Women who eat a ton without gaining.... page 10

[fatisyummy]

I think you are really doing a courageous thing. It makes so much sense. Please keep it up and let us know how it goes for you.

It seems that we regularly have two giant things working against us:

#1: Fear! Eating to satiety on nourishing wholesome foods and seeing weight increase is scary. Whenever I do this, it makes me want to restrict, defeating the purpose. Good for you for having the courage to resist this.

#2: Unrealistic ideas of what a woman should look like. I stopped menstruating at 17%BF. That's not freaky low. But obviously it was too low for me. I still wasn't happy with how I looked and wanted to be leaner. Eff that.

Thank you for sharing your experiences with us. Really, thank you!

[PaleoMom]

Leida,

Which nutrients do you think are lacking in primal/paleo that other foods might provide?

Kefir is certainly a special food that I think is beneficial to many, especially when homemade from raw milk. Raw dairy in general is my big exception to paleo foods. I have limited it in the *past* for myself due to calories but I think it provides a ton of nutrition and I make viili and kefir for my kids. I feel very lucky to have a 3 Jersey cow farm nearby that provides grass-fed raw milk.

Black Currents- those are primal. If you can't find them in stores up there how about growing them? I'm in far north Idaho, if they grow here you might have a chance as well.

I think that when moving away from a food source it might take awhile but the body will soon learn which new foods will provide the missing nutrients or compensate with more cravings for foods that may have been lower in that nutrient but still providing some.

[calee]

*biggest hugs*

You are SO not alone with this. I've been so obsessed with food my whole life, I have no idea what it's like to NOT be planning my entire schedule around eating, not eating, will this involve food, won't it, etc etc.

I am baffled and envious of people who are not constantly obsessing over food and eating. I cannot even imagine what it must be like, or what I might think about instead.

All of this, me too! I am 62 and I've been obsessed since I got chubby when I was 7. I would have so much more mind space to enjoy life without this obsession.

[sbhikes]

So today I was just going along my day and I thought about this thread and how I identified as someone who eats a ton. But then I realized that breakfast and lunch combined were a large skinless chicken breast and a sweet potato. That's not really a ton. I was on my way out to have some vegan dessert from the food co-op. Okay, now I eat a ton, right? Dinner was a chicken livers (3 livers) and one big giant goose egg (man those are great). A couple squares of chocolate and some wine. Is that a ton? Maybe not.

[PaleoMom]

So today I was just going along my day and I thought about this thread and how I identified as someone who eats a ton. But then I realized that breakfast and lunch combined were a large skinless chicken breast and a sweet potato. That's not really a ton. I was on my way out to have some vegan dessert from the food co-op. Okay, now I eat a ton, right? Dinner was a chicken livers (3 livers) and one big giant goose egg (man those are great). A couple squares of chocolate and some wine. Is that a ton? Maybe not.

Yeah, that's not even close to a ton

[PaleoMom]

All of this, me too! I am 62 and I've been obsessed since I got chubby when I was 7. I would have so much more mind space to enjoy life without this obsession.

Thank you both. It is always nice to not feel like the only one going through something. Hope we can all find our peace.

[gopintos]

So today I was just going along my day and I thought about this thread and how I identified as someone who eats a ton. But then I realized that breakfast and lunch combined were a large skinless chicken breast and a sweet potato. That's not really a ton. I was on my way out to have some vegan dessert from the food co-op. Okay, now I eat a ton, right? Dinner was a chicken livers (3 livers) and one big giant goose egg (man those are great). A couple squares of chocolate and some wine. Is that a ton? Maybe not.

I feel like I will be eating a ton... the not gaining a ton is yet to be determined.

I started increasing my calories, because I just thought I was too low. Weight loss has completely stopped. Then I read about eating your BMR and I have been hundreds and sometimes a 1000 calories under BMR for about a year. So now suddenly I feel like I am starving... like I haven't eaten for a year!

Today was a calorie up day, I started zig zagging also. I just could not get full. I also did not eat nearly as many veggies as normal, and no BAS, so I will chalk it up to my choices.

I started to journal about it also, cuz I am so frustrated and confused. Mostly pissed. No real progress in about 5 months. And only about 20lbs lost since going Primal about a year ago.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread78870.html

[Omni]

Thank you all for the support. This thread has been very nourishing for me.

The point of this is definitely to saturate myself with nutrients. One thing that moved me towards thinking this way was to look at the nutrient levels on chronometer when logging in my foods. It is just impossible to maintain a caloric deficit and meet all the RDA's. Even more frustrating is knowing those are low and I should be getting even more than that. The idea here is to eat more nutrients than I need to maintain so there is extra for repair of damage from chronically being low. When that healing is complete, my metabolism should go up, body temperature will come up. My body will have healed what it needed to, enough time will have passed to send the message that the surplus of nutrition is going to continue and then the fat is free to come off, as it will be seen as unneeded.

I believe the reason I have gained in the past while still eating low is that after going super low calories it lowers the metabolism and anything extra is quickly used to store fat for the constant famine that comes and goes. Leida commented about trying 1800-2000 calories and gaining. My thought at this time is that that was still not enough. The body needs extra and it needs it consistently to start sending a different message. I also think the fat gain won't stop until the body has healed and been sent a new message - this is not a temporary surplus, rather, this is the new norm. Then the fat should come back off.

Obviously this is still theory/hope. I'll keep posting progress as time goes on. This morning I had a temperature increase for the first time. 97.6 went up to 97.8. I decided not to weigh myself this morning but did notice a 1 cm. increase in the waist.

Great to see this thread getting a bit of mileage,
The micronutrient issue has always been a concern in my eyes when I see individuals pushing down calories for weight loss goals.
I also think the menstral cycle (for those still in it) is a great indicator of overall health, there is a key nutrient demand during the folicular stage when the uterus is preparing the lining, particularly right at the end of this stage as the lining is bulked out, this is the time when many women get the exaggerated mood behaviour's and I think this is most likely due to key nutrient deficiencies, primarily iron rich protein in my view (bit of a theory I have) and then at the end of the cycle when calcium and magnesium deficiencies appear evident in cramping and craving events. Excessive PMS symptoms, I think are an indicator of micronutrient deficiencies, the sypmtoms should only be uncomfortable enough to make you aware, but not debilitating, it does not make evolutionary sense in the design process.

Wit regard to monitoring my partner has been recording body temp and heart rate morning and night as part of her healing process (autoimmune hyperthyroid) and it has been interesting to see the fluctuations in her cycle and temp variations as she has progressed on her journey and her PMS has also improved markedly. When I first looked at this stuff, most of my searches landed on fertility sites, then the obvious hit me, healthy body, healthy cycle and boom there's a "bun in the oven", so these sites have already determined before anything else for pregnancy to occur there must be a healthy menstral cycle which by default is an indicator of a healthy body most of the time.
Recording and charting temps & resting heart rate along with symptoms diary, will provide useful data to reflect back on when tracking progress and in addition there is another major benefit in that you stop everything and actually focus on and devote time to yourself, this will assist in the process of learning to listen to your body and feel the subtle shifts. It does take a while, but the daily routine, over time, will bring you in tune with your body.

Our process was to deal with an autoimmune condition and we pulled out all stops to give it our best shot, but the more I read into some individual experiences with weightloss problems, both physiological and psychological, I would rate them as serious as an autoimmune or other chronic condition and hence warrant the same degree of attention.

Anyway, think I'm starting to ramble on a bit.
Great to see this topic shaken up a bit.

[RichMahogany]

So today I was just going along my day and I thought about this thread and how I identified as someone who eats a ton. But then I realized that breakfast and lunch combined were a large skinless chicken breast and a sweet potato. That's not really a ton. I was on my way out to have some vegan dessert from the food co-op. Okay, now I eat a ton, right? Dinner was a chicken livers (3 livers) and one big giant goose egg (man those are great). A couple squares of chocolate and some wine. Is that a ton? Maybe not.

That would barely qualify to be called "a ton" if you doubled it and added a gallon of milk.

[sbhikes]

I have to stress that the chicken was some sort of mutant. The breast was about a pound, so half a pound at each meal. And the potato was quite large, too. The desserts I ate were: chia seed lemon pudding (main ingredients are chia seeds, cashews and coconut milk) and a vegan brownie (main ingredients walnuts, pecans and dates). I'm sure those two items were quite a few calories.

It all just seems like so much more than I ate before, probably because there are large amounts of meat at every meal. I'm really trying to eat the recommended piece of meat the size of your palm at every meal thing.

I guess making a large piece of meat the center of every meal makes it feel like a lot of food since it's not just "tiding me over" until dinner, which is how I guess I've mostly normally operated in the past. Perhaps calories aren't so much what is needed to be eaten in "tons", but meat.

Here's a picture of dinner the other night. I went back for another whole quail.