Insert obligatory I stopped losing weight post

(Diane) #41

:heart:

:wink:

(Karim Wassef) #42

My 2 cents having a similar body type 5’10” and 255lb at the beginning

  • just my personal experience…

The first 12 lbs you lost we’re not fat. They were mostly water. Your body is very smart and very efficient. If you’ve been at that weight for any length of time, it’s going to do its utmost to return you to it and the process is simple- water and glycogen go first (muscle and liver stored glucose), it will run off all food first and only after it is convinced that you really are not going to take in any more carbs (took my stubborn body a month) will it actually burn your body fat.

And then! It will open up the fat cells and drain the liquid lipids but will refuse to catabolize the cell itself. Think of it like an empty beach ball… but now, it fills that cell with water to maintain cell integrity. Water is heavier than fat so you will see weight gain as your body uses food fat + your fat but won’t break fat cells down. This is perversely water weight and it will go counter to what you want to see but is actually a good sign.

So the two will offset and keep you high or flat… in a week or two of this, your body will finally accept that it’s not going to get the insulin signal to refill the fat cells and finally allows them to collapse. This will be a day of massive flushing… water and salts leaving your body and potentially losing 4 lbs or more in a day.

Then the process starts again.

If you’re satiated with 2000 cal, ok… but I wasn’t. I upped my fat till I was at 3000 and it pushed my body to accept that ketone burning is the new normal. I believe it also accelerated my body’s willingness to let my own fat go. It’s like giving your body the safety signal… “we’re not starving, there’s plenty of fat here… I’m giving you fats every day… chill and let the fat inside go when you need to”…

Some food fats will also help your body to relearn how to burn your own fat. Fish and nut fats especially… Salmon, mackerel, macadamia and avocado became my staple foods.

Ketones high in urine means that you’re making ketonesbut not really using them well yet. That’s the next phase and requires patience. Stay on target and either ignore the scale or accept that it’s a negotiating/ retraining process for your metabolism. You’ve trained your body for decades one way, it’ll take more than weeks to convince it you want to do things differently.

Eat fats, drink water and salts and wait…

That’s what happened with me anyway.

#43

I am a newbie but as a 54 year old woman who has been consuming on average 15g carb per day for 8 weeks I am quickly discovering that staying off the scale is very important. Measuring my size changes across my body (neck to calves) has shown me how much I am changing. In the first 6 weeks I lost 25 inches yet my weight only showed 12 pounds.

(Cindy) #44

I didn’t measure when I started (should have), but I noticed pretty quickly that all my t-shirts got looser AND longer. It’s nice, isn’t it?

Congrats on the 25 inches!!

(Cindy) #45

Oh, and one more thing…you shouldn’t say “only” showed 12 lbs. As a 54 yr old woman ; ) (I can can that because I’m 54 in a few months), you know that 2 lbs/week is an EXCELLENT weight loss.

(Wendy) #46

I actually have done it this way the whole time. I’m a year in now (I think). My weight did flunctuate the whole time but always in a downward trend. Patience really pays off. I eat fat and protein to my satiety and now probably indulge a bit more in carbs. (I like my berries and Greek yogurt.:heart_eyes: )

(Jane) #47

TBH, so have I. Never bothered with macros - just carbs.

And added butter to my morning coffee after switching from LC to keto. And to my shock and amazement, drinking butter every morning did not stop my weight loss or cause a stall.

(Jane) #48

Same here for occasional indulgences now that I am in on maintenance. I picked up some goat milk kefir yesterday and it is 10 carbs a cup so would be way too expensive when I was trying to lose.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #49

I love the distinction you make betwen losing fat and losing weight. I salute your clear thinking!

One of the things I’ve become powerfully aware of on these forums is just how often we talk about “losing weight,” when what we really mean is losing fat. I’m not naive enough to believe that language reform ever solves a real problem, but in this case it indicates a lack of clear thinking that perhaps we need to address more forthrightly.

What made me particularly sad was a thread started a month or so ago by a newcomer, a woman who was so wrapped up in what her scale was telling her, that she couldn’t accept that gaining muscle was a good thing. The fact that she wasn’t “losing” was a problem for her. As I recall, she had lost a significant amount of fat, but couldn’t cope with the scale’s lack of movement.

(Cindy) #50

The [spoiler]damn[/spoiler] scale is also what trips up a lot women when they start working out more, too. Didn’t matter how many times I’d tell people that gaining some weight during physical activity was a GOOD thing. It’s been shown that even your blood volume increases when you start exercising, so that’s more fluid, but it makes you more efficient and healthier. But people get fixated on that number. :frowning:

(Hyperbole- best thing in the universe!) #51

I think part of the problem is that weight is the only marker we can reliably measure at home*, so health professionals give us goals based on weight. Understandable, but not always helpful. The pressure we get to meet that number, especially for women, is immense.

My cousin and I are the same height, but at the same size clothing I am heavier than she is. I’m a nerd, I’m not working out or playing sports. So it doesn’t seem like I’d have bigger muscles. According to the MetLife chart I have the elbows of a woman 6 inches taller than I am. But I’m on the smallest hole on my watch band. I don’t feel like I am awkwardly proportioned with giant elbows and tiny wrists.

It is all crazy making.

*Can we use circumferential measurements instead? Waist to height ratio is a good start. But this method is also potentially rife with problems.

(Karim Wassef) #52

Waist measurements are better than the scale. Even with problems…

#53

Can’t bank on women’s insecurities and sell them diet stuff if they aren’t obsessed by arbitrary numbers on the scale, amirite. And don’t work too hard at the gym, just yoga and cardio only, don’t want to put on muscles and become unattractive to men, I mean put extra numbers on the scale.

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #54

I’ve gone down three dress sizes and last I checked, I had only lost 9 lbs.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #55

If I liked girls—that way, I mean—I’d want a girl with muscle! But then, I just don’t get off on dominating the weak. . . . #NOTAREALMAN

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #56

I look at it this way, when a serial killer has to choose between struggling with me or the gal with nothing on her bones, I’m probably safer.

#57

I remember on FB National Geographic did a reconstruction of the face of a teenage girl from 9000 years ago based on her remains, and just by her face you could tell this girl was ripped, as would make sense from this time period, and of course the first comments were dudebros saying “but she ugg.”

(Running from stupidity) #58

True, but DEFINING it correctly truly helps lead to the correct solution. If the problem isn’t set out correctly, then a useful answer is unlikely.

OK, I REALLY need an explanation as to WTF this even means.

See, I like the way you take these issues and apply real-world examples to them.

(Cory Allaire) #59

Sorry I haven’t responded to anyone as I have been busy with work, but holy smokes I can’t believe all the replies. I want to thank everyone for their responses, and helpful advice. I am not offended by anyone and all to which I believe their should be discipline/harsh tongue in weight loss. I will definitely be saving this thread for anymore questions I might have. Thanks again everyone!

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #60

The Metropolitan Life Insurance company issued tables of ideal weights by height, based on their actuarial data. The tables are reproduced on this Web page, along with the instructions on how to measure your elbows in order to determine whether your frame is small, medium, or large. Ruina is saying she has a rather large frame.

http://www.assessmentpsychology.com/metlife.htm