed out that I was skinny and had lost weight (5'9 and 110-115 lbs and had been maybe 142). I was 16 and most of it all is such a blur but by the time I was conscious of anything, the tentacles were wrapped around me too tight and deep for me just to "get over it and start eating" like everyone suggested. Sadly, when it became conspicuous to all and I was pressured to eat - it turned to bulimia. I still struggle to this day as I was a MAJOR fat phobe and I hate eating it. I have been to counseling, inpatient, etc. but when I read Emma Leigh's articles on FLzine, it really struck me for some reason and I have been doing much better. Not cured, but much better Like Leigh said in her first podcast, we love knowledge and learning; I "know" so many things (like how fat is good for the body) but some things are still hard to do. But I did start finally taking fish oil capsules!! I laugh now at how I could be afraid of fish oil.
But in essence, yes those are ED thoughts (and actions with binging) which to me are sort of synonymous with low self esteem thoughts (I am a failure, I am doing it wrong, etc); which basically is you scolding yourself for not measuring up. Measuring up to whom or what? Other peoples success? Your own goals/expectations in your mind? Hollywoods version of everyone being a stick these days?
So it is good you see the tricks your mind can play - it helps to read other people's mindgames because then it is easy to identify them in your own life. Posting here will help and is good accountability. An ED thought process is like a siren's call - very easy to become entrapped and very destructive. Just start countering those "I am a failure" thoughts with "I am a success" thoughts. Do you have Tom Venuto's "Body Fat Solution"? He has some good chapters on counteracting those messages. I am trying to implement them myself!!
There are SO many things to be said so I will just leave my babbling for now and say "Kudos to you" for recognizing destructive thought patterns that will hinder you in the long run.
And of course, these are my thoughts and not true for everyone. I am sure there are far more who read success stories and it motivates them - but for someone like me, it has the potential to make me feel like a failure, but I am getting past that because it is totally about my poisoned mind, NOT the person who succeeds. I am happy for them!! Just wanted to clarify that so no one would feel bad or think they are harming anyone by their success. Make sense? It is just like me reading how Sharon Stone, Lohan, or Mischa Barton can drop to these low weights in a month or so and I am wondering why I can't do it. Mind games and more mind games........OK sorry, I said I 'd hush. If I need to make something more clear, just let me know. I am not good with getting my thoughts out in writing.
Missy
While not full fledged eating disorder what you are describing sounds to me like Disordered Eating (DE) which many many people suffer from and can really have a negative impact on one mentally and physically.
I struggle with many of those thoughts myself from time to time. I did have anorexia (about 20 yrs ago) and while I certainly recovered in the physical sense there are always those distorted thoughts about food, bodyimage, etc I have also had periods of overeating/binges often in result to stress/loneliness etc. Been working on that the last year.
And I hate to say it but age really does a play a huge factor. At 40 my body behaves very differently than it did at 20 or 30. I imagine over 50 and after menopause it is even more of a challenge.
While it is tempting to cut back calories more and more or do something drastic it will just leave you in a worse position. Have you read new Rules of Lifting for Women? There is a great section on dieting and what happens when you go lower and lower or do drastic measures. I also recommend Inutitive Eating. I am re-reading it now and it really has some wonderful insights, especially for those of us that have dealt with overeating/binges etc.
While not full fledged eating disorder what you are describing sounds to me like Disordered Eating (DE) which many many people suffer from and can really have a negative impact on one mentally and physically.
While it is tempting to cut back calories more and more or do something drastic it will just leave you in a worse position. Have you read new Rules of Lifting for Women? There is a great section on dieting and what happens when you go lower and lower or do drastic measures. I also recommend Inutitive Eating. I am re-reading it now and it really has some wonderful insights, especially for those of us that have dealt with overeating/binges etc.
I'm really doing really fine, on a steady rational course of action. I'm trusting Leigh's program rather than trusting my inner mind, (except for my positive thoughts)... I wrote that message just to document the feelings, and would have put it on my log, except I thought it would spur a good conversation and for others here to also think about / transform our inner unhealthy ED and DE thoughts that rule us and keep us living in permanent deficit
Here are some thoughts going through my head:
1. I'm not losing on the scale, so:
a. You're eating too much variety and interesting foods, maybe if you eat plainer still, just turkey or chicken or egg whites, and no more than 1/2 C vegies at each of most meals, your body will react with a drop
b. You're eating too much food, maybe more fasting and 800-1000 cal days will cause weight drop as when you were in 20's and 30's
c. I'm doing something wrong.
d. I'm a failure
e. I should drop my calories
f. Maybe my exercise level is much more light than I realize g. OH, here's the big one: If I'm feeding myself all these healthy meals, no wonder I'm not losing weight: I'm eating 5-6 meals a day, not really depriving myself, so my body thinks it is being fed and is happily maintaining with what I am giving it (1350cal)
Oh girl .. I can SO relate to 99% of those thoughts, as I too have them on a daily basis!! In my 20s.. dropping weight was never a problem (that was in the height of my anorexia though, and it's hard not to drop weight on a caloric consumption of about 400 cals a day) .. now that I'm 33 and have re-gained what I needed to gain back (and a little more than I'm comfortable with) .. trying to restrict my eating is impossible. And due to being older now, I'm seeing the effects of the metabolic slowdown that comes with age.
I don't know if it's some form of self-sabotage, the psychological effects of not only physical but psychological deprivation of 10 years of undereating/overexercising.. but I feel like walking train wreck right now, and all of those thoughts go through my mind, what feels like every waking hour (getting to the point where I'm even having dreams about it!!). Psychologically, now that I'm eating again, I'm having a hard time viewing food as just fuel for my body, but I've found that more often than not, when I eat, I feel like I'm making up for years of deprivation, and it's reflected in my food choices (i.e., and entire jar of PB, or a half a canister of walnuts, 1/2 box of cereal). I don't necessarily feel as though my eating style as it is now is "bingeing" .. but I think I've definitely crossed over the normal threshhold into over-eating quite often. It's such a delicate area for me right now .. I'm sure the lack of progress on my part, is in response to my body fighting back and not wanting to let me lose weight again, but the psychological factor as well .. that my mind is tired of me depriving myself and my body of the foods and calories I crave. 10% of the time, I'm undereating .. 90% of the time, I feel as though I'm overeating. I canNOT find a "system' that works. Counting calories for me, seems like not only a lot of work in an area that I'm clueless on .. but also tends to result in me obsessing again about what I'm eating/not eating calorically, and puts me back in that restrictivementality .. but by the same token, given the fact that I want to lose a small amount of bodyfat and then re-focus my goals and calories to allow me to add lean mass, I actually HAVE to count calories if I want to see the results I'm looking for. I feel like I'm constantly on a see-saw, that more often that not, is down, not up.
And sadly .. for as wordy as that was .. I can't offer any insight of my own or advice to you, other than to just let you know that you're not alone in your struggles. Truth be known, I'm sure there's a lot more people going through this than just you and I. I think women, generally speaking, are just psychologically programmed to constantly feel like we need to lose weight, in the same ways that I think a lot of men are psychologically pre-programmed to always be wanting to add mass/bulk.
Why couldn't I have been put on this earth as a dog?!?! They never think about food, weight loss, etc., and are just happy as they are! I am always in awe when I really watch my little sheltie Laddie, at how happy and content he is all the time, and how he'll go to his dish, eat until he's full and walk away often leaving some behind .. and then never gives his food another thought.
Oh girl .. I can SO relate to 99% of those thoughts, as I too have them on a daily basis!! trying to restrict my eating is impossible. And due to being older now, I'm seeing the effects of the metabolic slowdown that comes with age.
You are not older. You are young. I'm not sure you're having a metabolic slowdown. I learned that I didn't have a slow metabolism; I just wasn't getting enough sleep and was dragging around all day. You will learn about your metabolism as you learn to feed yourself.
You cannot restrict your eating with those foods: they are trigger/binge foods. I consider it a proud healthy day (like yesterday) when I could eat 50cal of chocolate as a treat and stop. Okay if you don't want to count calories then do fist of carb, palm of protein 6x/day, plus vegies and fat. You have to start with an outside structured food plan, since you do not know how to do it from your history. My history was 2nd and 3rd helpings eat until I'm stuffed, yours is the opposite. Learning what a portion is was one of the most important keys I have learned. Now I eat 6 portion-meals. If I eat a double portion, that is fine, I call it 2 meals combined.
Do you have a plan to start a structure? By when? What structure? What does it look like?
Once you start a structure you will have something that will help you avoid the PB binges.
Quote:
Why couldn't I have been put on this earth as a dog?!?! They never think about food, weight loss, etc., and are just happy as they are! I am always in awe when I really watch my little sheltie Laddie, at how happy and content he is all the time, and how he'll go to his dish, eat until he's full and walk away often leaving some behind .. and then never gives his food another thought.
haha I have always felt the same thing. If I were a dog, others would feed me and I wouldn't have to decide anything.
Nicole honestly you should NOT be trying to lose weight now. I hear a lot of eating disorder in your "voice" still. You have only very recently begun to recover. Yes, you have regained some weight to put you in a healthy (but still low) range for your height but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Its not like you regain some weight and suddenly your mind and body is "healed". Your body is most likely still in a huge state of deficiency, hormonal upheaval, and "confusion". The more you worry about what to eat, how much to eat, how to lean out etc it is just going to make you more anxious and take you further away from your goals of healing and living a normal life.
The last thing you should be doing now is trying to get "leaner" or lose weight. You need to learn what it means to eat normally, eat healthfully and see how your body reacts to that. And you need to begin the hard work of learning to love yourself and accept your body as is no matter what you weigh or what your bodyfat % is. This is KEY in fully recovering from AN.
Hi. I'm new here, but can totally relate to all of this. I've never had a full blown eating disorder, but have battled disordered eating most of my life. In my teens, I would restrict my eating severely to be able to maintain a low normal weight for my height, but I never exercised. In college, I just basically said "screw it" and gained the normal freshman fifteen and then some. After college, it was a cycle of dieting and bingeing, with intermittent exercising, never keeping enough deficit to really lose weight because of my binges. In my late 20s, I did weight watchers; reached my goal weight and then spent the next 3 years gaining back all the weight, plus about 5 pounds. Then I got pregnant and used that as an excuse to eat everything in sight. Six weeks after I gave birth to my first child, I weighed 204 lbs (I'm 5'4") I was depressed and mortified; I felt hopeless and frustrated that there was just so much weight that I had to lose that it was going to take forever.
Well, it has taken a long time. That baby is now five and I have another daughter. I have managed to lose weight, but I'm still not where I want to be. (Though yesterday, I wore my skinny jeans in public -hooray!) At first, the dieting was exhausting - like hand to hand combat every waking hour, but slowly I started to realize that I needed to look at the long term of weight managemet and being able to live in a world where there is pizza and ice cream and vodka tonics and french fries and cream sauce and not to fell that I am powerless to these things. I'm a reader, so I read. A lot. And it helped. I used to really be triggered by ice cream. Now, there's ice cream in my house at all times, and I rarely touch it. Same with oreos. After my second child was born, I ate practically an entire bag of oreos by myself in 3 days (ok, 2 days). I couldn't stop myself. Right now, there's a bag of oreos I bought last Tuesday that hasn't even been opened and when it is, I probably won't have one and I won't miss it. I just feel better knowing it's there and I can have a cookie if ever I choose to. My battles are not over. I still have binges, but they're smaller and I'm more aware of my triggers. I know my past struggles will always be there in the background, but hopefully as time goes on and I get farther away from those days, I will get mentally stronger and more able to resist the impulse to binge. So anyway, for those who are interested, here are some books that really helped me to start to feel normal about food. I hope that they can help someone else here too:
1. The 4 Day Win by Martha Beck: I cannot recommend this enough. It's a little touchy feely new age-y and I didn't do all of the things she suggests, but it is a gold mine for those with disordered eating.
2. Anne Lamott's essays about her eating disorder, particularly "Hunger" and "The Aunties" from the book Travelling Mercies and "The Muddling Glory of God" from the book Grace (Eventually)
3. Real Food by Nina Planck and The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan: Made me think about whether there was food in my food, particularly all the "diet food" I've eaten over the years. (Yes, I know there's no food in oreos, but I like them anyway) These books got me over my diet Coke addiction.
4. Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink: It's about experiments he did about what triggers people to eat mindlessly. The bottomless bowl of soup one is pretty freaky. Some of the advice (e.g. "use a smaller plate") isn't anything new, but the book gave me a few new things to think about.
5. The Little House on the Prairie Books, particularly "The Long Winter." I know it seems kind of weird, but these books just really brought home to me the abundance with which we now live and how I should be grateful for it, but at the same time, don't have to partake in all of it. Food was precious to these pioneers. They had to hunt and garden to survive. When the kids got a stick of candy at Christmas it was a big deal. If they were going to have a cake, their mother had to make it from scratch, and she had to have the sugar and eggs available to do that. There was no Entemanns or Sara Lee. Now, when I think about eating something calorically dense like a cake, I try to think about how rarely my ancestors would have been able to eat something like that and how much labor would have gone into the preparation and I try to honor that by eating the best possible cake available (I pretty much won't touch any cake bought at the supermarket - yes I know I'm a snob) and in a moderate portion.
Sorry for the long post. I certainly don't have it all figured out, but I'm better than I used to be and I owe a lot of that to these books. And to Leigh's food measuring video. Seriously, it changed my dieting life.
Thanks for your thoughts, seela! It sounds like you've come a long way, even if you have a bit further to go. Congratulations on your progress so far, and good luck with those last pounds!
I just ordered Traveling Mercies from amazon yesterday. I had no clue that she included any essays about EDs; I'm all the more excited to read it now!
And welcome to the boards. Everyone here is very supportive.
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They call me Amanda, that being my real name, and "They" being people who know me in person as I don't go around introducing myself in real life as "scribess." 'Cause that would just be strange.
When I was a teen anorexic (yes, I like to follow all the female fads), I had this great little book called "Life's a bitch and then you diet", by a writer called Serena Gray. It was a really wicked parody of all diet lifestyles drawn into the extreme. It helped me realise how f***ed up my mind had become. It's out of stores but many libraries still have it.
Eating Disorders Athletes & ED Eating Disorders Binge Eating... Whitney Spannuth of Vanderbilt thought that eating less was what a cross-country runner did .
Thanks for your thoughts, seela! It sounds like you've come a long way, even if you have a bit further to go. Congratulations on your progress so far, and good luck with those last pounds!
I just ordered Traveling Mercies from amazon yesterday. I had no clue that she included any essays about EDs; I'm all the more excited to read it now!
And welcome to the boards. Everyone here is very supportive.
Thanks for the warm welcome. I am a huge fan of anne Lamott. Have you read any of her other books? If you have kids (or even if you don't, but it's just more relatable if you do), I highly recommend Operating Instructions.
Just Bird by Bird and a couple of essays that happened to be reprinted in various anthologies. But I love her sense of humor and have been thinking for a while that I needed to read the Lamott canon, so to speak. Traveling Mercies seemed like a good place to start!
No kids, but I did think Operating Instructions sounded fun, too.
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They call me Amanda, that being my real name, and "They" being people who know me in person as I don't go around introducing myself in real life as "scribess." 'Cause that would just be strange.
, I feel like I'm making up for years of deprivation, and it's reflected in my food choices (i.e., and entire jar of PB, or a half a canister of walnuts, 1/2 box of cereal). I don't necessarily feel as though my eating style as it is now is "bingeing" .. but I think I've definitely crossed over the normal threshhold into over-eating quite often. .
I guess each of us identifies differently the term "bingeing". To me, an entire jar of PB is a binge, or 1/2 box of cereal. This provokes tremendous feelings of guilt for me, and anything that disrupts my life in that way is classified as a binge.
I wonder, is there a caloric threshold to define a binge vs. an overeat?
Taken from the DSM's description of BED- taken from something-fishy.org
An episode of binge eating is characterized by both of the following:
Eating, in a discrete period of time (eg, within any 2-hour period), an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat in a similar period of time under similar circumstances;
A sense of lack of control over eating during the episode (eg, a feeling that one cannot stop eating or control what or how much one is eating).
The binge eating episodes are associated with at least three of the following:
Eating much more rapidly than normal
Eating until feeling uncomfortably full
Eating large amounts of food when not feeling physically hungry
Eating alone because of being embarrassed by how much one is eating
Feeling disgusted with oneself, depressed, or feeling very guilty after overeating
EDIT: Basically the difference is the compulsive way in which it is performed
I wonder, is there a caloric threshold to define a binge vs. an overeat?
I haven't had a binge in years, but to me, overeating is when you eat too much of something you like. A binge is when you're standing in front of the fridge and consume anything that's vaguely edible looking, including yesterday's cold boiled potatoes, sugar straight from the bag and possibly the cat's food.
i.e. a binge is far more compulsive. overeating is more like "oh, I'll just have one spoon... hey where did the peanutbutter go?"
I was listening to Leigh's first podcast yesterday, don't know how I missed it when it came out. She was talking about getting information to the anorexic, (I didn't see where she put the links that she was talking aobut there) that anorexia and bulimia are really the same thing, and I wonder if I'm on the same spectrum. I've been exercising/ dieting for 18 years since I was 21. Before that, I knew that foods were bad for me but most of the time I just ate whatever. Some healthy, some junk, little exercise. And then one day I hit a weight that was too much and went on a low-fat diet and started riding a bike. I lost a lot of weight, obsessed about the low-fat diet and tried to keep exercising. Eventually the low-fat itself was'nt enough to drop my weight or bodyfat, and my workout schedule scared my roommates. Clearly I wasn't eating enough protein then. Anyway, it feels like I am always either "on" a diet and doing everything right or "off" a diet and gaining weight. I haven't found maintenance.
I think the most recent time I tried to hit maintenance, what happened is that I dropped the cardio, and had only small amounts of yoga, walking to an otherwise sedentary lifestyle. Adding junk at the same time led to the obvious result. I don't know if this is a kind of long-term bulimia/anorexia cycle or this is just normal, figuring it out. I think that in order to maintain, I can either 1. eat out and eat junk but workout like a fiend or 2. eat clean and drop the cardio. Finding a balance is hard. When I know I need to lose weight, it's easy to say "no" to fries and eating out and alcohol. And is there some medical, hormonal kind of reason that I don't go from losing weight to maintenance. Is it like, when the psychological control is dropped, then my body wins and eats stuff that I should have eaten all along?
I'm curious what other people think about this issue. Is it common, is it just about finding the right balance and not see-sawing between loss/gain, is it about realizing that I can never have certain trigger foods?
I wanted to add something about the swings (I can't see where to edit my post). I think I worry a lot. I know a lot of women do. Or maybe I stress out a lot or have a stressful life or something. But the point is that I think that I have two coping mechanisms for stress: I do cardio or I eat carbs. (I was thinking about this when niclyf wrote that she went for a long bike ride.) One raises endorphins and the other serotonin, right? I think I can be at maintenance when life is okay, which is, basically, rare. But last spring I was doing the walking, yoga, and weight training via the NROL4W, and I think I ate more carbs because I was trying to avoid the cardio. I also think that either the calorie goals in NROL4W are way off or I seriously underestimate calories or both. Still not sure if this points to a vitamin deficiency, protein deficiency or just that I should keep doing cardio even when I'm not cutting.
ED Eating Disorder thoughts
Like Leigh said in her first podcast, we love knowledge and learning; I "know" so many things (like how fat is good for the body) but some things are still hard to do. But I did start finally taking fish oil capsules!! I laugh now at how I could be afraid of fish oil. 
They never think about food, weight loss, etc., and are just happy as they are! I am always in awe when I really watch my little sheltie Laddie, at how happy and content he is all the time, and how he'll go to his dish, eat until he's full and walk away often leaving some behind .. and then never gives his food another thought.
Linear Mode
