unable to loose weight?

[Milky_Kou]

So, ill get to the chase, i am not the healthiest person in the world or the most active...Im trying to lose weight but no matter what I do, i seem to just keep packing in weight and getting weaker by the month.

Per my Fitbit HR that i got a few months ago my average daily output of calories is between 3.6-4.8 depending on if i go to work or not. I know i dont eat a whole lot since depression has made me lose my appitite. Recently about a month ago i started using those healthy meals thats sold at HEB that have an average of under 800 cal a meal. I will eat 1 of those a day and try to eat healthier, drinking sparkling water, (so as to get me off my diet soda and sugar free soda addiction) and lots of veggies. I try not to eat snacks cause i will just not stop eating if i start.

Recently i got me a VR headset and have played alot of beatsaber since i like it and it counts as my workout. (I can go almost 3 hours on that with what the fitbit says anerobic workout without noticing.) I do this about 3 times a week since i do it on my only days off. I work overnights so im not active during the day (i get home at 5am on average) but im a night owl by nature anyways. Uhm...Not sure whatever i can describe but it seems when i tried to get off my soda addiction and try to eat healthier (i dropped eating fast food and avoiding fried foods as much as possible) I seemed to have gained several kgs now. Im now at 137kg and...i want to drop that to at least 90 maybe not by the end of this year not sure if thats possible and healthy but...i want to make a change im just not sure what else i can do.

So tldr....I put out at least double if not more than i eat, but i am gaining fat instead of muscle, im burning alot of cals and trying to eat healthier but nothing seems to work.

I dont drink or smoke or do any drugs but i have alot of anxiety and depression.

Thanks for any advice...this was preety hard to type up.

[AmandaGeorge]

I've got depression too, so understand how hard it is to motivate yourself to eat and generally keep fit. 

Break it down into much smaller goals than you seem to currently have - it's good that you've got an ideal weight in mind but it's too huge a gap to motivate you.  Maybe aim to lose 1lb a week or even a month and have plenty of rewards lined up ready for when you achieve them.

Maybe set your Fitbit targets to be the minimum you can (it's 2,500 steps in the Inspire app) and aim for one blob a day in the 250 steps an hour bit too.  Take things really slowly and make your targets achievable.

Do you have a garden or back yard you can walk around once a day for 15 minutes?  Do you know anyone with a tiny/small dog you can take for walks every day or anything like that?  The smaller the dog, the less they need to be walked, but knowing that another being is relying on you for their daily exercise will hopefully motivate you to take them out every day... it certainly did with me!

It's great that you're doing your best to cut down on the junk/fried food too, just work on it a lot slower... start with removing one junk/fried food meal a week and eventually, like I've found, you will start enjoying non-junk food more too, as well as it being significantly cheaper!

It sounds like your VR headset is what you need to keep using to help you to lose the weight too, 'cos you enjoy it, which is vital for those of us with depression and limited motivation!

Keep on keeping on, @Milky_Kou - just make your targets more achievable and a lot smaller... we can do this together!

[Glenda]

@Milky_Kou @AmandaGeorge   Ladies I was so depressed for so long I just had to get out of that.  I finally learned.  I can choose what I think about.  You can refuse to think about whatever is making you feel sad or depressed.   Most thoughts of the past are negative, but you can sort through your life to make a mental list of happy moments to switch your thinking to, like a sport victory, graduation from something, taking a new baby home from the hospital, the actual moment of getting married etc.  Or what worked better for me was a list of 'blessings' in the order of importance,  that fit almost everyone. (1)  Health, I'm so grateful I'm not a patient and I have clean water to drink vaccines and antibiotics to help keep me that way.  (2) I pay taxes.  I'm grateful because that means I'm not homeless, I have electricity for heat and air conditioning, washer, car fuel, phone, clothes, shoes.  (3) I'm so glad I was born in the time of abundance of books for everyone and recorded music (4)  flush toilets are more and more appreciated as I get older especially when even today the majority of people on our planet have no toilet at all of any kind.

              Stress.  If you are holding a glass of water the weight doesn't matter at first.  But the longer you hold it the heavier it gets.  Hold it long enough and someone would ship you off to a hospital.  So put that burden down for a while if you can.

           Usually you can buy used exercise equipment cheap.  I bought a spin bike for $25.  But right now it may be more difficult as everyone is exercising at home.  Weather here is too miserable for dog walking or anything else except in the dark.  The only exercise I can stand is reading.....on a bike or treadmill.  Then it is easy to make into a habit, routine, or do in bits.    Best wishes to you both.  Lots of good suggestions  about starting small.

           You didn't say how tall you are but there are lots of calculators online that suggest a calorie amount to eat for whatever you weigh and your height but for short people I think they suggest too many calories.  I am 5'1.5 and they think I can lose weight on 1100 calories a day.  And I don't think anyone should even consider calorie deficits.  Study after scientific study say that exercise only makes you healthy, it doesn't help you lose weight.  I walk 7,500 steps every day or more.  I don't eat more because of that either.   Go to calculator.net or calorieking.com

[Heybales]

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@Milky_Kou wrote:

So, ill get to the chase, i am not the healthiest person in the world or the most active...Im trying to lose weight but no matter what I do, i seem to just keep packing in weight and getting weaker by the month.

Per my Fitbit HR that i got a few months ago my average daily output of calories is between 3.6-4.8 depending on if i go to work or not. I know i dont eat a whole lot since depression has made me lose my appitite. Recently about a month ago i started using those healthy meals thats sold at HEB that have an average of under 800 cal a meal. I will eat 1 of those a day and try to eat healthier, drinking sparkling water, (so as to get me off my diet soda and sugar free soda addiction) and lots of veggies. I try not to eat snacks cause i will just not stop eating if i start.

Recently i got me a VR headset and have played alot of beatsaber since i like it and it counts as my workout. (I can go almost 3 hours on that with what the fitbit says anerobic workout without noticing.) I do this about 3 times a week since i do it on my only days off. I work overnights so im not active during the day (i get home at 5am on average) but im a night owl by nature anyways. Uhm...Not sure whatever i can describe but it seems when i tried to get off my soda addiction and try to eat healthier (i dropped eating fast food and avoiding fried foods as much as possible) I seemed to have gained several kgs now. Im now at 137kg and...i want to drop that to at least 90 maybe not by the end of this year not sure if thats possible and healthy but...i want to make a change im just not sure what else i can do.

So tldr....I put out at least double if not more than i eat, but i am gaining fat instead of muscle, im burning alot of cals and trying to eat healthier but nothing seems to work.

I dont drink or smoke or do any drugs but i have alot of anxiety and depression.

Thanks for any advice...this was preety hard to type up.

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Good job on getting it into words which can be helpful, and getting it out there - obviously harder.

Are you under a nutritional/diet Dr's direct supervision for eating so little, getting frequent tests?

Or do the vege's get you back up to around 1200 calories?

1200 is considered minimum for average sedentary woman to get enough nutrition in.

You could be much shorter in which case not as much needed since not as much body to nourish - but could be bigger too.

And of course you aren't sedentary either it sounds like.

So just a huge concern that attempting or ending up eating 50% what the body burns is considered an extreme diet. The 80% of dieters that fail to reach goal weight or fail to maintain weight loss use extreme diets.

Don't do an extreme diet. The stress it causes the body really sounds like it wouldn't be useful to you anyway.

I can't figure out what value 3.6-4.8 calories daily means - can you elaborate please?

I'd suggest your body is already under some decent levels of stress, and life stress counts too.

Lack of sleep perhaps, odd schedule, whatever else going on.

Body can only handle so much stress, and now an extreme diet is being thrown at it.

It will increase cortisol, which causes water to be retained.

Upwards of 20 lbs has been reported can be slowly gained that way.

You could be losing fat weight (measuring several spots will show that up) while gaining water weight and scale will stay the same.

But this is a bad spot for the body to be in - it will adapt.

Your body can force itself to burn less than estimated, less than it was, less than it could.

A goal for successful weight loss by the 20% usually has some form of eating as much as possible that still allows for a reasonable rate of loss.

Not minimum amount - which can easily cause muscle loss which you'll wish later didn't happen, and just as some vitamin/mineral deficiencies can cause long-term issues, so can calorie deficiencies that are too extreme for your body.

So back to what may be reasonable for some may not be reasonable for you.

And attempted 50% deficit is about only reasonable for the morbidly obese that haven't been moving much to have much muscle to lose. And that's under Dr's supervision with many tests to confirm the body isn't being pushed too far into danger zone.

I'd suggest keep up with the increased activity - perhaps giving some comments how calories are estimated for the "workouts" that are enjoyable - because they could be inflated.

And keep up with healthy eating - fat is good and required for good brain functioning so don't skimp on healthy fats. But need to eat more.

You are at point it appears that 1000 cal deficit could still be reasonable at least. But staying around there.

Where are you logging what you eat?

Everything that you eat?

Why weight, grams, or by volume with mL and sections of serving sizes?

[Milky_Kou]

ah yeah i should clarify on that part.

the 3.6k-4.6k calories is what i burn daily. 3.6 is the average i burn but i easily hit over 4k a day just moving around and such. 

as for why im eating half or less, its more of mostly my depression making me lose my appitite and i really only try to eat when im super hungry that my stomach hurts. Not sure if i already mentioned my sleep apnia which medicine kinda doesnt help with right now. And this whole year for everyone has kinda been....well you know..

as for measuring what i eat im trying to remember to start scanning what i eat with the app but i kind of tend to forget to be honest. But ill be doing that today if i can remember to bring my phone to the kitchen. 

I just try no t to eat so much cause my stomach keeps telling my brain all day (this was also months before i really wanted to try and start losing weight) to feed it. cause i can eat all day without getting sick but i hate that...since i mostly sit at a computer all day but do alot of walking and going up down stairs quite a bit. Def a bit more active with the vr but it gets tiresome mostly in the arms (might be swinging too hard since it feels like something pops when i do.

As for a dr nutritional, at the moment I cant afford a dr to help since i dont have insurance and i cant pay $300 a visit just to get started....and literally the last 2 drs pointed me to a different dr to go to and then they point to another and this was when i first went in for my back so thats $1k down the drain for not getting the help and tests i need to see what kind of genetics also play in this.

sorry didnt mean to get negative. But im going to go and do some play now and see about making a healthy soup for dinner tonight.

[Milky_Kou]

Actually thats what I want to know, if i make something like soup, or healthy spagehtti and such, how do i measure that for intake? I normally have lots of veggies *even the noodles cut from veggies* and try to do small bowls no more than a fist full or 2 but i dont know how i can measure that exactly since its not really a clear cut science that and veggies dont have a bar thing i can scan for calorie and protien intake since every single one is a different size so thats a big variable that cant be tied down. 

[AmandaGeorge]

It sounds like you've got an active job there, @Milky_Kou!  I barely hit 1,500 calories burnt on 'marathon Monday' walks with our senior puppy!!

I was the same when I was in the depths of the black hole... maybe keep eating as often as your body is telling you, just significantly smaller portions?  For example, if you have toast and you usually use a dinner plate and double layer it with toast, try using a smaller plate and you'll be getting half the amount of food, half the calories, but it'll still look like a similar amount  😉  We've got two sizes of plates that don't look much different, but because one is almost square and slightly deeper, it doesn't hold as much as the circular plates and it's not as easy to balance things on the sides of it either lol

Maybe set a routine for yourself so that your body knows when it'll get fed and not before?  I have breakfast at 8am, walk the puppy, take my morning pills, mess around online, have my lunch, take my lunchtime pill, walk the puppy again if necessary, mess around online again, have my tea, take the puppy for her evening stroll, take my pills and head to bed.  I rarely feel hungry any more 'cos there's always something going on that takes my mind off food... could you maybe try something like that?  Have a routine that keeps you occupied so that the time slips away from you between meals without you realising what's happening?

I hope you enjoy your soup - I'm about to shut down for the night and head to bed.

[AmandaGeorge]

I dunno if your app works differently to mine, but I can choose "half a large potato" or "2 medium eggs" or "quarter of a kilogram" or whatever... that's how I measure mine  🙂

[AmandaGeorge]

Thank you, @Glenda, but my medical bods (3 GPs, 2 CPNs, a psychologist and a psychiatrist, as well as a Neurologist) don't agree with you when it comes to me.  I've been through counselling and therapy, medicines and support on the NHS over the last 20 years so if it was as easy as you say then I would have been better 25-30 years ago.

People use depression to describe something that makes them feel low for a short while then it disappears as suddenly as it arrived.  That's nothing like the depression that has plagued me since childhood for various reasons and it certainly doesn't address the psychosis part of my mental illness either.

As for buying exercise equipment - I've no doubt that you can get cheap, second-hand equipment, but walking is free, it gets you out into the fresh air, it releases natural endorphins and sets you up for the day.  I've got under $10 in my account right now and I doubt you can get a treadmill for that, but you can take a dog for a walk for free and still have that money in your account for groceries or meds or the mortgage or electricity.  Our house is only small too, so there isn't the room for any exercise equipment - even something small like a set of weights would have to live in our back yard 'cos there's no room for anything else in the house.

I appreciate your ideas, but unfortunately true depression can't just be snapped out of like you seem to be suggesting.  Sorry.

[Heybales]

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@Glenda wrote:

 And I don't think anyone should even consider calorie deficits.  

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How in the world would you suggest someone lose weight then if that is a need or desire?

You have to eat less than you burn in some manner - to burn fat stores and drop weight.

There is no way around that fact. That is called a calorie deficit.

Every weight loss method you may be thinking of causes that to occur - eating less than you burn on average over time.

Daily Intermittent Fasting, weekly 5:2 protocol, Keto, low-carb, high-carb, twinkie diet, vegetarian, plant-based diet, ect.

And every weight loss method can be a failure too if one doesn't account for calories and eats too much.

[Glenda]

@Heybales  People can lose weight  by eating less calories than the maintenance number for their sex, height, activity level,  It doesn't matter if they exercise or not.  If they exercise they should not subtract "calories used" and then eat more.  That is what I meant when I say don't consider calorie deficits.  Study after study shows, people go on some exercise program to lose weight and they DON'T  lose weight.  As you have pointed out to someone, If they eat 500 calories less they lose a pound a week or 1000 fewer calories than the maintenance  number would be 2 pounds off.  And if you exercise a little, don't be thinking you can then eat more.  You can't, if you want to lose weight.

[Heybales]

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@Glenda wrote:

@Heybales  People can lose weight  by eating less calories than the maintenance number for their sex, height, activity level,  It doesn't matter if they exercise or not.  If they exercise they should not subtract "calories used" and then eat more.  That is what I meant when I say don't consider calorie deficits.  Study after study shows, people go on some exercise program to lose weight and they DON'T  lose weight.  As you have pointed out to someone, If they eat 500 calories less they lose a pound a week or 1000 fewer calories than the maintenance  number would be 2 pounds off.  And if you exercise a little, don't be thinking you can then eat more.  You can't, if you want to lose weight.

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You almost nailed it - "by eating less calories than the maintenance number for their ... activity level" - yes, true.

"It doesn't matter if they exercise or not" - wrong, incorrect - that is part of their "activity level" you correctly point out.

You seem to think the exercise doesn't burn calories.

I know the studies you have seen - free form with no logging of food eaten and not controlling for calories - the majority when they exercise to lose weight just end up eating more.

But guess what kind of site Fitbit is. Fitbit syncs with MyFitnessPal which many use to log foods.

Fitbit is giving you a daily calorie burn that includes everything, increased daily activity and exercise - all burns calories.

You only need to eat less than that "maintenance number for their .... activity level".

Do you want to do your own research on every single study that shows how easy it is to lose weight when counting exercise when you also count food calories?

Or shall I supply you a list for some light reading.

Because this constant advice for people that are logging what they eat, and are logging what they burn, to just not count exercise - can have some pretty negative effects when the deficit starts becoming extreme - and that's how the vast majority of dieters fail to reach goal weight or keep it off - using extreme diets.

"If you exercise a little" would be fine probably, but usually a poster has not made enough comments to know if that is true or not.

But even those that exercise a little can most certainly lose weight and still eat more.

They merely have to still eat less than they burn - and they are on a site using a device that allows confirming both those things happen.

[gomeshelen]

Same here. I kept on a healthy diet plus started attending the gym. It worked for me