Posts by jenniferger

Sorry but your boyfriend sounds like a real jerk.  Be aware that all operations on your breasts will leave scars. There's a minor procedure that cuts around the nipple only, however it is only useful for people with smaller breasts and minimal sagging. The kind of operation that causes noticeable lift, will leave a scar running vertically down the lower half of the breast.

Honestly, I'm not sure how you can stand a guy who makes you feel low and insecure about your body like that, especially something as personal and sensitive as your womanly attributes like your breasts. Humans are never perfect, including him. How would he like it if you made comments about his penis size or its symmetry or color or texture or the size or attractiveness of his testicular sac? He wouldn't. Comments like those can seriously damage intimacy and rightly so. You should never have to feel ashamed of yourself or your body. Sharing your body and your love with him is a gift and if he doesn't appreciate it, then you might do better elsewhere. Personally, I would find that kind of criticism shattering.

And a note to the men out there: nothing makes a woman lose her sex drive faster than if she feels bad about herself, so please keep that in mind before you open your mouth to make comments about her body or compare her to anyone else. Got it?

(and yes, I am pissed off on your behalf.) 

Who knew this issue was so emotional? I'm surprised really at how strongly people defend their one viewpoint or the other.

Personally, I can live with a 1200 calorie bare minimum. It's not outrageous, and it is difficult to get proper nutrition with much less than that... however, I also think that people should be consulting and listening to the advice of their physicians as well, and if your physician puts you on medically supervised and supplemented low calorie program, then generalized advice on a website such as this one from a pack of non-doctors should NOT trump that. Use common sense. No one solution can possibly work all across the board for all people. I should have thought that would be obvious. 

The important thing is not to fret. You're very young and that means you can lose that weight quite quickly if you wish- it's one of the privileges of youth! If you choose to lose the weight of course, just don't take any pressure, just make a plan for yourself and know that it WILL come off. The pounds are NOT permanent and you can always change it if you don't like it. However don't be bullied or shamed into it. Do it because you want to and not because you feel ashamed of yourself. No one should ever feel ashamed of just being who they are in their own skin. So you put on a few pounds. Big deal. You won't be the only one. Some kids will have shaved their heads. Some will show up with terrible, peeling sunburns. Some will be having bad skin break outs. It's life. These things happen. Just move forward. It's not like you robbed the Burger King and got sent to juvie for the summer.  Relax. :)

Another thought.... You might suggest that she add plenty of nonfat dairy to her diet too. She needs the calcium at her age, and it's best to get that from food sources rather than pills. I don't know what it was but I found it easier to keep to a healthy diet and I swear I came off a really annoying  plateau after I started adding lots of skim milk to my diet. Maybe it's coincidence, maybe not. But I found that adding the milk also added protein to my diet which I needed, as well as calcium and I felt better satisfied. I buy a brand that's fortified with beneficial  Probiotics and extra vitamins and I feel better after having a cup at each meal. Maybe have her give that a try too. The nutrients and protein are useful and she needs to be socking away that calcium for the future. She can also add nonfat yogurt to her list of diet foods. I have no idea if there's anything to the research that suggests that calcium and dairy products contribute to fat loss- studies are always tricky- but I feel it HAS helped me.

Well first off it's a bit rude for anyone to say you look gaunt and ill and I can imagine it probably has made you feel self conscious.

There's nothing you can do about where your body decides it wants to gain or lose fat. I wish there were. The best thing you can do is keep your weight the way YOU want it, and revel in your bone structure. I'm one of those girls with round, soft faces and I'm always jealous of women with "gaunt" faces, because what that usually means is you lasses actually have cheekbones that show! It's all in how you look at it. Also bear in mind that people can be a little mean. I'm not saying that people are necessarily TRYING to be mean, it's just that people probably know you've lost a large amount of weight and for some reason this brings out all kinds of things in people from genuine concern (Omagad, she's going anorexic!), to feeling threatened (Now I feel fat by comparison, I need to insult her so she feels bad now), to hyper criticism, to this and that. The "you look ill and gaunt" comments are probably not even worth thinking about to be honest.

As for brightening and freshening complexion, you can look into adding plenty of fish oil into your diet. Taking a good Omega 3, 6, 9 supplement can help your complexion look fresher and brighter. Also, add Alpha Lipoic Acid, Co-Q-10, and plenty of antioxidants to help keep things looking bright and your skin looking "plump".  Lots of water too. May as well look EVEN BETTER. :)

It's really hard to say what (if anything) is going wrong without an accurate calorie count. I hate to be pedantic, but the secret to my success has been counting calories very religiously. I can't stress how important that is for some of us. 

I was estimating and eating what seemed like a healthy (and it was healthy- no "bad" foods) and reasonable diet in reasonable amounts, but the problem was that the average calories were just too high. You can exercise your butt off and blow it in five minutes with a veggie burger. No kidding. The super healthy, organic, veggie burger I used to get for lunch I discovered after the fact had over 900 calories in it. NINE ZERO ZERO. It didn't look greasy. It didn't seem that big. It was full of legumes, seeds, veggies, etc, and served on an organic wholemeal roll, and yet there it was, the bulk of my daily allowance in one piddly little meal.  It's so shockingly easy to estimate wrong and if you do it on a daily basis and overeat by a couple hundred calories, it adds up.

The other possibility is that your exercise is causing you to gain muscle which is offsetting your weight number on the scale... a much better measure is to measure your actual body fat %. They can usually do that for you at a gym. Considering that you are strength training, I'd be surprised if you haven't gained some lean mass, so don't necessarily rely on that scale number. The scale can and does lie sometimes.

Me! I'm sick of it!

I think people waaaay overuse it as an excuse to eat more. For example, when people hit diet plateaus (I'm on one right now) everyone starts pointing fingers at "ooooh you're in starvation mode! You're not eating enough! Eat more calories!"  Erm... hello? Way to get me off the wagon for good with advice like that! I don't think the solution is to start eating MORE, but to maybe shift my diet around a bit, eat new foods etc, count the calories, keep the exercise up, and just wait.

I'm also sick of hearing people (not here really- but on other forums for example) using it as a firm excuse why they should NOT start a weight loss diet of any kind! I even know people who think if they don't eat every two hours that their bodies will go into this "starvation mode." I've read people's posts where they claimed that calorie reduction of any kind actually makes you fatter because it causes "starvation mode" which causes stress, which causes cortisol production, which in turn make you fatter. I've read people's arguments that you always end up bigger after any diet, due to starvation mode. GAH!

Yes, we're designed to reserve body mass in times of severe famine, but we're also designed to lose unnecessary mass when we gradually reduce our calories and increase our calorie expenditure. Believe it or not, being significantly overweight is not an optimal condition in nature. There is also no evidence that calorie restriction has any longterm effect on metabolism, nevertheless, some people still insist on claiming that dieting will cause your body to go into a serious kind of "starvation mode" and that you can permanently screw up your metabolism so that you can't keep the weight off. Weight Watchers disagrees and so does the US Department of Health.

Bottom line, I'm sick of hearing all the reasons why I should fail. Give Mother Nature a little credit. You have fat for a reason and, assuming you're of normal health and have no endocrine disorders, its levels naturally go up and down depending on what you do and what you eat. Period.

You can exercise and eat very healthful foods all you like, but if you're simply consuming enough calories to maintain body weight, then you won't lose. It's a matter of counting the calories (regardless of health quality) and being absolutely certain how much fuel is going into your body- no guessing. It can be a real pain, but I was absolutely astounded at how easy it is to eat to maintenance level when you still *feel* like you're dieting. Just a little extra can do it, and estimating can blow it big time.

For a while, it would be prudent to just get experimental. Get a kitchen scale, read packages, measure things with really pedantic precision, etc just to get 100% certainty. I mean get super anal for about two weeks just to see where you stand and IF in fact your suggested calorie allowance is correct for you or not. Through experimentation, I found I actually had to eat about 150 to 200 LESS than what this site recommended for me, alas. I guess I just have a slower metabolic rate or more thrifty genes or something than most people my age and height or something. There's no way a formula is going to fit everyone. You may have to just tweak it to fit your own needs and that may mean a little less food than others might get. :(

Also, make sure you measure your body fat periodically and NOT just weight or BMI, since both the latter are really misleading for adults who exercise regularly. Body fat and size measurements are far more accurate at telling you what you need to know. It's entirely possible that some of this weight that you seem not to be losing is in fact a gain in lean mass.

I think you should go and have your body fat measured by a doctor- get a really accurate figure. The scale really can't tell you how much of your weight is muscle and since you work out a lot, I'm guessing you're pretty dense. Relying on BMI calculations can also be very misleading. I think that's key, because you don't want to be 145 if it means losing 5 pounds of lean mass and it might be what your body is doing and trying to recover, hence the yoyo scale. Another consideration is sodium and water weight. I have a bad habit of regularly snacking on pickles (I even drink the juice!) and when I do that regularly, I always retain a few pounds of water. Eating frozen dinners and processed food will do the same. I should really cut back on daily sodium.

I don't even look at the grades actually, because a lot of times I'll add a food myself, but I won't have complete nutrition info on it.

And, as the poster above pointed out, you might get an F for olive oil, which could bring down your grade, despite the fact that you do need some fats and that olive oil is an excellent food. Also, I find that certain other things come out as being "high in sugar" despite the fact that it's a fruit and a natural sugar or whatever. Also, you could eat nothing but bread all day and wind up with an A or B. So yeah, use it, but don't get hung up on it.

Farting joints ... that made me laugh!  Okay, well thanks for the input everyone. It doesn't sound like it's dangerous as long as there's no pain associated...I just bought some joint supplements that have fish oil, omega 3, MSM, glucosamine, and chondoitin, something called mangosteen extract, and a bunch of other stuff too. I'll try them and see if they help along with the strength training. 

And delaney86, I too crackle all over! Like, my arms just go POP when I raise them. It's so freakin weird!

Yeah, one definitely needs to try on everything for sure. Bra sizes are even different, and I find consistently that Victoria's Secret runs SMALL.

The whole vanity sizing thing doesn't help the situation either. To be honest, I'm thinking of getting a sewing machine and dabbling in making my own stuff or at least getting good at alterations, because let's face it, most off the rack clothes are not going to fit perfectly, even if you do manage to figure out what size of which label to buy for which body part. :P

 I think a lot of people have experienced major setbacks for one reason or another. I was doing great last year until my father died unexpectedly. The stress and grief of it all, plus being back home just kind sealed my fate and I fell completely off the wagon for almost a year. I quit logging in, I quite counting calories, quit going to the gym. ate huge portions. Unfortunately, it seems like once you start over indulging, it's hard to stop. I  fact, I read a study recently that says that even short periods of over eating can actually train your brain to expect more food- almost like an addiction response- so that eating less feels worse, makes you cranky, is hard to stick to etc.

I think the good news is that you know you can do it! You've done it once, you can do it again. Don't just give up because you've had a setback. I mean, your life isn't over. You can spend the rest of it living a healthy lifestyle or getting progressively more overweight. I'm choosing fit, and have climbed back on the wagon and I've lost 10 kg.

One thing that actually helped me was to read some hardcore diet studies and nutrition data from the US Department of Health website and other official sites (skip all the wannabe diet gurus and blogs out there from people who really don't KNOW anything). It really helped me to know that there's NO evidence that fat has a "memory" or that you permanently screw up your metabolism when you gain and lose weight. Sometimes I think that all the dire, negative info about "starvation mode" and weight set points, and metabolism, and muscle loss and so on gets totally taken out of context and blown out of proportion and it keeps people from doing what they need to do. I remember I put off dieting so long because I was terrified that I was going to mess up my metabolism because I kept reading these alarmist articles about "starvation mode" and other stuff. Nonsense. I gained the weight back because I overate and didn't count calories, not because my metabolism has gone "super slow" post diet. And sure enough, as soon as I started counting and exercising, the pounds have come off steadily.

So, it's perfectly possible and it's something you CAN do again. There's a certain power and peace in that! :)

I think it all depends on what you eat for breakfast, whether overeat the rest of the day, and a number of other factors.

I've been a breakfaster and a non breakfaster at various periods. If I ate a big bowl of corn flakes or a bagel or a pastry of some kind every morning, I'd be big as a house because I feel so unsatisfied and hungry when I eat those things, so then I snack all day and eat a lot of calories. Refined cereal and refined bread products just make me hungrier.

If however, I eat two eggs scrambled with some smoked salmon, and a really generous cup of mixed veggies to add big volume, I'll feel much better and can easily go until lunchtime. 

I've also gone through periods where I just wasn't hungry in the morning and started eating at midday instead. As long as I planned my diet, I did just fine and in fact it seemed easy to keep the cals down. So, I dunno. I think the argument can be made either way, based on your tendancy to snack and crave later in the day, and your overall calorie consumption.

I can't stop! That's why I don't buy those foods any more. Generally, if you find it impossible to stop, then just avoid those foods completely for a while, and if you choose to have them, then buy single servings- not large bags.

It DOES get easier to find control when you're not eating junk food frequently. I dunno why. It's like your brain just starts expecting that junk food and it takes more and more to feel satisfied and happy.I mean, a year ago, I could pack away a whole bag of mini chocolates and a bag of chips and think nothing of it. Today, after some abstinence, I do feel more satisfied with just a few. I think the junk food drought has kind of reset my brain or something.

I can actually eat certain things, like chips now without always going overboard, but it's far safer for me to, say, get a small 30g bag along with my Subway sandwich as a treat, rather than going for the big bag of kettle chips and thinking I can munch from it and put it down. I may be able to put it down, but chances are I'll be drifting by the cupboard an hour later.

Junk food snacking is just evil for me. I do a lot better just not having that stuff at all, because it's so easy to lapse back into the whole junk food addiction thing. I say, give it a complete miss for at least a few months.