[43M] Starting: 340lb Current: 250lb Goal: 200lb
Things were going so well, but I plateaued about two years ago. The thing is, I eat very little and I exercise very much. For years I was already at the limit of what was sensible. So maybe I messed up my metabolism, maybe I'm just getting older. But after another scare it was clear that I needed to get healthy or risk dying, so I just started steadily upping my exercise and decreasing my calorie intake, intending to keep going until I saw results. It was: "find whatever works, whatever it takes, because I will literally, actually die if I don't."
The results have been just plain dumb. I think maybe I'm just going to have to accept that weight loss isn't in the cards. But the thing is, I feel SO MUCH BETTER anyway. And that's the point to what I'm saying here.
It doesn't seem possible for these details to be true. I wouldn't have believed them. That's why I'm posting this. This is a real thing that's happening to someone. It's worth sharing just because it's so unexpected.
I really tried. I eat little enough that I shouldn't say how much. And I burn A LOT -- 4000 to 6500 calories per day according to my fitbit. I've been doing this for two months. I run for 6 to 9 miles a day 4 or 5 times a week, plus 3 to 5 miles a day on all the other day as my "recovery" days. I do basic isometric exercise -- sit-ups, push-ups, plus curls etc. with dumbbells every day. And yet I still manage to remain largely flat or sometimes even gain weight.
I have NO F--ING IDEA where this energy is coming from. Like, it feels like I must be metabolizing tap water or something just plain absurd. You can argue that the calorie numbers on food is wrong, or that calorie burn numbers are poorly estimated. But we're out by more than an order of magnitude. The numbers might be wrong, but being wrong by a factor of 10x or 20x is a lot. You can only retain so much water. But it's not really worth trying to figure out, I don't think. There are serious health problems that can cause you to burn more calories than you expect, but literally nothing will cause you to have more energy than you take in. So I'm not going to stress it.
And maybe eventually something will snap someday and I'll start losing weight again. It's been weeks without progress, and I don't think it's reasonable or even possible to push the diet/exercise pattern any further, even if I wanted to.
But here's the thing: I feel great.
I have a lot more energy when fasting or keeping the calorie intake similarly low in a given day. Eating less makes the impact of any single food item really obvious. And for me, this eliminates stuff like headaches, upset stomach, and mid-day exhaustion. It's so nice not to have to deal with feeling bad.
And I feel better when I exercise a lot. That's the real reason why I keep running 50mi a week. To hell with weight loss, I just feel better the more I run. And if I drop below running 3mi a day average for a week or so, it becomes impossibly difficult and utterly exhausting to run more than 2 miles at a time. Use it or lose it. So I have to keep it up really regularly just to have the option. It feels better to run, so I keep it up.
It took me several goes to finally get it through my thick head that when I feel exhausted and drained, food makes it worse, and exercise makes it better. Not the other way around.
Presumably eventually I'm going to have to start taking in as many calories as I burn, but as long as my BMI remains above 30, I feel like today is not that day.
To be clear, in terms of safety:
I get monthly medical checkups for other reasons. And I take required inputs very seriously. Water, salts, minerals, specific fatty acids and amino acids, vitamins, and other compounds that you might be using up faster than you take in. If you're limiting food intake while keeping your activity high, you gotta be spot-on in terms of addressing your body's requirements or the consequences can be dangerously confusing. It's not just vitamins and minerals. Fasting requires care.
I also strategically use these components (specific salts, oils, amino acids, etc.) to avoid being hungry. Once you understand the neuroscience of how these feedback systems work, it becomes pretty simple to directly give your body what it's asking for instead of slapdash throwing food at your stomach hoping to score a hit.
So am I getting healthy anyway? Maybe.
I recently told a friend about my frustration, saying I was trying to get in shape but my body just wasn't cooperating. She said if I'm running 4 to 10 miles every single day and feeling really good doing it, then I'm already in shape. Maybe she's right. Maybe I've had the wrong goal.
