A thought about Fat Loss page 3

[magnolia1973]

If I were you I would try tracking my calories for a few weeks, just to see where I am. You seem happy and healthy - not sure you really need to do anything.

I have been staying around 1600-1700. Dropping below that to 1400 or so doesn't change weight loss (at least in the short term of a few weeks).

And yeah, I am a foodie. Love cooking.

[Cryptocode]

I have been staying around 1600-1700. Dropping below that to 1400 or so doesn't change weight loss (at least in the short term of a few weeks).

And yeah, I am a foodie. Love cooking.

Hi Maggie, I think you eat very well. But at 5'6" maybe 16-1700 cal. is too much, it would be for me and I'm 5'8". I'd really gain weight on that. Try 1200 cal. if you can stand it for a week and see what happens. Maybe you'll be so hungry it won't last that long. But try it.

I lost 70 lbs in the past. It took me 2.5 years. The reason it took so long was that it took me a year to get past the "hungry all the time" feeling. I guess my stomach finally shrank, or I just adjusted. I still eat around 1500 and my weight maintains. Part of that is that my food is now nutritionally dense, so it doesn't take as many calories to fill me up.

[whitewolf]

I just want to scream when someone says that eating 1600kcal's is way toooo much and suggests reducing it down to 1200. If I'm eating 1600, then I consider myself on a very restrict diet I am also 5'8'' and weigh around 147lbs, but liked to be 142lb or smth. If I could stick to a 1600kcal diet without cheating I think I could doo it. Actually I have been that restrict about 4 weeks and lost maybe 1-2lbs the first week but nothing since and getting really frustrated about it. Because I used to eat way more (not on a normal day maybe, but on weekends snacked like a crazy mouse on cheese and nuts and I see at the store that I am buying a lot less sour cream and no cheats at all, except red wine, I'll hold on to that lol)

Anyway I have been on a 1200kcal/day diet few years back, would not like to do something like that again soon. (maybe stay that low for one or two days a week just to IF or do calorie cycling, but not permanently). Of course I avoided fat at all costs and that may make a difference but still. I did lost weight but I think it messed me up pretty bad in my head. Constantly thinking about food, constantly wanting to eat - eat - eat. Holding myself back with willpower, blah getting into shape should not be that hard (mentally). Best thing about being primal is that I do not want to eat all the time, therefore I can watch others eat pizza and not really want to eat it myself. If I would go back to 1200kcal I'm sure that advantage would go away. I think it is a very thin line between the cals you need to slowly lose weight and the cals where your metabolism and all that slows the heck down and you start stalling and gaining at 1200. I'm also reading the other thread here about women who have been very low cal and now trying to reboot it back again.

Reading this thread yesterday really gave me hope that maybe it will take longer but if I can stick to it, I will just woke up 2 weeks from now and be 2lbs lighter. And another 2lbs will go after a month or two. That it is possible that it will not be linear. Do not take that away from me (and others) with that 1200cal/day talk. It is not a good way to live.

[Omni]

Yeah... I don't know what needs fixing though. I feel fine, good sleep, low stress, work out (not too strenuous, not too easy), eat quality foods, don't drink. Probably close to 95%/5%.

Yeah, and so does everyone else who just goes to the doc one day and gets told they have a chronic autoimmune condition, your body has multiple back up modes which keep you fully functional even though there may be a battle raging within, most people are usually sick for a long time before they detect obvious outward symptoms.

Which makes me wonder, is fat loss less about "creating a deficit and burning fat for fuel" or is it more about the body becoming more stabilized with nutrients and less full of toxins and releasing fat? Like I imagine many, many overweight women ate for years like I did- a relatively low calorie diet full of nutrient void foods, topped off with some chemical toxins and we put on fat not due to eating excess fuel, but to somehow trap toxins and protect ourselves? And that when I did lose weight, it was never really fat, just muscle?

I think the weight plateau has more importance than people give it credit for.
Going along with your hypothesis, I proposed something similar after reading some fat papers, the crux of it is that your lipid profile reflects your diet and takes about 2-4 years to adjust, so if you were doing as you were told, you would also have been consuming copious quantities of "Healthy" rancid O6 oils, these have to be stored somewhere. So when you go to lose weight, the gates open, flood the system with O6's, disrupt the O6:O3 ratio and the body shuts the gate.
The same lipid profile is also reflected in cell membranes and if the body can't get the right building materials, saturated fats, then it uses what it has, O6's, but in this case there is also the issue of cell leakage as the O6's can't pack nice and tight cause they have a kink, whereas saturated fats are straight and can be lined up side by side with no gaps, this may relate to system wide inflamation as each cell is struggling to maintain it's osmotic balance.
The other weird thing I wondered is cellulite, is it a reflection of O6 content, because they are more jelly like than saturated fats.
Thought about that one when I remembered some pork we once bought, the fat was kind of jelly like and not firm like normal pig fat, I am sure they were probably raised on Soy meal.

[Omni]

I was listening to a Rob Wolf podcast the other day and he said something that makes a lot of sense. Do not focus on the scale (in fact through it away, or give it to your worst enemy). Focus instead on performance goals. If you meet your goals then everything will take care of itself. It could be your mile time, how much you can squat or anything you want. After hearing that I made a short list of attainable goals and have been avoiding the scale.

Great Idea, will have to keep that one in the stash.

[spuggygirl]

I'm 5'6" and 174lbs and there's absolutely no way I could survive on 1200 calories. I'll lose 'weight' on 1600-1800 calories - except that counting calories makes me miserable and just want to eat more. I recently tracked for a few weeks because I was in a prolonged plateau phase...counting I lost very slowly, but lost a little. As soon as I stopped counting, despite that fact that I'm likely eating a little more because I don't have the inbuilt restriction that tracking brings, the fat has started dropping off again.

I appreciate that counting calories works for some, but for me primal is all about getting in tune with your body and becoming as healthy as possible. Fatloss should follow.

Loving the idea of focusing on performance goals too!

[magnolia1973]

I've tried 1200 calories a day, and it makes no difference beyond making me less apt to work out.
And then if it does work, when I get to 165 and plateau, am I eating 1000 calories to lose?

At some point, I just feel like CICO is less relevant because maybe some fat loss is driven by some other factor. By virtue of CICO, I should have probably been 5'6 and 115 a few years ago..... My thought is that for some of us, we may get to a point where cutting calories, carbs whatever is not really relevant to help weightloss since it becomes a waiting game. Better off just to stick it out and enjoy primal foods versus all the tweaking and restriction.

[foodiegoneprimal]

I started at 230 FOUR years ago. Been primal for three months. I am at 170 now. Obviously my journey has been slow I've gone from a size 18 to a size 10. I still have fat to lose but I refuse to stress about it. I loose in spurts and plateau for a month or two. For the first time in my life I'm not weighing food and counting clories, I have energy, and overall I feel healthier.

[StephenHLi]

I started at 230 FOUR years ago. Been primal for three months. I am at 170 now. Obviously my journey has been slow I've gone from a size 18 to a size 10. I still have fat to lose but I refuse to stress about it. I loose in spurts and plateau for a month or two. For the first time in my life I'm not weighing food and counting clories, I have energy, and overall I feel healthier.

Sounds great, more in line of a way of life worth living.

[BestBetter]

See, I would like that, but for me, the trend is more like months.

This has always been true for me, too. Anytime I tried to 'force' my body to drop fat faster than it wanted to, I was met with resistance. If I cut my calories, my body reduced my metabolism as a countermeasure.

Any noticeable changes that occurred in a 1-2 week timeframe were never long-lasting. When I attempted UD2 last year, my body was really unhappy with me doing something extreme and retaliated by packing on some extra pounds to send me the message 'knock it off!'

I know there are outliers, but women's bodies really, really don't want to let go of fat. Maybe it's reasonable for a man to maintain noticeable fat loss on a weekly basis, but I don't think it's logical to expect the same results from a woman's body, whose job it is to hoard as much fat as possible since reproduction is a VERY calorically costly venture.

It took me years to learn the lesson that if I try to make my body change too quickly, it will be counterproductive and all I'll end up with is extra fat as a result. Once I accepted that I may never have a great bikini body and stopped caring about getting a flat stomach and restricting calories, my bod very slowly has started to make improvements.

The rate is so slow that I usually can't even tell it's improving so I stopped paying chronic attention to how I look; when my husband periodically makes a comment that I'm looking better than I did many months ago, then I scrutinize myself and realize that good things ARE happening.

Yes, it feels like it's happening slower than molasses uphill, but I'm a lot happier now that I'm not trying to fight myself all the time.