goldfinch

I am struggling with where I am at with my fitness and my weight. In about 14 months I went from obese to almost thin. I went from entirely sedentary to active. But for the last few days I have felt overtired, overexercised, and underfed.

I intended on stopping my weight loss at 110 pounds (reached at some point in early December) and really concentrate on strength and fitness. But, I've had trouble trying to figure out how much to eat and what to eat. As a result I've continued to lose weight and today I am 104.5 pounds. I am not underweight and if I were at my "college" weight I would be 95 pounds. I am 4'11" tall. But I think the price of continuing to lose weight is that I actually feel a bit less fit than I did last fall. I spend my evenings being exhausted and waiting to go to bed and to sleep. And my sleep is not the best.

I have been riding my bike about a 100 miles a week since the first of the year, until the past week when we have had a lot of rain. However, a lot of the riding has been with some guys from a neighboring rv park and they ride 25 to 30 miles, but slow. Maybe three quarters of my riding is with them. I've started running, though not much. Today I tried to run but my knees were not happy so I walked briskly instead. I also am working with weights a couple of days a week. My improvement with strength feels slow but I have no real way to know what a formerly obese and sedentary woman who never touched a weight in her life should expect for improvement. For example, this past fall I could not do one single girlie pushup and so I started with wall pushups. The best I can do now is 14 modified pushups, which was this week. It was extremely tough to do the last four. Any more have to be done on a wall or against a table. I do core exercises a couple days a week. I also try to do at least a short set of intervals on my bike once a week, though I hate it and am thinking of dropping them as just not worth it.

I'm thinking I'm doing too much. I am just feeling too jagged. But I don't know if I am a good judge of how much I should do. I think that I am not eating enough, but psychologically it is hard for me to increase the calories more than I already have, maybe because based on my resting metabolic rate and activity levels I can't believe that I am burning enough calories to justify the increase. But I must be.

I guess I am not sure what I am asking, other than asking for your experiences with trying to figure out how much to exercise, how hard to exercise and how much to eat. Especially if you are a bit older. I am 57. Do you go through times where you feel like a wimp and have to back off? I know early last summer I had similar experiences with feeling not so great when I pushed a bit too hard on riding my bike. But a lot of that was because my bike fit was still not quite right and I had issues due to lack of core strength. So, the problems I had were a bit different than how I am feeling now. I know people here have talked about dealing with weight loss plateaus by upping the eating. Maybe the same sort of principle applies and I need to drop the exercise intensity a bit and increase the eating a bit. Or one. Or the other. Thoughts?

cmcgarvey

Right off the bat, from what you say your physical activities are for a regular week, if you are eating anything less then 1500-2000 calories a day you are going to lose weight. Your calorie intake might have a lot to do with your muscle gain, or lack there of from what you are saying. In six months if you only gained the ability to do 14 modified pushups you either are not eating the proper nutrition to gain muscle or you are not really working to gain muscle. I would suggest against dropping your workouts AND increasing your calorie intake. One or the other, personally I would go with the calorie intake increase. It is a lot easier to just eat a bit more then it is to just stop working out. You were go stir crazy. Now, some simple tips to increase calories. A glass of milk with snacks/meals. A 8 ounce glass of skim milk is 80 calories. Snack on nuts, one ounce of nuts ranges from 110-200 calories. Its a good healthy snack with loads of nutrients and good fats. If you already drink a good amount of milk, add protein powder to your milk. Get a good whey protein because it will balance casein protein in milk. If you really want to figure out the root of your problem you need to get serious about logging your food and your work out. Try and figure out as best you can your calorie intake and your calorie burn. Because right now you could be eating a good amount of calories a day but if you are not getting enough carbs/protein your body will be breaking down muscle for fuel. Especially with what your weight is at right now.

goldfinch

I am eating about 1475 calories a day, I log every day, have for more than a year, and often even weigh my food. I think that I am pretty accurate on "calories in." It is harder to figure out how many calories I burn as I don't trust calculators and they do seem all over the board. I do drink a fair amount of milk, sometimes skim, sometimes whole, depending on my mood, and I use whey powder. I snack on nuts already. I eat a lot of fruit. I eat a lot of seafood, mostly salmon and shrimp, and chicken with skin removed. If there is any "bad" food I tend to eat it is cheese. I think that my food quality is generally pretty good, though I don't eat enough vegetables. Maybe it is simply that the calories are not high enough for what I am doing.

Thanks for your thoughts. Your guess on my burn rate may be close, considering that I am still losing weight. I might consider going up to 1600-1650 calories and see how I feel. But it seems like so many calories! I think that I will drop the hated intervals for now and change the running out to brisk walking, mostly for my knees.

I looked back to see when I started the strength training, it was in early November, so it has been 3.5 months to go from zero to 14 modified pushups.

jethro56 

I hit 214 in May of 2011. I came up to 218 for the summer and quit weighing myself. By Oct. and 3000 more miles I was flat-lined and down 30% in strength over a year ago even while lifting 3 times a week. I was sore all the time and depressed. Farming took away my riding time so I had a month of rest. When Nov came and farming was completed I decided to concentrate on resistance training. The first thing I did was work on my core harder than I ever had before. I slowly started adding strength but It wasn't until I switched to some new rubber band based machines at the Y that I was able to put some power into the workouts. No more aching joints. I've went from struggling to do 10 reps on an 8 setting to over 20 reps maxed out at 12. My quads went from the same 8 setting and 10 reps with both legs to a 10 setting and 15 reps with one leg.

As far as eating I put a "dead line" of Dec 1 to go back to the 1800 C diet I was using until last spring. I'd go 2-3 days and just lose it and eat 3500 C in a binge. This cycle kept going until the first week in Jan. when I finally figured out I couldn't do all the heavy lifting and eat 1800 C/day. So now I'm sucessfully doing 2500 C/day. My strength is holding on and my cardio workouts are intense 3 days a week. I can wear the pants I wore this summer but they're a little tighter than I like. The weight I picked up last fall has been coming off , maybe a pound a week but I'm not weighing myself so I don't know for sure.

I think the difference now is that I finally have the discipline, confidence and patience to see though the setbacks and know that changing strategies isn't failure. I think I know where you're at right now. We'll only get near where we want to be because wherever we are, we'll want a little bit more. For me, I needed a little time off after 26 months of effort.

In a few days I'm heading down to Florida and will lift only if the weather doesn't allow me to ride. I'll probably lose some strength but I think it'll quickly return once I get back.

cmcgarvey

If it was November you started working on pushups then yeah thats not bad. How often do you weigh yourself? From what you originally said you have lost 5.5 pounds in about two months. So you are losing 2.5 pounds a month. So you are getting 7250 less then you should to maintain a month. You should increase your calorie intake by 240 a day to balance out. This ofcourse is all theoretical math.

pat5319

You are trying too hard, (it sounds like), you are overtraining and not eating enough, quit weighing your food just quit eating b4 you are full, you need a lot more than 1450 cals to keep riding 100 miles a week

nkfrench

Do you exercise every day or do you give yourself some rest days? Are you getting plenty of sleep?

I believe in seasonal planning -- focusing my year on one or two peak events. First part of the year is fundamental skills and basic endurance; then more anaerobic work and strength; then more speed work and racing skills; the big event; then taking time off/easy cross training. And each month will have one week that is low-key; each week will have days off as needed.

You may well find that your "ideal" weight is not really ideal for you. When I was 5'7" and 140#, I was pretty much in your position of feeling tired all the time. At 145# my performance was much better and I felt better. The tricky part was that I felt better because I was in a slight calorie surplus mode .: gaining weight; and pretty soon that 145 turned into 150, 160, ... by which time performance was poor, I was beating myself up over the weight regain, lots of social issues too.

Keep us posted, wishing you well.

1nterceptor

How much sleep do you get on average?
You may want to increase it by an hour or two.
Do you take off(from exercising) at least one day a week?

chefisaac

Gold: Weight watchers is not just for people who need to lose weight. It is also for people who need to maintain and find the right balance. It is an option you might consider. Plus you could inspire others.

I do not think you are eating enough for all the activity you are doing plain and simple. The more active you are the more you need to keep the body fueled. Look at it like a car. Want to make it go further? You have to fuel it with the right fuel. Dont feed it $hit but protein, carbs and veggies and fruits. Just gotta go with more of it. (thats why I like Weight Watchers... I dont feel deprived at all).

goldfinch

I guess this is the bottom line. I always feel behind. Never good enough. I have friends up north my age that ride together and I so want to be able to ride with them but I am far away from their pace. It did help to find guys here who ride slow. Riding with company is such a pleasure.

This post was a bit of a relief. I was really feeling that "not good enough" feeling. The calorie estimate may be close, but I am going to start at about 150 to 200 more and see how that goes.

I agree with you and others, I'm not eating enough. But, I can't figure out when to quit eating unless I count calories, which sometimes means weighing the food. I'm never full.



My sleep is an issue and it varies anywhere from 6.5 to 9 hours a night. I have an old dog that has to get up at 5:00am so I am up with the dog but sometimes I go back to sleep. Sleep comes tough for me so I don't always go to sleep early enough to accommodate the dog's needs. I have a serious case of restless legs, as in I can only go to sleep utterly exhausted after hours of difficulty. So, I take drugs for it and I have to vary the drugs because of a number of issues. When I am off the Parkinson's type drug I have to take a sleeping pill. Right now I am on a sleeping pill round.

I do take rest days, usually weather based, but I have to check on the frequency as I started doing the weight work on nonbiking days. It is probably once a week though.

I am fairly well convinced based on the research that I will be fighting my biology to stay thin. I have concerns that I will be in this exact position. Up a bit, down a bit, up a bit. I hope it is only a bit.

I'll look into this. The reason I did not join Weight Watchers was that I traveled too much. I thought that I would not get enough out of the online version.

Thanks everyone. I am feeling more "safe" about increasing my calories. I also slept like a rock last night, so I feel better this morning anyway.

iforgotmename

Definitely sounds like you are overtraining. The body needs to rest so it can grow, it is good to take a break every so often. I have lifted weights for years and have learned my body's cycle.

Here is a short explanation of Hans Syle's General Adaptive Syndrome https://www.currentnursing.com/nursin...ss_theory.html

jethro56 

https://www.rice.edu/~jenky/sports/overtraining.html is of interest.

I had the parasympathetic type of over training but didn't know it existed. My resting HR kept going down (got to 41) so I thought It's not over training. The resting HR goes up in over training...Right? Not always. I was also listening to the Y's now demoted Trainer that told me "You should do cardio work every day." You may be able to do mild cardio every day but not medium to high level stuff. My resting HR now is 48-50

cmcgarvey

This right here is your body saying, FEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDD MMMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEE. Seriously, dont change what you are eating, but go a week of eating till you feel satisfied. The problem you are starting with yourself is that you have learned how to lose weight, but you are making no strides to teach yourself to maintain and keep it off. Your work outs would be perfectly fine if you were eating the right amount of food. But for a week, or even a few days, eat each meal and snack until you feel satisfied and then stop.

If you have a problem stopping then take a mental note(this can be the hard part) of how much you ate and next time give yourself a portion similar to what you ate to feel full. What I am explaining is from pure personal experience. I was 308, got to 230 and am back up to 255 because I never taught myself control. As soon as I stopped paying attention to every tiny detail I started gaining weight again. I also stopped working out because I started working a lot more, bad excuse I know. But now, I can happily say I can stop eating mid meal when I feel full.

goldfinch

People may differ in how they control what they eat. When I was fat I couldn't eat until satisfied and now I can't either because I just don't get good timely full signals and I am rarely if ever satisfied. I can eat so much that when I get up and walk around it is almost painful but still feel like I want more. For example, a few months ago I went out to eat with my best friend who never has been overweight. At the time we went out to eat we were the same weight. We ate the same meal. She talked about how bloated and full she felt after she ate it. I told her that I could have eaten the same meal twice and I did not feel the least bit full. I really put some thought into how I felt and that was how I felt.

I think that I mentioned once about how years ago I ended up ill with my hormones out of whack, which made me vomit many, many times a day. This meant that I starved as I could not eat at all so I ended up having to be fed intravenously. After the problem was resolved I was hungry like you cannot imagine being hungry. There was never a time when I was not hungry. Over the years that drive to eat has leveled off, but I still have issues with appetite and losing weight has increased that somewhat. I can't be sure that my starvation experience did screw up my appetite, I could be all wet on the issue and I just got into bad habits due to overeating after starving. And of course, there is my genetics, with ever single woman I ever knew on my mother's side of the family being fat. Either way, I figure that I may have to pay attention to every detail of what I eat for the indefinite future. I am OK with that. Looking at the weight loss registry data, it looks like most of the successful maintainers do pay close attention to how much they eat. I may look at this issue more as time goes by but right now is not the time for me to trust my impression of feeling full or feeling satisfied. I have read some about "mindfulness" eating, kind of like a meditation on your food. I've thought about experimenting with that to see if it helps.

But, whatever. It is a journey and I have to know what I can do at this point in time. I am increasing my calories starting today. It is also raining today so I am using it as a rest day.

goldfinch

Oh man, Hans Selye, I haven't read him for years!

Interesting stuff. My resting heart rate when I last checked also about 48-50. I haven' measured it for a while to see if it has continued down. It used to be about 78. I've never been able to do medium to high level stuff everyday so I never really got into that kind of overtraining. I am still too out of shape for that. But that doesn't mean that I don't need rest!

tony_merlino

Someone else described the phenomenon on this thread, but I can confirm it based on my own experience (several times). There's often been an overshoot period after reaching my desired weight (that is, the times when I didn't crash and burn part-way through the process.) The overshoot period is characterized by just the phenomenon Goldfinch described, where I'd continue to lose weight without even trying, feel a lack of energy and strength, yada-yada.

In the past, that usually triggered an amazing trick of self-delusion, where I'd convince myself that that being too thin was my new problem, and that I needed to gain a little weight - that my last diet/exercise push had transformed me into a "normal" person, who could eat whatever he wanted, as much as he wanted. That the tendency toward obesity had finally been cured, for good.

So I'd start eating again. The first few pounds would come back, and I'd feel fantastic. There's no state that feels better than when you're not carrying a lot of extra pounds, so you feel light and energetic, and you're also eating a surplus of food, so you're totally satisfied. Happy, happy body.

It never lasts very long. I don't know about anyone else, but I can easily pack on 50 lbs or more a year when I eat what I want, as much as I want. I gained 20 lbs from mid August to the end of December, after struggling to lose it for four months before that. That's pretty obscene, when you think about it.

I started working at diet and fitness again as a New Years resolution, and so far, I've lost 17 of those 20 lbs again. I have another 50 lbs to go to get to my desired weight, which will put me a few pounds below the overweight category of the BMI scale. I'm really concerned about how to go about holding the territory without falling into the pitfalls that have always defeated me in the past. The "I went too far, I need to gain weight back" pitfall is one I'm especially wary of.

Goldfinch, if you're really concerned that you're losing without wanting to lose, try adding food in small increments (like 50 or 100 calories per day), and staying at each new level long enough to really observe the effects - that probably means a month or so. I'd start by changing nothing about what or how much you're eating now, but adding one 100 Calorie snack - like a banana, or 12 almonds. Keep at that level for a month and keep monitoring the scale. If you're still losing, repeat. If you start gaining, reduce by 50 calories. Just keep monitoring and adjusting.

This won't be exact because of variations in your exercise and who knows what else, so there won't be a perfect stable point - you'll always be adjusting. Those of us who have been obese don't have a stable point.

goldfinch

Sounds like the best plan. I decided to start at 125 more a day (more than what you suggested, but not a lot more) which brings me to 1600 and see how that goes. I don't want to gain weight either and live with the "bit up, bit down" routine I mentioned above. Though I know it is not possible to be entirely stable. And I don't want the risk of eating too much, feeling great, and then continuing to eat too much. Your post is a valuable reminder that this could happen.

I could lose a bit more but I really don't need to lose more. My doctor wanted me to stop losing 10 pounds ago. I do want to get stronger and faster on the bike and right now losing weight and gaining strength and speed seem to be at odds. And I don't want yet another wardrobe change.

EDIT: after a two day binge (damn it anyway) I decided to only increase my intact by 50 calories and then slowly work up from there.

Pistard

Do yourself a favor, see a specialist in nutrition / sport. advice here will only cause more confusion.

goldfinch

If I could I would see the ultimate trainer plus science nerd, Lyle McDonald. (Even though I don't always agree with him)

I am not getting confused, I am just honing in on what seems reasonable to try. Given where I am staying right now I doubt that I'd easily find the right expert. In any event, my weakness isn't in nutrition knowledge but in knowledge about exercise.

BTW, since I mentioned McDonald, he has a good series of articles called Training the Obese Beginner that I am finding helpful even though I am not obese anymore. https://www.bodyrecomposition.com/cat...ology-fat-loss After not thinking about his stuff for a while I poked around this morning and there are a lot of good articles on his site. I do appreciate his knowledge of the science, his use of references, and his willingness to say he is speculating when he is speculating.

tergal

While i am not remotely capable of giving diet advice i can point out here. If you get knee pains or shin bone pains (trust me they hurt more) you might need to look in to getting a different set of shoes. I have a different pair i use for walking just to reduce impact. You can also try jogging on grass if you find you still have problems just don't trip over.

Also 4foot 11" so many short jokes come to the mind of a 6 foot 7" person

goldfinch

Here is a great description of how the weight can come back on so easily and why I am so insistent of keeping absolute track of what I eat and watch the trends in my weight and calorie intake:

If the balance slips by as little as 150 calories a day—a glass of whole milk, an ounce of Fritos, a cup of plain yogurt, a bagel: Doris may start slipping from her stable weight. And the change will be so subtle, initially, that she won't even notice. The weight gain will be less than a third of a pound a week. This would show up quickly as a rising trend line, but it disappears in the several pound day to day variations in weight. Even after a month, Doris has only gained a pound and a quarter and doesn't notice it, either on the scale, in how her clothes fit, or how she looks and feels.

And since the change is so gradual, she continues not to notice as her weight creeps upward for a couple more months: tasting the gravy while making Thanksgiving dinner, polishing off the Chinese food in the restaurant to avoid asking for a doggie bag, “you can't go the ball game and not have a hot dog,” and so on. Finally, Doris does notice. By that time, she's tacked on five or ten pounds, and now she really feels awful: not just fat, but persecuted and powerless. “I didn't change anything,” she laments. “I haven't gone back to my old chocolate sundae pig-outs or pizza binges, and here I go gaining weight again!”

And all from one extra helping of mashed potatoes a day. Doris was overweight most of her life because she wasn't born with a built-in eat watch. She lost weight when she remedied that shortcoming by planning her meals around the number of calories she burned, guided by the trend of her weight. After becoming slender for the first time since grade school, she made the mistake of removing the eat watch. She fell back on her body's feedback mechanism to tell her how much to eat, and it continued to deceive her. To maintain her weight, Doris needs the continuing guidance of the eat watch. There's no need for meal planning to be obtrusive or interfere with Doris' enjoyment of meals. Indeed, in time, guided by the trend line and her experience with different meals, she'll probably be able to adjust up and down without ever adding up another calorie. But that skill takes time to acquire, and it works only in conjunction with the safety net of the trend chart to warn you of problems before they get too big and depressing to remedy.

https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/planningmeals.html

For the geeks among us, if you want to keep a moving average of your weight to watch the trends: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/...ml#PencilTrend

tony_merlino

You wanna hear crazy? I've developed a model in excel to not only track moving averages, but to do more sophisticated filtering, estimation and projection on the weight data. I update it every morning. Talk about obsession!

But I completely agree with the article you quoted. The rule of thumb, (obviously different for different people), is that 3500 Calories = 1 lb. A 100 or so Calorie excess will cause a weight gain of a little more than a pound per month - which is really hard to track. But it comes out to 12-15 lbs per year. 100 Calories is a small box of raisins, a small banana, a slice of bread. On the other hand, it's about 15 minutes of cycling...

cmcgarvey

See, thats the thing about eating 100 calories over. Its so easy to burn that. Also, I find with me at least, when I am eating very healthy. I struggle to breaking 1500 calories without feeling like I am forcing myself to eat even when I am not hungry. Now, go back to when I was 300, 1500 was a meal

youcoming

Take a week off and see how you feel.

jethro56 

It drives me crazy but I have to do it every once in awhile.