Hello, my name is NCN, and my body hates me. The feeling, I can assure you, is mutual.
I’ve stopped losing weight. In fact, I’ve gained and re-lost the same 10 pounds, over and over, for the past three months. My body, instead of getting smaller, has entered into a strange stasis, and refuses to change.
I’ve altered a lot of my eating habits, I’m still exercising, and I feel much better than I did this time last year. These are the positives.
It’s VERY hard for me to maintain weight loss, and I seem to gain weight MUCH faster than I lose it. These are the negatives.
I’m still plugging along, trying to eat right, and enjoying my time at the gym. It gets a little frustrating, but I just KNOW, that at some point, the weight loss will pick up, my body will give in to the work I’m doing, and I’ll see some more progress.
Thanks for hanging around. I hope you are all doing well. Rock on.
I have the exact same problem – hours in the gym and calorie counting (along with eating quality foods) just don’t make an impact. I recently discovered that I’m hypothyroid.
You should check out the book “Mastering Your Metabolism” by Jillian Michaels. (she’s the trainer from Biggest Loser) The book is NOT focused just on women – she has some great info on hormones and other levels that men who can’t sustain/maintain weight loss should have checked. She’s also very anti any chemical, but she explains why and how these affect your body. I just finished the book this morning so I can’t attest to whether the diet helps or not (though reviews seem favorable from people who actually put the work in to change their eating habits), but I thought you might be interested.
Yeah, I agree with Paul, it seems like you’ve got the finance stuff down, and you need to move your focus and priorities. And it’s not that hard to make weight loss the numbers game of diet plus exercise, though you have to know that 1. most people underestimate calories 20% and 2. most people overestimate exercise calorie by 20%. You might consider getting a go wear fit since that helps with exercise tracking (and movement tracking which is huge).
I think it’s great to focus on eating healthy foods first, because if you’re not giving your body nutrients, it is going to be hard to diet or exercise. Also, you might like this example and website. Lots of, as she puts it, no nonsense information on diet, training, and lifestyle ( I have no association with her but am a loyal fan).
http://www.leighpeele.com/water-retention-and-weight-loss-2
Follow up point: the problem with using weight training when your goal is to LOSE weight is three-fold: increased hunger from needing to make new muscles, weird water retention issues, and new muscles. Certain specialists strongly urge you to focus on one or the other: fat loss or muscle gain. There are techniques to do both at the same time, but it gets into complicated carb cycling… Increasing overall activity during the day (less blogging!) is far more effective than a weight circuit with less hunger to battle.
The dichotomy about working out is that you want to eat more, but to lose weight you MUST eat less. I’ve made the mistake of trying to lose weight through exercise alone. It doesn’t work.
Look at portion size. That’s where it’s at.