I fear I am going to be fat FOREVER - vent/advice-seeking

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you were stranded on a deserted island and had to forage for your food...how long would you still be fat?

There is something you aren't being honest about.

Thanks? I’ve tracked my macros and calories religiously for a year and a half. NOTHING crosses my lips that I don’t assess and document. I am not out here eating whatever, whenever. I am MUCH more vigilant about what I eat than I was when I was smaller. So it is indeed quizzical.

I’ve been doing a lazy/dirty carnivore to include dairy. I’m going to cut the dairy and hope to god some progress comes from it. I have been in tears many times because I feel betrayed by my body.

Quizzical? Hmmm..

Not at all. If I were you I would use a packaged meal diet service. You have to be miscalculatibg. It is literally biologically chemically not possible to eat very little and not lose weight. You may be monitoring what you eat but not limiting calories. You can eat two frosted cupcakes a day only and lose weight. It's about science not drama.

While broadly true, not always true. I was eating as I always had and seemed to be gaining weight. Didn't weigh myself, but found I was having to getting size larger and then a size larger than that. Thought the weight gain was just coming from older age and reconciled myself to that. When I finally had symptoms that even I couldn't ignore, it turned out that a had a medical condition that was causing body swelling. Turns out that water weight can be a real thing.

Fair, that’s not what’s happening to women here. They are wildly out of energy balance and don’t want to come to grips with 1) how to not do that or 2) how to create a body system that allows for more food consumption.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was where you are. Had lost weight twice on WW, once on dr supervised keto, and gained it back plus more each time. Current doctor convinced me to try a GLP1, and I'm glad they did; my bmi went from 34 to 24. Size 18 down to a size 10 (and still losing). It has not been a walk in the park -- the med I'm on is not magic and has side effects. But it worked.

wow! congrats! can you share how much you weight when you started and your goal? what's working with GLP1 but not WW/keto/etc. - food noise gone mainly?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How much do you weigh and how tall are you?

I also have 3 kids (11, 9 and 5) and it took a lot longer to lose the weight from kid 3. And I am still probably 20 pounds heavier than when I got married and 10 pounds heavier than when I started having kids. But I am 5’7” and 145 and am 42 years old. I don’t really have it in me to heavily diet anymore. I walk a lot and don’t look really overweight so I just stopped caring.

This is OP and I look overweight, I think in no small part because I’m short and busty with wide-ish shoulders. I’m still an hourglass - my waist is smaller than my bust and hips, which are the same circumference - but it’s big (like 35 inches). I never had a tiny waist but it was 28-30 inches before, after second kid. I’m 5’3 and 175 pounds. I know DCUM will say it’s impossible that I was thin/small at 145 at this height but I really and truly am exceptionally muscular. Even now, I am not flabby, my mass has just expanded :sob:

All of that to say, I look okay, but I would feel so much more comfortable in my body even twenty pounds less than I am now.

Just to say I trust you OP when you say that you were thin/small at 145 because you were very muscular. I am the exact opposite, I look flabby at a much much lower weight because I am not muscular and I am very frustrated when dcum tells me I must be hallucinating. Some people do not understand how different body types can be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also OP track your diet. Every bite. Do not taste test while cooking. Walk 7 miles a day 1-2x a week. Walking is just as good exercise as running! And better for your joints.

Peptides can also help.

I’d rather be overweight than live like this.

I hear you, pp. I was you, even. But here's the thing: you eat the same few foods every month. It's really not a challenge to put them into a tracker (I like MyFitnessPal; there are others, many are free). Then you just copy entries and it tracks everything. A few weeks of carefully measuring and inputting and tracking and I realized that I was, in fact, eating way more than I thought. A serving of cottage cheese is easy to overestimate, but hard to fake on a gram scale. I also thought I was getting TONS of protein from the eggs and beans and nuts I was eating, but the reality was that my fat macros were running just as high, if not higher, and my fiber count wasn't where I needed it to be. It's easy to think you're doing these things right, and you may be surprised by how off your guesstimates are when you start aiming for actual facts about your food.

If you want to do the thing, you've gotta do the dang thing. Once you have it dialed in, it's not at all hard to continue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^Meant to add if I hadn't been so chill about the weight gain and had been trying all the things previous posters say they have tried, I would have wanted to rant and vent as well. And none of those things would have done anything for my weight gain as they would have had zero effect on the medical condition causing it.

This is real, but also? If you're overweight, most whitecoats are going to tell you to lose weight about it first. I've found that, when I come to appointments with my meals tracked for months and my step count and my CGM and blood pressure stats, they take me seriously when I say "I eat clean and I work out but I'm not losing weight". Having the receipts builds credibility.

It shouldn't be that way, and doctors should simply listen to what you say and respond accordingly, but anti-fat bias in the medical community is a major problem.

[Anonymous]

Get blood work done but you’re probably eating large portions or not staying consistent in your deficit. This is why fitness athletes weigh their food using a digital food scale. And they track every bite. Last, don’t snack off your kids’ plates.

[Anonymous]

Question: do you track your food? If you do, are you honest with your inputs? That is, are you actually weighing your food (1 tablespoon vs 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, etc?)? Are you tracking very lick, bite, and taste? When I started doing this honestly, it was very eye opening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^Meant to add if I hadn't been so chill about the weight gain and had been trying all the things previous posters say they have tried, I would have wanted to rant and vent as well. And none of those things would have done anything for my weight gain as they would have had zero effect on the medical condition causing it.

This is real, but also? If you're overweight, most whitecoats are going to tell you to lose weight about it first. I've found that, when I come to appointments with my meals tracked for months and my step count and my CGM and blood pressure stats, they take me seriously when I say "I eat clean and I work out but I'm not losing weight". Having the receipts builds credibility.

It shouldn't be that way, and doctors should simply listen to what you say and respond accordingly, but anti-fat bias in the medical community is a major problem.

PP here. Well, I didn't bother seeing a doctor either. Guess I suffered from over-complacency.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Try tirz again. and follow it. You will lose. I wonder if you bought some bad compound or something.

It takes a huge deficit of calories. Tirz showed me that. But it is impossible to do without meds (to all the PPs) because you will just be dying of hunger and miserable without the meds. It is sad how many less calories I must eat to maintain, let alone lose.

I am not a basher of meds—definitely can see how getting rid of the food noise would be key in losing weight. However, it IS possible for (some of us) to lose a lot of weight without meds. I am down 45 lbs since the beginning of the year. I log my food with My Fitness Pal and also significantly increased the amount of cardio that I do along with some weights. MFP recommends 1480 calories/day for me; because I do usually manage to burn 700-1200 calories a day in exercise, on any given day I consume between 1300 and 1800 calories and have continued to lose.

The first couple weeks of the tracked and reduced calories were the hardest, but your body gets used to less food fairly quickly. I also tend to rotate similar meals for breakfast in lunch.,it takes the guess work out of tracking.

But I don’t have small kids at home and I also retired at the beginning of the year. This means I was able to eliminate panic eating (I.e., you may or may not get lunch due to work stuff so you eat easy, high fat things like cheese), can exercise regularly, and am not putting the needs of multiple other people before my own. I also started HRT (am in menopause) and didn’t have food noise per se. Just ate too much high calorie stuff and didn’t get enough exercise.

I only mention this because if for whatever reason you don’t/can’t use meds, you can lose. I also keep reminding myself that it took years to put on the 75 or so lbs that I ultimately want to lose, and that it’s going to take time (though not years) to get rid of it.

Be kind to yourselves!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What the hell.

I’m 39 for a few more days. I have three kids: 11, 8, and 2. Outside of pregnancy, and since my youngest was born, I was always within the same ten-pound range and wore a size 6. Sometimes a 4, sometimes an 8, but I was pretty much the same size. I ate normally - did not exclude anything but didn’t eat to excess - and was active but was never a gym rat. It was, in hindsight, easy for me to maintain this weight.

My last pregnancy wrecked me 100%. Baby was born in March 2023. I gained an ungodly amount of weight, developed gestational diabetes, and to this day I weigh 30 pounds more than I did when I got pregnant with him.

I counted calories: sub-1600, sub-1400, sub-1200. Eliminated sugar. Eliminated gluten/grains. Quit alcohol. Intermittent fasted. Worked out 3-5 times a week for a YEAR (July 2024-July 2025, cardio and weights). And my weight has barely budged. Oh and before anyone suggests it, I have been on both tirzepitide and semaglutide and neither worked. WTF.

I am now trying the last-ditch effort of a carnivore diet. It’s been 2.5 weeks, and after an initial drop of water weight I haven’t lost anything. My panels are normal, my blood glucose is normal, and I am so plucking depressed at the notion of being perpetually chubby/overweight. I have tried EVERYTHING. Will carnivore/keto be the answer to my problems? Or should I just get used to being FAT!?

This sounds like insulin resistance. Go see an endocrinologist. You might need to go on insulin for a while.

Semaglutide doesn't work for like a third of people, BTW.

[Anonymous]

You should get an endo referral right now, not wait for your appointment. It might take you 6+ months to get in with them…

Also go into your Endo appointment with a list in hand of any blood work you want done. My general experience with adult endos is that they are not very helpful and definitely not proactive. Just be prepared to self advocate.

I go to the pediatric endocrinologist all the time with my kids, so when I had an adult endo consult, I was really shocked that they were happy to rush me out the door as long as I didn’t seem to be actively dying of anything.

[Anonymous]

need to be at 700-800 calories per day, use glps to curb apetitie

[Anonymous]

Do you work full-time?

[Anonymous]

OP, are you seeing an endocrinologist? You should be, since you had gestational diabetes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the hell.

I’m 39 for a few more days. I have three kids: 11, 8, and 2. Outside of pregnancy, and since my youngest was born, I was always within the same ten-pound range and wore a size 6. Sometimes a 4, sometimes an 8, but I was pretty much the same size. I ate normally - did not exclude anything but didn’t eat to excess - and was active but was never a gym rat. It was, in hindsight, easy for me to maintain this weight.

My last pregnancy wrecked me 100%. Baby was born in March 2023. I gained an ungodly amount of weight, developed gestational diabetes, and to this day I weigh 30 pounds more than I did when I got pregnant with him.

I counted calories: sub-1600, sub-1400, sub-1200. Eliminated sugar. Eliminated gluten/grains. Quit alcohol. Intermittent fasted. Worked out 3-5 times a week for a YEAR (July 2024-July 2025, cardio and weights). And my weight has barely budged. Oh and before anyone suggests it, I have been on both tirzepitide and semaglutide and neither worked. WTF.

I am now trying the last-ditch effort of a carnivore diet. It’s been 2.5 weeks, and after an initial drop of water weight I haven’t lost anything. My panels are normal, my blood glucose is normal, and I am so plucking depressed at the notion of being perpetually chubby/overweight. I have tried EVERYTHING. Will carnivore/keto be the answer to my problems? Or should I just get used to being FAT!?

This sounds like insulin resistance. Go see an endocrinologist. You might need to go on insulin for a while.

Semaglutide doesn't work for like a third of people, BTW.

Wrong. She doesn’t need insulin. Insulin makes people gain more weight. What she needs is to live a low-insulin lifestyle to reverse her insulin resistance.