First off, let me say that you should always listen to your doctor and nutritionist...rather than crazy people on the internet, myself included.

But here's my rant today. And for what it's worth....this is just MY feelings on this nonsense. I'm no expert.

Ya'll need to eat. Not overeat. But also NOT UNDER-EAT. Eat healthy food you enjoy.

I know how it happens. Your weight loss gets sluggish and stuck and you think OMG, this isn't working, I'm Failing at this! You start to panic.

And what does a lifelong self-destructive dieter DO when they start to panic? They go exteme.

They go...ok, my doctor said it was ok to eat this much.....so I'm gonna try to eat HALF of that to speed up my weight loss!

I'm going to work harder than anyone! I'm going to eat less! I'm going to force this weight off of my body...because this is my last chance and I'm freaking out and I can't fail at this, so I NEED to do better and cut back!

Only, here's the thing. You don't need to cut back. You need to stay the course, nourish your healing body, have good energy to boost your metabolism and lose weight sensibly.

Why do people do VLCDs? (very low calorie diets....1000 or less calories a day)....they do them because they show results in a hurry.

And there is nothing people like better than a lower number on the scale...regardless of how they're achieving it. Or how harmfully they are achieving it.

When you eat less than 1000 calories a day, did you know you lose more muscle than fat...even if you are eating tons of protien grams?

When you lose muscle, you slow your metabolism, endanger your organs that have muscle (heart anyone?), and decrease your bone density. None of this is a good idea.

And when you're eating starvation level calories, your body tries like hell to keep you from dying....by, you guessed it, slowing your metabolism even further.

And the carb thing...can we talk about that a minute? You DO want to avoid carbs that are metabolized to sugar really fast, like sugary foods and refined white flour items because they can cause your pancrease to over-react and send too much insulin and you'll end up with rebound hunger....but other carbs, particularly ones that have good fiber content to slow the sugar can also have good protien content...and they don't do the rebound hunger thing. They give you great available energy.

Why do we lose so much weight so rapidly when we do keto? We don't really....but the first five pounds is so quick and shocking that it MUST work! (except you're not losing fat, you're losing the water that your liver stores extra glucose in.....and you've stripped your liver of its emergency reserve of energy. And yeah...you can make the sugar you need from other things through gluconeogenesis....but it takes amino acids that your body is typically harvesting from your muscles.) Don't do that thing where you lose the five pounds eating keto....then eat a few carbs and go OMG, look at the weight I've gained!....and go keto again and lose the same five pounds of water. It's an illusion. (Not saying keto people can't lose weight...they do lose weight fast...but they also have about five pounds in lost water from glucose storage, no emergency stores, and their bodies may be consuming their muscles)

Food for thought (literally!) Guess what organ runs exclusively on sugar? Pure glucose. Your brain. Your brain burns over 300 calories of glucose every day. At just 2% of our body weight....our brains burn about 20% of the calories we use each day! The CPU needs fuel.

Lots of people lose weight rapidly with Very Low Calorie Diets after bariatric surgery. They have these amazing results that other people notice and are in awe of. They lose to goal eating very little and feel very accomplished about their self discipline and their amazing fast results.

And then guess what happens?

At goal...they are still people who have never learned how to eat sustainably for life. All they know is starvation and self deprivation. And starvation doesn't work long term.

Please learn to eat sustainable amounts of calories. Do it early so you don't fudge your metabolism into starvation level calorie requirements.

One of the best ways to have a robust metabolism...is to do exercise every day. It doesn't have to be the gym or something you find tedious. Do things you enjoy....but keep moving.

It's hard to build your robust metabolism.....when you're too tired to do anything but go to work and go to bed...because you're starving yourself.

Please eat. Don't overeat. But eat. Learn to eat right, not starve. Starving is not the cure and in many cases sets the stage for significant regain.

Do it right, even it it's slower than other people. Do it sustainably. Learn to coexist with food, not avoid it. (easier said than done)

Don't get discouraged by small losses. Just keep losing to goal with small sensible tweeks. You don't have to suffer extremes to have success.

Learning to control your diet moderately...is the best skill to have when facing a lifetime of sustaining a significant weight loss.

This end my rant.

Totally ok if you think I'm nuts/wrong/whatever. Take what you like and leave the rest.

Peace and best wishes to everyone on this crazy road.

On 4/10/2021 at 7:29 PM, Jaelzion said:

Yeah there and I'd also take some of my boobs back. I mean, I wanted to smaller, but sheesh! LOL ?

It's so weird because I still think of myself as a big-chested lady and I'm not really anymore.

I also never thought I'd be a person who has a thigh gap. I just realized yesterday that I am.

2 hours ago, BigSue said:

It's so weird because I still think of myself as a big-chested lady and I'm not really anymore.

I also never thought I'd be a person who has a thigh gap. I just realized yesterday that I am.

OMG, me too! I'm an apple shape, so my thighs were always pretty small, even when I was a big girl. And now they are really small and I have a thigh gap. Who'd a thunk it?