Posts by erinzz

Forum	Topic	Date	Replies

Health & Support	I have a "lady" question....	Dec 17 2007 22:40 (UTC)	2
i'd give it 72 hours to work, then call your MD. if you self-diagnosed + are self-treating (that is, if you assumed from the symptoms that you had a yeast infection, and then bought the OTC Monistat to treat it), there's a good chance that it's not actually a yeast infection. Approximately 2/3 - 3/4 of women who self-treat for yeast infections, who "know" they have one because they've had one before and their symptoms are similar to the first incidence, do not actually have one. Of course, you could be in the 1/3 who are correct (the changes in vaginal ph prior to menstruation can make vaginal yeast infection more likely at this time). But you should know that other conditions can produce similar symptoms (e.g. bacterial vaginosis, trichomoniasis). So if it doesn't clear up in 3 days, it could be that either (1) it's not a yeast infection; or (2) it IS a yeast infection but you need something other than monistat for treatment. In regards to taking Diflucan before the Monistat (or other topical suppositories) has a chance to work, probably not a great idea. topical suppositories are very effective in most cases of vaginal yeast infection. the problem with giving Diflucan as a first-line treatment to everyone (which is what many patients would like, since it's often [not always] a one-time dose, and it's easier and "less messy" than vaginal creams or suppositories like monistat) is that yeast (especially species other than c. albicans) get resistant to it, which results in higher doses being needed and eventually, the medication no longer working (e.g. you kill off the c. albicans with the Diflucan, which allows overgrowth of other, resistant candida species). One person here and there taking an unnecessary medication that induces resistant yeast strains may not make a difference, but the cumulative effect of TONS of people doing it makes a huge difference - probably not for you, or most of the other women who just have an occasional yeast overgrowth in the vagina, but for the people who REALLY need diflucan (e.g. AIDS patients, patients who are immunosuppressed from cancer treatment, and others who have systemic candidiasis). Basically, if you can treat the vaginal yeast infection without resorting to Diflucan (which the vast majority of women can), I would ask you to give up the very small benefit of taking Diflucan (its primary benefit being convenience) in order to preserve a much larger benefit (that is, potentially life-saving treatment) for others. If the Monistat doesn't work, the Diflucan (and other second-line treatments) will still be around :-) Safina: the symptoms of vaginal yeast infections are generally not subtle! itching, burning, more discharge (generally non-foul-smelling; may smell 'sweet') than usual, cottage-cheese like discharge [although it varies from woman to woman], etc. a urine test would be useless to diagnose a vaginal yeast infection - for one thing, the infection is in the vagina, not the urinary tract. it is NATURAL for there to be yeast in the vagina; the infection is simply when the yeast get "out of control" (which is often the result of various changes in the vaginal environment). generally, with a first-time yeast infection, a woman suddenly starts having uncomfortable symptoms (which most women do not see as subtle), sees her doctor, and he diagnoses the cause as fungal (as opposed to bacterial, protozoan, non-infectious...) by physical examination and looking under a microscope. if you have symptoms of a vaginal yeast infection, see your doctor and he should be able to know if you do. if you have no symptoms, then there's no test you need to take. various yeasts, including candida, are part of healthy vaginal flora.
Health & Support	pain medications	Dec 16 2007 03:40 (UTC)	2
i've been on opiates for i-don't-even-know-how-many years. i've never gained weight on them, but have had other side effects. right now i'm on oxycontin + morphine/hydromorphone (Dilaudid) as necessary. i have DEFINITELY found that not all opiates are created equal in terms of side effects. Fentanyl (available to outpatients as Duragesic patches or Actiq + other lollypops) is by far, imo, the pure opiate agonist with the fewest side effects - unfortunately, for me and others, it has a very short half-life, and the transdermal system used to 'overcome' that results in very uneven dosing. however, some people have no problem with even absorption. i've also heard some very good things about methadone having fewer sides than other opiates (and methadone is MUCH cheaper than, e.g. fentanyl, which is quite expensive) for me personally, opiates seem to depress appetite (although i'm at the point where this is no longer an issue, whenever i've tried to decrease the dose, i'm suddenly HUNGRY again and am able to eat much larger quantities of food than i would otherwise want to). it is very difficult to disentangle the effects of opiates from the underlying conditions its meant to treat (and lifestyle issues). for many people, it's simply impossible to eat while they're in pain, so relieve the pain and they gain weight. it's quite common to see people on opiates lose weight, but it's usually due to reduced eating (opiates do suppress the 'appetite center'; interestingly, though, there's some research that shows that in heavy people, they have the OPPOSITE effect - they cause increased appetite. imo, this issue is far from being resolved). there's no doubt that opiates can cause many people to crave sweets. one thing that opiates DO do is suppress anabolic hormones like testosterone (through LH suppression) - this is a very bad thing if your goal is muscle-preserving fat loss.
Health & Support	Does SOY effect THYROID?	Dec 16 2007 03:16 (UTC)
in large quantities, it may have some (negative) effect on hypothyroidism. my advice (and my endocrinologist from several years back agrees) is that if soy is a large part of your diet, keep eating it, just monitor your thyroid levels + make adjustments in your replacement hormones as necessary (soy is one of my major protein sources; i eat it just about every day, and have never had a problem). it's probably most likely to have an effect if you haven't eaten soy up till now, or are greatly increasing the amount you eat. like with everything, the key is monitoring.
Foods	caffeine withdrawal	Dec 11 2007 08:13 (UTC)
oops, double post. sorry!
Foods	caffeine withdrawal	Dec 11 2007 08:13 (UTC)	1
just wanted to add: in case you didn't understand what i meant by "contamination" in my 2nd-to-last post in this thread (and your more recent post on candida suggests that you didn't), i meant that your urine system had something other than urine in it - most likely, vaginal fluid - because of the way in which it was collected (peeing into a cup, some vaginal fluid can easily slip into the cup with the stream). i DID NOT mean that your urinary tract itself was "contaminated" with bacteria and/or yeast. important distinction. please look carefully at the claims made by proponents of the candida hypothesis, with an objective eye, before you decide that you have a condition that is not generally accepted by the medical community. some of its proponents are nuts, and even claim that HIV does not cause AIDS, candida does! while it's indisputable that immunosuppressed people often suffer from yeast infections (e.g. oral thrush), this is a RESULT of immunosuppression, not a CAUSE of it.
Foods	caffeine withdrawal	Dec 11 2007 08:04 (UTC)	2
safina: just wanted to respond to another comment in your last PM to me: "that diet is unrealistic. I have tried to cut back on fruit and sugar all together, then in the evening, I was really starving for sweets. I don't know. sometimes, I think it is better to "feed" whatever bad bacteria in my system and just follow a balanced diet that has diary, fruit and bread. on the other hand, the benefit of this candida diet is it kills the yeast but it takes months" as stated before, i'm no believer in the candida hypothesis (that 'unexplained' fatigue, mood swings, depression, etc. are caused by an overgrowth of yeast [a low-grade, systemic candidiasis] in otherwise healthy people; there is simply no evidence for this), but if YOU'RE going to buy into it, you should at least understand what it is that you're buying into: candida is NOT a "bad bacteria", it's not a bacteria at all! it's a yeast. moreover, not all bacteria are "bad" bacteria - you have "good" bacteria which keep the "bad" bacteria (those that will, in certain environments that the good bacteria help to keep from existing, grow out of control and cause infection) and yeasts in check. in your gut, your vagina, etc., you have good bacteria, bad bacteria, and yeast. you will ALWAYS have yeast in your body - you have no reason to believe that your yeast levels are "too high" simply because your urine sample had yeast in it. you also have no reason, without symptoms, to believe that you have a bacterial infection. a tiny drop of vaginal fluid in your urine sample was most likely responsible for the yeast, bacteria, and WBCs that were found. this is NORMAL! in that, it happens all the time! and doesn't indicate that anything is wrong with you! if everyone with a contaminated urine sample (and contamination really should be the assumption until you take a new, scrupulously clean, test, especially because you have no symptoms of a urinary infection) bought into the candida hype and started purchasing alternative cures (if i were researching an illness where 99% of its proponents are 'natural healers' or others in the alternative health industry, i wouldn't take advice from ANYONE who was simultaneously trying to make money off of the diagnosis. that excludes most of the popular candida websites, where many people are selling either [unproven] cures or their books about managing the illness), it would be the candida-proponents' best dream! under the candida hypothesis, if your sugar cravings were caused by yeast overgrowth, then you would have felt BETTER (less fatigued, dizzy, etc.] when you were losing weight and thereby restricting your calories and carbs, and you would feel FAR worse now that you're eating 5000 calories/day of pure crap - under this hypothesis, you would be "feeding" the yeast with your binges, and the alleged over-growth would get worse because of it. you would be MORE dizzy and tired now. and you've already told us that you're not! i don't support the hypothesis, but if i did, it would not appear to me that you were one of its victims (AFAICT, you don't have any of the alleged 'risk factors' - they mention prolonged or repeated use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, not one short course of an antibiotic that may or may not be broad-spectrum [you haven't told me what AB you took]; how many yeast infections have you had in the last 10 years? by that, i mean yeast infections dx'd by an MD, since women who self-treat for yeast infections are wrong 2/3 of the time)! much more likely is that your symptoms were/are caused by insufficient sleep and too-low calories. i can't keep repeating myself on this point. you'll do what you want. all i can ask is that you look at the information, because, as stated before, i think you're using this as an excuse. lastly, what sort of specialist did your doctor tell you to see?
Motivation	I need to slap him in the face	Dec 11 2007 07:28 (UTC)
how can I get motivated to count calories again? by not making excuses! that's how your belief that you have "candida" appears to me - as a way to attribute your sugar- and carb-binges to an external agent other than yourself. even if one accepts that the diagnosis of systemic candidiasis in otherwise healthy persons on the basis of vague, universal symptoms is proper, there's no evidence (based on the proponents' theory of the 'illness') that YOU have it! if you did, then based on the 'candida hypothesis', eating 4000-5000 calories of crap per day would be making your fatigue worse, not better (as you've said before, your fatigue + dizziness got better when you started eating at non-starvation levels) people with acute hepatitis normally experience weight LOSS + LACK of appetite. i've already told you that my guess is that there's nothing wrong with your liver (have you done the tests yet? do them asap so you don't have to deal with uncertainty. it's unlikely that your liver is currently damaged - what's possible, but still not likely, is that you're in the early stages of a condition that, unimpeded, will take its toll on your liver over time. just do the tests so that you can either get this thing off your mind, or take appropriate action) try something you've never tried before: get enough sleep, follow a decent meal-plan (as laid out for you before), and stop looking for "the answer" (whether it's a new leaf test, amino acid supplements, a candida diet, a detox diet..... i can't tell you enough how it would be a waste of your money and time to think that any of these things will change your life in some dramatic way: when you're eating 5000 calories per day, it's a bit absurd to assume that you need some specialty item in order to lose weight, when you've never actually tried simply eating a sane number of calories + macronutrients, exercising, and getting proper sleep). while SOME of the things you ask about may have value for those who are trying to maximize the results from their already very-disciplined efforts (that is, those who are ALREADY doing everything, or almost everything 'perfectly'), they're not going to change anything for you. 17xstar.. wrote: It's really tough to hear this but you can't blame your gain on anyone else. You are jealous of your co-workers and their lack of prior support, but you are now not supporting them. It seems like a take and take situation. i agree with that completely! your anger about your co-worker is simply another excuse to not take responsibility for your own actions. try this: at night, after a binge (you stated before that your binges get worse through the day), prepare your food for the next day, so that everything you'll have to eat the next day is already prepared. then throw out all the junk in your apt that you binge on. then, the next day, don't bring your credit cards or any money with you to work (you said before that you walk there and home, right? so you don't need bus money or anything like that). so you bring your meals with you to work, but not any money to buy junk with. for the first day, make your meals BIG. instead of the 6 meals at 300 calories each, try 6 meals at about 500 calories each. so you'll be eating 3000 calories (more than you're burning), but they just can't be junk. each meal must have protein, complex (non-white) carbs, and a vegetable (or fruit for breakfast, if you don't like eating veggies in the morning). fruit is FINE! if you can do this (and you should be able to), then consider it a success! you're back in healthy-eating mode! soon you'll be back in weight-loss mode! after day-1, SLOWLY decrease the number of calories in each meal until you're in a slight calorie deficit (take 50 calories out of each meal per day). get the junk food out of your apt, don't bring $ with you to work to splurge on junk with, and maybe that'll make you more likely to stick to your plan.
Health & Support	problems with candida?	Dec 11 2007 06:53 (UTC)	4
safina, you sent me your lab results + i responded to them in the second page of the coffee discussion. please re-read my comments there. your fatigue was a major issue when you were dieting (eating LESS sugar + carbs); as you posted before, as soon as you started binging + eating thousands of calories/day, your dizziness and fatigue got better (as everyone had been telling you for a while, your calories were way too low) - based on the "candida theory", if your problems were caused by an overgrowth of yeast, eating more carbs and sugar would make it WORSE, not better. fatigue is a non-specific, universal symptom. until you try getting more sleep for a prolonged period of time, there's no way to attribute it to ANY illness (e.g. liver disease, candida, etc.)
Fitness	New Leaf test ?	Dec 09 2007 03:53 (UTC)	12
well, i googled it + if you're talking about the metabolism profile, it strikes me as something you don't need (waste of money, and you're always saying you can't afford stuff, so better not to waste $ on things you don't need). you're better off buying some device that allows you to regularly measure your body fat. now THAT'S essential information. i doubt the profile new leaf offers is anything more than a guess. they say it's more accurate than the "RMR calculators" (duh! what isn't??!), but that doesn't mean it's actually ACCURATE - just not quite as much of a guess.
Foods	caffeine withdrawal	Dec 09 2007 03:22 (UTC)	3
safina, in your personal message to me several days ago, you told me that your nutritionist friend suggested that you had "candida" (aka a disseminated candidiasis in an otherwise healthy person) not your doctor (i would've assumed as much, for reasons that i won't go into here, which don't really have much to do with you). that is why i was surprised to hear in this post that suddenly it's your DOCTOR who's suggesting that you need to quit coffee (when after your original post here was written, you sent me a personal message expressing confusion about the "candida diet" and asking for my advice, and complaining that your doctor had not said anything about this, and that he didn't seem to have any time for you to schedule your next appt to do further liver tests: “the doctor didn't mention anything about this [candida]. all what he said that I am FINE except for one thing. he suspects that there something wrong in my liver. so he ordered further tests. I have not get them done yet but scheduled an app. he is busy and doesn't talk that much. I don't understand what is going on. honestly, I might go to another doctor who has more time for me” incidentally, you wrote this after you posted the original message here, which is why the statements seemed inconsistent). if your doctor had actually told you to quit drinking coffee, i wouldn't have felt the need to question him. i DO, however, feel the need to question the advice of non-MDs who make presumptive diagnoses (especially those that are controversial, and not accepted by most MDs) on the basis of a lab test which could very well indicate nothing, or a different condition. however, you shouldn't take that as me saying you SHOULDN'T give up coffee - in fact, if you remember, in a response to your posts about fatigue, i suggested that it might be worth trying a few weeks without coffee if other things didn’t work (e.g. adequate sleep). if your doctor didn't explain this to you, yeast in a urine culture often represents contamination from vaginal fluids (high numbers of squamous cells, which were reflected in your UA, are generally taken to mean contamination as well, although there are some newer research findings that question whether it's actually useful to test them for this purpose; other findings in your UA also suggest contamination [ask if you're interested], though they don't rule out other possibilities). high levels of bacteria + WBCs in urine CAN be indications of a urinary tract infection (bacterial – usually e. coli), but along with the yeast + squamous cells, contamination was your doctor’s well-reasoned assumption. if you don’t have any SYMPTOMS of a UTI (basically, trouble peeing – pain, increased frequency, feeling like you have to pee all the time, low volume, tenderness), if the urine was uncontaminated (big “if” in this case), you could have what’s known as “asymptomatic bacteriuria” (which there’s usually no reason to aggressively treat, unless you’re pregnant), which is relatively common. neither bacteria nor yeast should be found in urine itself – however, they are VERY common in urine SPECIMENS, owing to contamination (even a bit of bacteria from skin cells or a small amount of vaginal fluid can turn into LOTS of bacteria if the specimen is allowed to sit at room temperature – when urine is collected by the patient peeing into a cup, doctors interpret the “meaning” of the bacteria according to the patient’s symptoms. large numbers of ONE type of bacteria can mean infection, whereas lots of different types of bacteria usually means contamination). as far as yeast in your urine, yeast cells (usually c. albicans) can indicate contamination, or a real infection, or benign colonization. my belief (which appears to be your doctor’s belief as well) is that contamination here was likely. but you can always re-do the test if you’re worried. know this, though: even if a completely clean urine sample shows yeast in it, it probably doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with you, absent other symptoms or findings (and even with them!). candiduria itself is almost always benign. but until you get a clean urine sample, there’s no point in even assuming that there actually WAS yeast in your urine. also, not ALL antibiotics disrupt the bacteria/yeast balance – many antibiotics have a narrower spectrum of activity. even accepting "candida"'s existence (which i don't by the way, although that's the sort of thing you'll have to decide yourself; so no one yells at me, yes, immunosuppressed people + sometimes diabetics + others with serious conditions can get systemic yeast infections, but i’m using “candida” here to refer to systemic yeast infections in otherwise NORMAL people), i see little here to suggest that YOU would have it (yes, i've seen its proponents - often hawking products - maintain that over 80% of the female population suffers from this little-known devastator that actual doctors refuse to see. i’m more than happy to look at actual EVIDENCE if anyone has any), simply on the basis of vague symptoms and yeast in the urine. i took an online quiz a few minutes ago, just for fun, and guess what? they “diagnosed” ME with candida too! in terms of YOUR risks/benefits, since your MD (rather than nutritionist friend) believes that your high liver enzyme levels are problematic (my guess, which is nothing more than that, based on your enzyme levels and overall lab picture, would be that you're PROBABLY ok here, but yes, further tests are definitely warranted), if you ARE at any risk for liver disease, you should know that coffee is hepatoprotective (i.e. there's evidence that it lowers the risk of liver damage). thus, without a definitive diagnosis, it MAY NOT be in YOUR interests to quit coffee. before taking on a very strict new diet (which includes many of the things you love, and which you're VERY likely to be unable to stick to, and which will likely lead to more of your infamous binges) based on a nutritionist friend's suggestion and the internet (you have no idea how many people mis-diagnose themselves on the basis of symptoms, often those that they find on some internet site. since your symptoms are non-specific, i could list for you a dozen other illnesses where you'd go "wow! it makes so much sense!" just because your symptoms match. when i was in med school, we used to joke about "med student syndrome" because perfectly healthy med students would read about an illness, and suddenly start thinking that they had it, and even occasionally start having new psychosomatic symptoms; if you want to see a whole bunch of people 100% CONVINCED that they are HIV+ because they had a lap-dance or BJ and now have every symptom of acute viremia, you can read Dr. Frascino’s often amusing responses here: http://www.thebody.com/Forums/AIDS/SafeSex/Ar chive/Infected/index.html ), i would recommend that you do the following (as always, i don't claim to be giving you medical advice, just common sense with a bit of knowledge behind it): - if you're truly worried about it, explain your worry to your doctor (who likely does not believe in the candida hype), and tell him that you would like a new urinalysis. make sure you clean the area immediately beforehand + get a clean, mid-stream sample. - IF you have a yeast infection (which can exist in places of your body other than your vagina, btw. this is something i've actually been unfortunate enough to learn firsthand - because i've been immunosuppressed, i've had oral thrush more times than you could count. however, the presence of yeast like candida in the body is NORMAL and, absent other findings, doesn't indicate any pathology), treat the yeast infection! let your MD diagnose it; don't rely on self-diagnosis (only about 1/3 of women who “know” that they have vaginal yeast infections actually have them) - never, ever take an antibiotic for a cold. never again! i can't imagine that your doctor gave you an antibiotic for a cold (but that's only because i give doctors more credit than they usually deserve. unwarranted prescription of antibiotics is unfortunately all too common), but just know that when you have "the common cold", it's caused by a rhinovirus. as the name implicates, this is a VIRUS, not a bacteria. antibiotics are worthless in terms of helping you, and misuse of antibiotics can have serious consequences (for society, not just the people misusing them). i have no issue with you trying the "candida diet" (mostly because i have no problem with people doing whatever the hell they want to 99% of the time. i do, however, have a problem with quacks who take advantage of the desperate and unhappy in order to make money off of unproven "cures". but the diet itself won't put money into the pocket of anyone i find repulsive, so no issue from me. not that things that push my negative buttons should necessarily push yours), though there's no evidence for it, if that's what you want. i don't think it's the healthiest diet for most people, but i'm sure there are some people who feel better on it (remove the huge amounts of sugar and caffeine from many americans' diets, and i would expect that many of them might feel a bit better. plus, the mind is a powerful thing!) - it's probably better than all the crap you're eating now. do i think it's necessary? absolutely not! do i think you should substitute my judgment for your own? nope! but i DO think you should learn a bit more about the candida "controversy" before accepting that you have it. i also think you need to question whether this is actually a diet that you’re able to stay on for longer than a few days. i think you also need to question your motivations for jumping so quickly to the candida hypothesis (could it be because you WANT there to be a physiological explanation for your sugar cravings and recent binges? and if this were the case, you could give in to your cravings, and just blame it on that nasty fungus instead of actually doing the work you have to do to overcome your emotional over-eating?) since you again wrote telling me how worried you were about having a “liver virus” (i assume that you meant either viral hepatitis or “liver disease in general” by that), let me say that if i were you, i wouldn’t worry too much over it. your AST + ALT elevations were quite mild – these elevations can be due to a variety of factors, many of them indicating no underlying liver pathology, and often resolve on their own (i’ve had liver enzyme elevations WAY higher than yours, and my liver is currently healthy and functioning fine :-)). lots of things (e.g. alcohol, certain drugs, prescription, over-the-counter and herbal, certain herbal teas) can elevate these enzymes. i’m not saying that it IS nothing – plenty of liver diseases can cause only mild elevations (e.g. chronic hepatitis, fatty liver), and you also see mild liver elevations in diseases that AREN’T primarily involving the liver (e.g. Crohn’s disease). but if i were you, i wouldn’t lose sleep over it. your MD likely wants to re-do the tests you had (to make sure that the elevations weren’t transient – this may be why he doesn’t want to do the tests right away) and/or order a fuller range of tests to rule out liver disease (and catch it if it exists; your doctor seems to not think that a serious problem is very likely [which doesn’t make it impossible]). if you meant “liver virus” literally, it’s unlikely that you have Hep A (with acute hep, the levels are generally WAAAY higher than yours) – chronic hepatitis is a possibility, but these are not viruses that transfer easily from person-to-person (like the flu does) – high risk sexual activities, blood transfusions, IV drug use, exposure to blood for other reasons.... these are the risk factors. you know if you have one of them. now, for more specific responses to what’s been posted here: safina: “well, as I told you in my previous message, after I got my blood tests done, I learnt that I have a yeast in my system. sugar, caffeine and bread are the worst things for me right now. that is why what works for me doen't mean it should work for someone else”. yes, i believe you’ve mentioned that once or twice ;-). i didn’t want to go into the specifics of what you’d told me in an open forum, but now that you already have, i’ve given you my view (which was my view when the original message was written): unless your DOCTOR tells you to do so, and gives you a reason why, or you’re experiencing negative symptoms from your coffee use, i see no MEDICAL reason to quit drinking coffee, or even to lower the dose. this is particularly true if you’re worried about liver disease, in which case you’d probably want to KEEP drinking coffee (there’s a wealth of epidemiological data showing reduced incidence of various liver diseases in coffee-drinkers). my opinion (and take it for what it’s worth) is that there is NO reason to give up coffee on the basis of one lab test showing yeast in your urine. you will always have yeast in your system – no matter what foods you eat, no matter what you do to try to get rid of it. this is normal, and healthy. this does not indicate a “yeast infection”. "on the other hand, it is always good to cut back on coffee, simply, I used to drink three to five cups of coffee. I spent a LOT of money going to starbucks. that is about ten dollars a day for just coffee and I can't afford that” well, i haven’t had coffee (or other caffeine) since i was a teenager – i have no problem with people wanting to cut back or give it up completely. i DO, however, have a problem with scare-mongers who overstate the negative health effects of various substances without knowing much about them. dependence on coffee, even at high levels, alone does not mean that a person “needs” to cut back or quit in order to be healthy. that judgment needs to be based on the specific symptoms, medical conditions, and risks to the particular patient. as far as i can tell, there’s no reason for you to quit coffee. although it’s something i suggested that you TRY a while back, if you don’t notice any improvement in your symptoms (those that i discussed in a previous post), then there’s little reason to abstain. as far as financial considerations go, sorry, those are decisions you have to make without my help. my only concern was the effect it would have on your HEALTH. but the fact that your coffee habit was unaffordable for you doesn’t mean that “it is always good to cut back on coffee” – it’s these sorts of universal statements that i was speaking against. catherinerich: "erinzz and the others who are defending coffee. Okay, people, we're not saying it's crack-cocaine! Whatever, drink it, who cares? ... My condition is a real thing. It's not caused by caffeine, it's just made worse by it. Should I continue to drink it anyway to fit in? Yes, I have a relatively unique problem. I'm not enjoying giving up coffee but the severity of my condition calls for it. Oh, and thanks erinzz MD for implying that I am not normal". you’re quite welcome! gratitude is a wonderful virtue, so rarely found in contemporary americans, who seem to favor rudeness and a nasty sense-of-entitlement about what the world, and everyone else in it, owes them. but since you’ve been so gracious, i’ll take my previous comment further, so you can be REALLY thankful: i won’t just imply that you’re not normal, i’ll say it: YOU’RE NOT NORMAL! from webster’s dictionary and dictionary.com: nor·mal: - according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule, or principle - conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural. Biology, Medicine/Medical. - free from any infection or other form of disease or malformation, or from experimental therapy or manipulation Psychology. - approximately average in any psychological trait, as intelligence, personality, or emotional adjustment. - free from any mental disorder; sane. guess what? someone with a “relatively unique” medical problem is not normal! shock! awe! i doubt that you’ll find anyone who’s “normal” in every regard (and what’s so desirable about being average? in my view, average americans are generally selfish, incurious, and rude [not to mention over-fat, although, unlike the first three traits, high levels of body fat don’t offend me]) – how were you to know that “normal” in my original post did not contain a hidden value judgment? hmm, care to look at the original comment that offended you so? "Normal people (and anyone who's dependent on caffeine is probably 'normal', as opposed to hyper-sensitive) generally don't experience anxiety or panic attacks because of caffeine, but if someone DOES have an underlying anxiety disorder, caffeine can exacerbate it (as can any psychostimulant)". what did “normal” mean there? well, gee, i defined it for you right in the post: not hypersensitive to caffeine! as the vast majority of people aren’t! but if you’re the type of person who makes value judgments on the basis of whether something is “normal”, well, i guess we won’t agree on much! but again, since you and others have been so gracious, and eager for information, you might want to know that the evils of crack cocaine use have also been over-hyped. leiann: “What in the world erinzz???? She specifically said in her OP that her doctor said she MUST give it up and you post a page about crap she already knows, are you a MD? Geez!” actually, from the private messages she’s been sending me all week asking for my advice, her doctor is NOT the one who told her she should give up coffee – she got that from a nutritionist friend and the internet. several people also asked why anyone would ever give up coffee – i explained some of the risks/benefits, and attempted to refute safina’s inaccurate statement that “it is also preferable that you limit your coffee intake simply because it is addiction”. i’m glad that you already knew all that crap. obviously there were others on the site who didn’t, or else they would have already understood why some people choose to give up coffee. if safina had already known all that crap, she wouldn’t have been posting asking how long caffeine withdrawal lasts (which i believed i provided a clearer answer on than anyone else posting, but i wouldn’t expect someone like you, who already knows everything, to bother reading it before deciding that it’s a waste of your time [which obviously means that it’s a waste of EVERYONE’S time]). i’m not sure why you feel entitled to know information about my personal life: “are you a MD” no, i made my career as a street prostitute. i learned as a young teenager that there was nothing i loved quite so much as getting to be on the receiving end of other people’s rudeness and disdain, and therefore aspired to make a career out of it. alas, over the decades, being a whore took its toll. i got tolerant: my tricks, rude and disdainful though many of them were, simply were not rude and disdainful enough, and my deep need went sadly unfulfilled. so i retired, and quickly found that internet forums had more rude, disdainful people than i ever could’ve imagined during those years when i was spreading my legs for married men in exchange for cash. now, i spend my time posting on weight-loss forums (i figured that caloric restriction might make rude people even more so), just so i can get a taste of that old high. ah! feel better now? i guess since you already know everything about caffeine, and safina's situation, and what safina knows and doesn't know, and are so sensitive to information that wastes your time, i can at least try to make it up to you by telling you something that you apparently don’t know: it’s “an MD”, not “a MD” happy trails!
Weight Loss	Cheat days? How often?	Dec 06 2007 07:38 (UTC)	8
there's no need to feel guilty about cheat meals - they're GOOD for fat-loss, so long as they're used in moderation. when you do the same thing for too long (i.e. calorie restriction), your body gets used to it: your metabolism slows, your leptin levels drop, etc. to the extent that you can 're-set' your metabolism every so often to its former, higher level (not that this is necessarily done completely with a single crappy meal, but if you regularly eat at or slightly above maintenance once or twice a week, there's evidence that it can be beneficial for this), you're helping yourself!
Foods	caffeine withdrawal	Dec 06 2007 06:19 (UTC)	11
Safina, WHAT medical condition do you believe requires you to stop drinking coffee? was the diagnosis from your MD, or something you came up with on your own? despite the fact that many, if not most, coffee-drinkers are caffeine-dependent (that is, their coffee use is, in layperson's terms, "an addiction"), the dependence is not problematic for most of them and does not therefore require them to quit. there are some anti-caffeine zealots, whose websites you'll find if you look. they cite (and often - seemingly deliberately - twist) medical studies in attempts to show that coffee is really horribly dangerous. it's not. there are certainly risks to caffeine. a dose of 10 grams is considered "lethal" (that's equivalent to about 100 cups of coffee). like all psychoactive substances (and all drugs, for that matter), one must weigh the risks and the benefits. what are the risks? mostly psychological: anxiety, insomnia, in VERY rare cases, psychosis. "caffeinism", aka caffeine toxicity, can occur in some individuals, and it's dose-related (usually seen with higher doses - at least 500-1000mg) - psych symptoms mentioned above, plus tachycardia (rapid heart beat), arrhythmias, hypertension (high blood pressure), nausea. Normal people (and anyone who's dependent on caffeine is probably 'normal', as opposed to hyper-sensitive) generally don't experience anxiety or panic attacks because of caffeine, but if someone DOES have an underlying anxiety disorder, caffeine can exacerbate it (as can any psychostimulant). caffeine increases the heart's workload (cardiac contractility) and cardiac output - it therefore can raise blood pressure in those who are PRONE to hypertension - but it also dilates the coronary arteries + thereby provides more oxygen to the heart, so there's no agreement on whether it causes heart disease or hypertension, but if someone's at high risk for these, reducing the dose might be helpful. what are the benefits? primarily, pleasure and stimulation! people LIKE caffeine. it makes them more alert, helps them to get stuff done, puts them in a better mood, increases mental alertness. in terms of medical benefits, there's evidence that coffee-drinkers have much lower rates of gallstone disease. because it constricts cerebral blood vessels, it's a good headache-reliever. it can be helpful in asthma, due to its bronchial relaxatory effect. it can help some people with narcolepsy. etc..... whether someone "should" give up caffeine (or specifically, coffee) depends on the risks + benefits in their particular case. for most people, it's relatively safe. IF caffeine is a "dependency syndrome" (under the DSM definitions, substance abuse + dependence are in many ways more normative classifications than medical ones), it's certainly a mild one. there's a withdrawal syndrome, that is, as withdrawal syndromes go, VERY mild - headache, tiredness, bad mood, cravings for caffeine, minor cognitive + motor function impairments, etc. are common; b/c the symptoms usually begin slowly, as the caffeine is leaving your system (it's half life, in healthy adults, is around 4 hours), peak at a day or two, and subside completely within a few days.
Fitness	A messy metabolism	Dec 05 2007 08:15 (UTC)
angelbrenda, what's your ultimate goal + what's your current means of bringing it to fruition? it's hard to say how you could get better results when i don't know what you're doing now! natural v. processed peanut butter: don't rely on peanut butter alone for good fats - it has some omega-6s but almost no omega-3s. you need a balance (i believe almond + cashew butters have more balance in this regard; i also believe that most people already get decent amounts of omega-6s, and omega-3s are what you "need more of"). some brands of peanut butter are fortified with additional omega-3s (with flax seed oil), and THOSE are the expensive brands! if all you want is "natural" peanut butter, most, if not all, of the major brands make a "natural" version which is (when on sale) the same price as the regular stuff. AFAICT, the only difference b/w the natural stuff and the "crunchy" version of regular PB (which is the exact same price as the smooth) is the addition of a couple of preservatives in the latter (emulsifiers, sometimes hydrogenated oils and small amounts of sugar), but they don't remove anything. don't buy lite peanut butter - it has the same number of calories; they just remove some of the fat (which is what you want out of it, after all!) and replace it with sugar, which is the last thing you need (a food that's STILL high-fat but with decent amounts of added sugar). but as far as EFAs go, i don't think there's any difference b/w natural and non-natural peanut butter. buy whichever you prefer (plus, i'm of the belief for most people, that it's not worth spending a ton of money in order to get healthy. or, at the very least, it's not necessary. buy what's affordable). but don't rely on peanut butter as your only source of good fats.
Fitness	how many hours cardio?	Dec 04 2007 18:20 (UTC)
can't happen at the same time: building muscle is an anabolic process, losing fat is a catabolic one. nearly nobody can build LARGE amounts of muscle while in a calorie deficit (there are some exceptions: genetic superiors, people re-gaining muscle rather than building new muscle, true beginners). you can, however, gain strength. if you don't want to lose any more weight, you can do bulking, then cutting - eat a mild calorie surplus + lift weights to build muscle, then, once you have a decent amount, eat a mild calorie surplus, do cardio + lift weights to burn fat + preserve the muscle you have. you could also try zig-zagging, though it's slow.
Fitness	how many hours cardio?	Dec 04 2007 07:20 (UTC)	3
if you're on a 2-month long plateau, it sounds like your metabolism may have decreased. are you weightlifting? if not, start! keep doing cardio, maybe take a week or two off - your body gets accustomed to whatever you've been doing for too long. cycling cardio is a decent idea to try, if you can do it psychologically ;-). at the very least, try doing different things (differ the intensity, frequency, and duration - in your case, i'd say go lighter for a week, see what happens when you start back up again). you say that you eat at different times every day - big no-no if you want to maximize your ability to lose fat. when you're on a calorie deficit, you don't want your body to ever get the idea that it's 'starving' (which is not necessarily the same thing as being in starvation mode, just that your body is likely to keep a HIGHER metabolism if you feed it frequently. plus, you need to be feeding those muscles you don't want to lose! eat some protein and some complex carb every 3 or so hours and your results will likely improve). cheat days! when you're on a calorie deficit for a prolonged period of time, you body adjusts to it by slowing down your metabolism, decreasing your leptin levels, etc. by periodically taking "maintenance days", you can trick your body into not doing this - "re-set", if you will, to the higher metabolism you want. this DOES NOT mean eating "whatever you want" - it means eating at or above maintenance for at least one day per week. if i were trying to lose fat (which i never have, so this is based on what i've read, not personal experience), i would do two non-consecutive days/week. carb-cycling is something to try if those don't work. but if you just constantly increase your cardio when you're already on a plateau, your body will re-adjust to that, and you'll be stuck doing high levels of cardio (well, what i would call 'high'; though it may be slightly less than you're doing now) just to maintain. unless that's what you want, you need to build some variety into your fat-loss plan. and if you don't want to lose muscle, weightlifting and 5-6 small meals a day. there's no hard and fast answer to how much cardio people need to lose weight or to maintain. i've never done more than about an hour and a half of intentional cardio per week (doesn't count walking places, playing with my kids, etc.), but i've never seriously tried to lose fat (i had a couple extra lbs after my 2nd pregnancy, over a decade ago, but they just sort of 'fell off'). some people lose weight doing 30 mins 3x/week. many people need a bit more. here's the question: do you want to do more cardio than you absolutely have to? if the answer is yes, by all means, keep doing it! but, if i were you (and i'm not really a cardio-lover; although there are outdoor activities that i enjoy, i don't count those) and on a long plateau, i would take a several day "break" from fat loss - an adjustment period to get your metabolism moving again with higher calories + to de-adjust to the level of cardio you've been doing. then, i'd start over trying 30-45 mins 3x/week (plus HARD weightlifting 2-3x/week), AND good nutrition (regular meals containing protein and carbs), a maintenance day or cheat meal every 4 or so days, not too large of a calorie deficit. don't get on the scale until this adjustment period is over - then weigh yourself at the end of it and see if you start losing weight again. if not, then up the cardio, bit by bit, until you start losing weight. slow weight loss is a GOOD thing (how much do you weigh, btw? the closer you are to your goal weight, the more important it is to go slowly) - you're more likely to keep it off. losing weight too quickly is one of the things that causes you to lose muscle instead of fat. in my opinion, if you're doing hard cardio + want to do more than 60 mins on a given day, you'll get better results if you break it into 2 sessions. also, early-morning cardio seems to have gotten many people good results. just my opinion
Fitness	A messy metabolism	Dec 01 2007 05:01 (UTC)	3
Hi Safina, First of all, I would like to thank you for all your time and efforts. no “thank you” is necessary (although gratitude is certainly a virtue and deliberately cultivating internal gratitude can help you increase the peace in your life) – I got as much out of writing the previous post as you did from reading it because it helped show me certain negative things that I do. However, if you do truly feel gratitude to those who’ve attempted to help you, the best way to express it is not by saying “thank you” but rather by improving your own life and health. That’s all that anyone here is asking for. Your main point is there maybe a problem other than the amount I am eating or exercising... I agree that I have other problems in my life like everybody else but these problems are not my main concern. I can deal with them. When I wrote that it might be a problem other than the amount you eat or exercise, I wasn’t suggesting “problems” like stress from work, arguments with your boyfriend, financial difficulties, etc. (although to the extent that you can eliminate those problems or diminish their influence on your emotional state, your weight loss will go easier – stress raises cortisol, which is awful for both muscle-growth and fat-loss). I was referring to a potential MEDICAL or psychiatric problem. My main concern is I want to be able to FINISH what I have started since last March. Binging scares me. I also need to tell you that this is the first time in my entire life I am losing weight... I have tried so many times in the past, since I was a teen, with no luck at all. losing weight this time is a major joy because I am doing something I was NOT able to do since I was a kid. I assume that by “finish”, you mean meet your ultimate fat-loss goal? How did you try losing weight as a teenager, and in what way did the process get screwed up? improper information about how to “diet”? binging? just didn’t stick with it? any history you can give of your weight loss efforts may be helpful. Meeting nutritionist: That was the first thing I tried to do last March. I tried to meet someone who can help me to set up a good diet plan. Erin, I have to tell you that with my tight budget, I couldn't do it. I still can't do it. I can't pay $600 for a diet plan, then each time $130. My insurance doesn't cover it by the way. whoa, i NEVER suggested that you meet with a nutritionist; i suggested meeting with your DOCTOR. personally, i feel like nutritionists are overrated and often don’t know a whole lot (i’m sure there are exceptions, but i saw a nutritionist when i was first dx’d HIV+, and then a different one when I started wasting, and all I ever got was lectures on the food pyramid! LOL); doctors are also under-informed about nutrition (it’s barely covered in most med schools). I would never suggest that you pay $600 for a diet plan that you could come up with yourself or with the help of others online. However, your insurance MAY cover it (probably with a co-pay, but not a particularly large one) if your PCP refers you to the nutritionist and is willing to state that nutritional counseling is medically necessary for you. But I know nothing about your insurance coverage – that’s just a guess. there are some people, however, for whom a consultant with a nutritionist can be helpful, though: people with eating disorders who need education from “an expert” on proper dietary habits (although they generally need a LOT more than nutritional counseling in order to eat decently), people whose knowledge about nutrition is so lacking that they simply need to be informed, and people who have the information (or know where to find it – much easier now that the internet’s around, assuming that the person knows how to weed out the good from the crap), but are unable to apply it in their own lives without someone watching over them and telling them what to do. I don’t think you belong to the first two categories (binge eaters generally know how to eat well, but emotionally can’t help themselves from not doing so), you may belong to the third. You mentioned something about " stressed out by my job". Yes, I am but I don't want bother you with more details about this. well, i think you already talked about it in another post: you discussed lack of support from your co-workers and how that was leading to binges. let me just say this: the secret to happiness isn’t about having a life that outsiders would view as “perfect” or “stress-free”. unless you become a hermit, it’s almost a certainty that you’ll have to come into contact with people that rub you the wrong way (at least occasionally), that others will foist unreasonable or stress-inducing demands on you, that you will encounter rude and unsupportive individuals, etc. The key to happiness isn’t to avoid these things completely (which is impossible!), it’s to not let them interfere or have an undue influence on your emotional state. When someone says something rude to you, let it go! Don’t sit there thinking about it (either getting angry or feeling badly) – that’s letting the negativity of others influence you and steal away your attention, which they don’t deserve! what do the opinions of others have to do with YOU? a certain member of calorie-count who i won’t name [SEE! i told you that our correspondence was like Ginny writing to Tom Riddle - now YOU’VE become ‘he who must not be named’ ;-)] has helped me to tone down the influence of my emotions on my inner happiness. e.g., i hate driving, although i have to do it all the time. when i’m driving, every little thing used to irritate me, especially someone going what i perceived as “too slowly”. when i’m driving, and i start to feel irritable, or frustrated, or angry, etc., i recognize the emotion “hmm, now i’m starting to feel angry, my jaw is clenched and i’m gripping the wheel”, and simply expending my energy recognizing the emotion disrupts it: if i weren’t observing my emotions as if they were detached from me, i would be feeding them by getting angrier and angrier. when you’re walking to get food in the middle of binge, you’re probably rushing because you want the food so bad. instead of concentrating your thoughts on the food itself, concentrate on what you’re doing IN THE PRESENT MOMENT: rushing! then, slow down. start walking at a snail’s pace. then observe that you’re still walking to the candy store or starbucks. then turn around! Sleeping from 10-6 is a good idea and I will try to do that. How is it going? These are the sorts of updates we need to give good advice. I just wanna tell you that I finish work by 6pm, I go to starbucks and have coffee or something ( because my energy level usually is low at that time so I can't workout). the effects of caffeine (like most everything else) differ between individuals. but i would suggest that that may be too late in the day for coffee – if you’re having trouble falling asleep at 10, it may be because you’re drinking coffee just a few hours earlier. the more important question to ask is WHY are your energy levels so low at that time? I would suggest that it’s in part related to your failure to eat enough real meals during the day. AFAICT, you’ve only tried eating 5 well-balanced meals (each containing protein and a complex carb) throughout the day once, and it only lasted for one day because you immediately started binging again. what I ususally do is I spend an hour 6-7pm at starbucks, trying to get some energy from a banana and coffee, a banana and coffee is NOT a meal! and imo, it’s certainly not sufficient fuel for before you’re going to be lifting. then I hit the gym at 7pm. I work out and finish by 9pm. 2 hours in the gym is probably too long and likely unnecessary. with overly long workouts, you experience diminishing returns (particularly when you’re not adequately fueled), and can even cause harm. what are you doing there that takes 2 hours? I walk home, it takes about an hour of walking, and I am home by 10pm. At 10pm, I am very hungry, so the easiest thing to eat is broccoli and green vegetables. I eat a lot of broccoli like 400grams and I add some green vegetables. again, not a meal! if your goal is fat-loss, it’s ok to have veggies instead of a starchy carb for your final meal, so long as it’s not your post-lifting meal, but you STILL need protein! this is particularly the case because this is your post-workout meal, in which case you need some carbs other than vegetables. so there is really nothing left for the following morning as you suggested:) well, having food left for the following morning isn’t about how much you eat at night. if you’re on a deliberate calorie deficit, it’s unlikely that large amounts of leftovers are going to come about ‘accidentally’ on most days - it’s about cooking more, and deliberately putting half of it in a tupperware container for the next day. Thanks for the information about the blood tests. I will get this done soon. I am sure it will help a lot. I saw that you posted your Fe + hemoglobin results (more on that later). What specific tests did you get done? what were the other results? Depression is not an issue in my life. Of course, I have experienced it sometimes but I know that I am not a depressed person so it is not part of the problem. I only suggested that it MIGHT be an issue. MOST people who suffer from clinical depression are not “depressed people” – they are normal people, with normal affects, who are afflicted with feelings that are often beyond their control. Nobody would ever suggest that suffering from depression changes what kind of person you are. MY DIET: the binge happens only on the weekends. sounds like that’s not the case anymore (you’ve sort of been on a constant binge for at least several weeks, right?) I have had this problem a few weeks ago when I had a bad cold and gave myself the green light to eat WHATEVER I crave or want. yes, I remember – in a thread about eating/working out while sick, Tim posted that that’s what he was doing (eating as much as he could so that he could get to maintenance calories or slightly above, preserve as much muscle as possible, and recover more quickly) during his flu. That didn’t mean that YOU should’ve given yourself the green light to eat “whatever you want”. This is where you need to know yourself better. So somebody else is doing something and it works for them. does that mean that it will work for you? no! it may work for you, it may not. if you had been paying adequate attention to getting to know yourself, you should’ve been able to predict that giving yourself the green light to eat whatever you wanted WOULDN’T work for you. Tim isn’t you. Tim has never been an emotional over-eater (perhaps with the exception of one difficult 2-month period in his whole, 55-year-long life). When Tim eats “whatever he wants”, he doesn’t want huge binges day-after-day – he eats reasonable amounts of food, most of it decent food, with a few treats thrown in. Tim can eat a large banana split once a week as a treat and still stay on his fat-loss course. does that sound like you? NO! before you gave yourself the green light, you wrote another post where someone told you that maintenance days were a good thing, and you wrote something along the lines of how excited you were to be finally allowed to eat whatever you wanted, all the things that you’d deprived yourself of for so long. You were already set to eat a whole bunch of crap, not to eat normally but above maintenance. That should’ve told you that an entire cheat day was just too much leeway for you. It may not always be like this: in another post you analogized your sugar cravings to alcoholism/drug addiction, and suggested that complete abstinence from sugar was the only way for it to work. you should know, then, that contrary to the myth, a significant percentage of alcoholics CAN return to moderate drinking. Also, many drug addicts later age out of addiction (without treatment or any formal program), and some of them become chippers (occasional drug users) without ever returning to their addictions (although a study trying to teach illicit drug users ‘moderation’ is obviously much harder to get funding for and to conduct than it is for alcohol, “the most belligerent drug of all”). for right now, complete abstinence MAY be necessary for you (i don’t know this and neither does anyone else. the only person who can know this is YOU, and you’re currently waffling on it. what you need to do is take one week of healthy eating, just to get back into the habit, and the next week, try a treat [500 calories max, but it can be whatever you want], with the determination that you will not eat any more treats, but that you get one next week, and that this is PART of your fat-loss plan, not a deviation from it. if it turns into a binge [and you have a strong incentive here to control it, to NOT let it turn into a binge, because if it does turn into a binge, that means you won’t be able to give yourself further treats – at least of the same type. could be that only sugary treats lead to binging for you, in which case you can still have a treat once/week that’s not sugary – e.g. a piece of pepperoni pizza], but imo, your ultimate goal should be to learn how to control your binges without complete abstinence. A Gelnny's candy bar and a small non fat sugarless pumpkin muffin was the beginning. Since that time, I haven't stopped. It is like my body thinks that I should eat as much as I can on Sunday because there is no sweets tomorrow or during the entire week. ( as you know I follow a strict diet during the week). this isn’t your body (physical self) demanding sweets, it’s your mind! your body has NO IDEA whether more sweets are coming. after going so long without junk, it’s quite unlikely that your body has any physical need for them (which is not the same as saying that your body may not have a physical need for MORE food; or that you don’t have a PSYCHOLOGICAL need for occasional sweets). try this: instead of doing the ‘weekend thing’, do 3 days on your healthy diet (shouldn’t feel TOO strict, or it’ll be impossible to stick with), then take one “above maintenance” day where you eat healthy food, just more of it (this prevents your body from adapting to the constant calorie deficit with metabolic slow-down); on the second day of the three ‘below maintenance, healthy diet’ days, give yourself a treat; then you get a treat once every four days – that means you’re only on a totally strict [defined as both eating only healthy food and eating below maintenance] two days out of four, which should be easier. so to sum up: day one = healthy food below maintenance; day two = same as day one, but you get a treat; day three = healthy food below maintenance; day four = healthy food above maintenance. that way you never have to go too long without a maintenance day or a treat. if that doesn’t give you the results you want, do four days down, one day up, or do three days down, one day up, but only do a treat every other cycle. since you have difficulty with binge-eating, you need much stricter guidelines on what qualifies as “a treat”: start with 400 extra calories, no more. maybe go up to 500 when you get better at it. but, they can be the most fatty, sugary, junk-filled calories in the world. this treat is psychological: so you’re not CONSTANTLY on a diet. for other people, i’d say ‘have a cheat meal’, but with your binge-eating, you’d go overboard and not be able to come back. you’re not allowed to feel guilty about the treat – the treat is PART of your plan, not a deviation from it. I will defintely follow your suggestions, and Melkor's regarding increasing my protein and complex carbs. have you? if you’re eating 4000-5000 cals/day, it shouldn’t be too hard to get 150gms of protein! sounds like you’re not doing that though. By the way, I am not an emotional eater but my sweet cravings are a mystery. i’m sorry to tell you this, but you ARE an emotional eater, Safina. Here’s a quote from one of your recent posts: “I am binging because I wanted to get another job and I didn't get the offer.” That’s an EMOTIONAL, not a physical, reason for binging. eating in response to stress, anger, crappy events in your life, etc. is not normal, particularly when you’re eating an amount of food SO much larger than you need (most people your size would find taking in 4000-5000 calories/day physically aversive. i eat that much because it’s necessary, and even though i’m about 30lbs lighter than you, i’m quite a bit taller and probably have more muscle, since i’ve been trying to gain muscle while you’ve been losing it, and i find that much food incredibly difficult to maintain). you’re using food to fill some need other than hunger. I can give up fruits. I already did. doubtful, but more importantly, unnecessary. i don’t see anyone suggesting that you give up fruit (again, this is part of your flawed thinking that’s leading to overly restrictive diets followed by binges) – the suggestion was that if you’re craving sugar, you’re not doing enough to keep your blood sugar levels stable. worry less about the glycemic index (which you seem to be over-relying on), and more about keeping your meals balanced: e.g. 50-55% carbs, 20-25% protein, 20% fat. that will stabilize your blood sugar more than avoiding fruit, or picking your carbs on the basis of the GI. Yesterday... It was a bad day because I had another binge. predictable. Tim told me about the online book but because I don't have access to the internet at home, I didn't know what to do since it is an online book, there is no hard copy I can buy or keep. I don't want to download the book at work. I really wanted to buy and read it but what can I do? nothing at the moment. actually, there’s a lot you can do at the moment. if you have a computer at home (and just no hooked onto to the internet), you can log onto the internet + buy the book at work, save a hard copy to a disk, bring the disk home to read it on your computer. if you want a hard copy, you’re allowed to print one – log on somewhere with both the internet and a printer, buy the book, print a copy to keep (if you’re not allowed to make personal printouts at work, go to a copy shop, like kinkos, and print it there). all of this is made explicit on the book’s website. solutions to your problems are out there, if you’re willing to find them (if you’re not, nobody can do it for you). I am so glad that you offered me help. I can send you more details if you would like so I can start a new plan. actually, what I would like (and i’m sure that many other people who are responding to your posts in an effort to help) is for you to fill out your profile, detailing your goals and current approach (diet + exercise) – update it as necessary, without deleting the former entries. unless someone keeps up w/ all your posts, or is willing to search them like i did (which only took 10 mins btw; i just googled 'safina1' and 'tired' i think, and got about 80 responses, and skimmed them), what's ACTUALLY going on w/ you from day to day is somewhat of a mystery! I also liked what you said about gaining the fat. " if you gain ½ lb of fat one week, don’t look at that as failure, look at it as part of your experiment, and an opportunity to gain useful information about what works for you and what doesn’t. " it is really supportive. my intention wasn’t support – it was to tell you the truth! every bit of information you can get about yourself is valuable, and looking at any experience as “a complete failure” is a negative attitude that will spill into the rest of your life and emotional well-being. Now, I am craving something sweet, not sure what to do. what to do? get control over your cravings! Hopefully, I will make my way to the gym today and not to the candy store. again, wrong attitude: the attitude you want is “i WILL make my way to the gym and not to the candy store”. these are things that are within your control. if they’re not, then you need help beyond what I can give you (i believe that this is likely the case). when you wobble on something (“maybe I’ll go to the gym today, if I’m not too tired” “hopefully i’ll start counting calories tomorrow”), a large percentage of the time, you’ll do the “easy”, comfortable thing (go to the candy store instead of the gym; keep binging instead of counting calories) instead of taking the action that will move you in the direction of your goals. when you’re hearing a little voice telling you “boy, i could sure go for another slice of pumpkin pie”, be aware of the feeling, and don’t try to think your way out of it: thinking about the craving feeds it, lets it take over your mind and grow stronger. just be AWARE that it exists, but don’t let it control you (“silly craving! why would i listen to some stupid, evil voice that is trying to make me do things that will move me further from my goal!”). you know where the candy store is! a few blocks away, before the need to go in arises, picture yourself walking by it, resisting its call to destroy your diet plan (if the desire to eat candy arises earlier in the day, whenever it arises, be aware of it [hmm, some voice is telling me I need candy right now”], and tell it “sorry, can’t listen to you! you don’t know what you’re talking about!” recognize that certain voices/feelings/urges are out to sabotage you! who gives the orders – them or you? but these are just suggestions – i’ve never had a problem with food cravings (as a teenager, however, i gave up drugs and spent a long while occasionally craving coke/crack, meth, and, to a lesser degree, opiates; they were powerful cravings when they arose, but when I was going to be in a high-drug-traffic area [i happened to be supporting myself at the time by dancing in a club where drugs were sold], i would make the firm decision beforehand that i wasn’t going to be using drugs that day, no matter what man offered to give me some. after a few months of saying “no thank you” every time a client offered me a line or hit, it became a habit and I rarely ever desired them anymore. you live alone, right? so there’s nothing in the fridge that you didn’t put there, and no kids demanding unhealthy, sugary snacks on demand – that makes it easy! only keep healthy foods in your fridge, no reason to tempt yourself, and then if you want something sweet, you’ll have to go out to get it. that time when you’re walking to the store to buy something sweet is currently time when you’re feeding your cravings – giving them emotional energy that they don’t deserve [you wrote in another post that you were actually rushing the woman in front of you at starbucks because you couldn’t wait to get your hands on those cakes. that means that the entire time you were on your way there and standing in line, the only thing that you were thinking about were those cakes] – as soon as the craving arises, recognize it [being aware of your emotions and urges is the only way to get them to stop controlling you – otherwise your actions are unconscious, and by the time you recognize them, they’ve grown far too strong], make the firm decision to let it go! visualize dropping a hot coal), so it’ll probably be more helpful to talk to someone who has – there are plenty of people on this site with binge-eating disorders, and many people who’ve overcome them. reach out to them. learn from their experiences. (later post) I should change the title of this post. I am not dizzy any more since I have been binging like crazy everyday. suggests that you weren’t eating enough calories. My daily calorie intake is probably 4000-5000 calories. Most of them from junk food. Muffins, cakes, cookies, and icecream. you have no physical need for that much food (if you did, you wouldn’t be gaining weight at an already-healthy weight), or for those types of food. I eat approximately the same number of calories (5000 calories is my daily goal, although I don’t always meet it) – i find having to eat that much annoying and aversive, no matter what kinds of food i’m eating (it’s impossible to get that many calories/day on entirely healthy foods, at least if you’re not 100% devoted to cooking and eating, which I’ve chosen not to be). eating once you’re already full is PHYSICALLY uncomfortable. if you’re feeling compelled to do it, the problem is psychological, not physical. I don't need to mention that i have gained weight, about 8 pounds of PURE fat. Most of them in my midsection and hips. what was your bf% before you started binging, and what is it now? I know that my body was in a starvation mode, I have lost muscles in the past few months because I was working out very hard with a strict diet. mistake #1! if your calorie deficit was so large (due to strict dieting and exercise) that you LOST muscle, you were either in too great a deficit or not taking sufficient steps to preserve your muscle (that is, weightlifting in the right way, which Tim has already talked to you about). sounds like it was probably both. so long as you’re eating so far above maintenance, this is a great time to get some of that muscle back. you VERY rarely see huge muscle growth and huge fat loss occurring at the same time. for the former, you need a calorie surplus; for the latter, you need a calorie deficit (doing the exact same weights, you’ll get different results depending on diet). at the level you’re eating, no amount of cardio is going to make a huge difference: so long as your eating is out-of-control, focus on gaining some muscle (incidentally, you’re eating far more than is required to achieve maximal muscle growth, but so long as you’re above maintenance, if you lift, you should gain muscle. then when you get back on the fat-loss wagon, you’ll have extra muscle to help you on the journey, so long as you preserve it this time). if you can’t stop over-eating, at least use the calorie surplus for all the productive things you can. Because of the binges, I have gained fat right away. I destroyed 2 months of hard work and I feel like I gain one pound of fat every day. binges obviously can cause fat-gain, but it’s likely exacerbated by the fact that your metabolism slowed down while you were on the strict diet. not knowing when your body was going to get fed decently again, your body was in ‘fat storage’ mode because it’s worried that there might be another famine at some future time! that’s what starvation mode is – a response to famine, and when you’re not eating decently, your body assumes that there’s a famine. Can you help me to get out of this situation? what is the best strategy to start losing fat again? SLOWLY! in another post written just a couple days ago, you said that you wanted to lose 10-15 lbs by christmas. unless you want to lose mostly water weight and muscle, that is by far the wrong way to lose weight. 5lbs by xmas is reasonable (you only weigh around 150lbs right now – at most, lose 1.5 lbs/week, so that would be about 6lbs by xmas). 15 lbs would be 3.75 lbs/week – that’s an 1875 calorie/day deficit, which is dangerous (considering that that’s approximately what your MAINTENANCE calories are!) – if you choose to do that, the vast majority of your weight loss will come from muscle. 10 lbs of fat lost by xmas = 1250 calorie deficit, still unhealthy and unrealistic. start here: 1900 calories a day split into 6 meals: breakfast: 6:30 am: 450 calories mid-morning meal: 9:30 am: 300 calories lunch: 12:30, 300 calories mid-afternoon meal: 3:30: 300 calories dinner: 6:10 (SKIP STARBUCKS AND EAT SOME BLOODY DINNER! you’ll feel better and save a fortune!): 250 calories gym: 6:30-7:30/7-8 post-workout meal (for days you’re lifting; cardio days you can make it smaller and add a few calories to an earlier meal if you want): 7:30-8 300 calories walk home: 7:30-8:30/8-9 no food once you get home, prepare meals for next day bedtime = 10pm start there. remember, EVERY meal = some protein (if you get an average of 25 grams protein at each meal, that’s 150 grams/day. i have your calories staggered, so it may be easier to get, e.g. 30 grams at breakfast and only 20 in your mid-afternoon meal, but your post-workout meal must be protein-rich), a complex carb (potato, rice, bread, oatmeal, etc.), and, if that doesn’t “feel like” enough, since you like fruits and veggies, something with fiber in it, to help you feel full. NO SNACKS – if you’re so hungry that you can’t wait for your next meal (which is only 3 hours away at most), have your next meal early. your snacks are not good for you because they tend to be all-carb, high sugar (e.g. fruit) – stuff that might be ok if they were eaten in a meal, but which you shouldn’t be eating on your own. multivitamin: if your Fe + hemoglobin levels were low, shows that an iron supplement might help (e.g. Feosol). but since your other vitamin/mineral levels weren’t tested, you don’t know what other deficiencies you have (although people, esp women, often have iron-deficient anemia with no other vitamin deficiencies, the vast majority of people have SOME vitamin deficiency), and anyways, it’s cheaper to just take a multivitamin than a separate supplement for each deficiency you have. I would recommend that EVERYONE on a calorie deficit take a multivitamin, and probably most people who aren’t on a calorie deficit too. H20: try for 10 glasses (80 fl oz) day. tea, sugar-free beverages, coffee, etc. don’t count. no other beverage counts, and caffeinated beverages are dehydrating, so may want to add some more. workouts: cardio: ease into it. start with 30 mins/cardio 3x/week. up it to 45, maybe do 4 days a week. after that point, raise intensity, not length. if you’re going to do an hour or more of cardio on a given day, better to split it into 2 sessions. but there’s not necessarily any NEED for you to do that much cardio. you want to lose weight slowly (you don’t have much to lose; people at higher weights can lose more quickly, as they can maintain a larger deficit without being in danger of starvation, but for EVERYONE, the slower you lose, the more likely you are to keep it off). more importantly, you want to find something that will be sustainable for you over the long haul. weights: it’s unclear what sorts of lifting you were doing before you stopped. what exercises, split, sets, weight, reps, etc? that’ll help to give better advice. how many days you need to do it will depend on what sort of routine you’re working (a split may be able to be done – and may even require – more days than a full-body workout), but no session should last longer than 45-60 mins. err on the side of 45 in the beginning, and it’s fine if it goes quicker. measure body fat + weight [and measurements if you want] at least once a week – it’s nearly impossible to give you feedback based on your own (possibly distorted) perceptions of what you look like at any given time. much more helpful if you write “last week, i was 155lbs, 28% BF; this week i’m 156lbs, 27% BF, my goal is....” this is why you need to fill out an ongoing profile: start today. put your weight, your goals, your BF%, how much you’re currently eating, macronutrient ratios, and what sorts of exercise you’re doing. anytime there’s a change in anything, update it, without deleting the previous entries. sometimes a fresh pair of eyes can see patterns that you can’t set clear, realistic, measurable goals. e.g. weekly goal: lose 1.5lb of fat (no muscle loss) monthly goal: lose 6 lbs of fat ultimate goal: whatever your ‘goal weight’ is; once you know your BF%, you can also know what it SHOULD be at your goal weight (based on, “if i lose, e.g., 20lbs of fat and no muscle, what %age should i be at?”). reward yourself for meeting goals! but food rewards are probably ill-advised for you, so think of something else. remember: i’m not you. i don’t know what works for you. this is a basic plan that should work, but it may need to be tweaked for your needs. give it a try for 2 weeks, see what happens. post your results. I guess one of the reasons I have been binging is I am not happy with the reaction of my co-workers and people who are around me towards my weight loss. exactly! binging because you’re unhappy (about anything!) is emotional over-eating. you’re either using food to numb some emotion you don’t want to feel, or you’re using your unhappiness as an excuse to overeat. either way, you need to conquer it. they simply don't want me to lose weight. I was shocked when I was talking to one of my co-workers and I told her that I have gained weight recently and I eat more than I used to. she said " good to know". that is one examples of many others. well, seeing as how you were eating at starvation levels before, perhaps her comment that it’s good that you were eating more shouldn’t be taken as unreasonable. if EVERYONE in your life thinks you looked fine and healthy at a given weight, wanting to be thinner and thinner MAY not be healthy (i don’t know if that’s the case for you – at 5’3, 150lbs, some women would look chunky, some would look average, some would look great!). but if you were perceiving it as rude or unhelpful, why should you be letting that sort of thing affect you to the point that it’s moving you away from your goal? not responding emotionally to what other people think of you is very freeing. anyway, your advice is much appreciated. I also would like to hear from Melkor, David and others on what I should do in terms of exercise. I had another week off and I don't feel like I want to go to the gym exercise: lift weights (what were your routines before? that’s necessary in order to give you better advice), session should take no more than 45-60 mins. cardio – shorter sessions (you can, and maybe should, increase the intensity). if you want 60+ minutes of cardio/day, better do them in 2 sessions. after a certain point, you’re likely really not helping yourself. if you’re able to do an hour of cardio, you’re probably not doing it at the intensity of which you’re capable! (this isn’t a rule that applies to everyone, but as a beginner, it probably applies to you) some people work out 2 hours in a row in an intense way and are fine. you’re not one of them. it’s clearly unsustainable for you to work out that long (given that you often go through periods of not wanting or not being able to do it), and you’re also not getting the results you want! now to get on to your comments from more recent posts: Actually, I didn't even need that brownie . It was a BAD advice that I got from someone and I really regret it. you’re confusing “bad advice” with “mistaken application”. The advice itself was GOOD (before your big binge a few weeks ago, YOU didn’t even seem to know that you had a binge-eating disorder - how was anyone else supposed to? for most people who don’t binge, cheat meals are a good thing and have little negative, and often some positive, impact on their fat loss). you can’t expect other people to tell you exactly what you should do, especially when you give so little of the information that’s necessary to help you. right now, you hop from post to post, gimmick to gimmick (just to name a few: very low-carb diets, detox diets, switching from oatmeal to shakes [if neither you nor jenmcc noticed, the shake had significantly more CALORIES than the oatmeal – that may explain most of the difference in her results], amino acid supplements, abstaining from fruit, and so on....). you’re trying to master the tricks before you’ve mastered the basics: solid nutrition, regular exercise. as far as i can tell, you only ever tried solid nutrition for ONE day, and then went back on your sugar binge run. start with decent nutrition (5 meals a day, decent macronutrient combos in each, enough protein), REAL weightlifting (you said in at least one post that your weightlifting was “light” – even though you didn’t define that term, it should be the opposite!), enough sleep (if you’re not going to bed significantly earlier, you shouldn’t be waking at 5am to go running, as you wanted to start doing in another post), a multivitamin, reasonable amounts of cardio, etc. you’re a student, right? so here’s a not-very-good analogy: you’re like a college student who’s worried about failing and thinks their problem is that they haven’t found the right ‘cheat-sheet’ or spoken to enough people about how they passed the class, when you’re not even attending your lectures and doing your assigned reading. there’s a good chance that if you went to your lectures and did your reading, you wouldn’t be worried about passing because it would be obvious that you were on your way there. that person assured me it was ok to have a cheat meal once in while and I should not be hard on myself. I was ok with having a brownie and at that time I was not really crazy about it. well, if you weren’t crazy about it, why did you do it? these are the sorts of questions you need to be asking yourself. you either misunderstood jenmcc’s advice (which was crystal clear) or you simply disregarded it! i actually think you’re re-writing history a bit here. let’s look back at your posts leading up to your binge: you: “Jenmcc: Many thanks:) what is the definition of a cheat day? LOL mine would be a whole pumpkin pie,a bowl of ice cream, a milk chocolate bar, a chocolate cake and one cup cake. what do you think?:)” jenmcc: “A cheat day for me is eating at maintenance, but without necessarily counting every last bite. It's about practicing intuitive eating, eating until full but not stuffed. And yeah, go ahead and have ONE of those treats! If you are craving carbs, maybe your body needs them. Yesterday I went for a long run, and by dinner my body was screaming for carbs. I was dragging around tired and exhausted from the run... just feeling off.” you: “A treat and a break. You guys are the best. I bought cocovia and put it in the fridge. I also have vita muffins. Jenmcc: it is good that you had what you wanted. but hey are you saying only ONE of those treats?:)” jenmcc: “Safina, yes, just one :-). Or look at it this way: whatever is your maintenance level of calories, eat that amount today! This is like a zig-zag diet... lots of people here do the zig-zag thing.” you: “jenmcc: many thanks. the problem is I don't know for sure what my maintaince level of cals is:) as I mentioned earlier I am confused about that.” anyways, about two weeks earlier, you’d written: you: “Anyway, I am glad I have not found them [vitamuffins] yet... It sounds like they are so yummy and I might end up eating all of them:)” even earlier (sep 4, well over a month before you started binging, you wrote): you: “HALLOWEEN is coming.. I see chocolate everywhere around me and I get crazy. After 6 months of dieting and losing a lot of weight, I miss chocolate. During this period, I have been avoiding it by all means. I haven't had it for 6 months and now I just go to the store to have a look at it.” you also advised someone (prior to your binge): you: “just be careful with jello chocolate. they are 6 snacks and if the person can't control his portions - which is always the case- he will end up having 360 calorie jello snacks. I did that last night because it was so good and simply AVAILABLE. one snack didn't satisfy me because it is just small.” immediately after the start of your binge, you wrote: “I have been on a strict diet for 9 months but couldn't stop the urge to get some cakes from starbucks. I just had three today and I don't feel guilty about it but just want to figure out what is next for me. I decided to give my body what it wanted. I have been starring [sic] at the cakes for 3 months.. I felt like starving.... caught a cold for two weeks so I decided to have the followings I cheat sometimes but my cheating days have changed since I joined cc. last weekend, I cheated but chose to pick sugar free chocolate, reduced fat icecream and fat free sugar free muffins. I also had two chocolate muffins and one apple tart from Strabucks but that is because I really wanted them. After cheating days, it is time to be back on track. Hopefully” what’s my point in reprinting this? that you KNEW you were going to binge before you gave yourself the green light to do so; that you’d never been completely off of sugar and junk (which is fine), and that even after the binge, you were at best conflicted about whether you wanted to go back to healthy eating. before you have a treat, if you’re already thinking about 10 different things that you want, and know that ONE treat won’t satisfy you, then you should just skip it. I have gained weight. I don't know how much. the scale says it is about 5-6 pounds. I don't believe that because I feel it is more than that. how can you tell? my waist line went 3 inches up. I think this is more than just 5 pounds. what do you guys think? how can I know? thanks. well, you’re confusing two things: weight gain and fat gain. you may have a distorted body image (i don’t know this because i’ve never seen you), but if you don’t, it’s possible that you’ve only gained 5-6 lbs of WEIGHT, but gained much more than that in FAT (e.g. gained 10 lbs of fat, lost 4 lbs of muscle = net weight gain of 6 lbs). this is why body fat testing is essential. weight alone tells you very little (sounds like the measuring tape is telling you more). (from the exact same thread, on the exact same day): Thanks. Actually I was 157 last week after my binges but now I am 148. I don't know if that is real?? I can't tell from just looking at myself in the mirror. I really don't know but three inches is a lot. wait, did you gain weight or lose weight? this is why you need to keep a profile. even reading all your messages, it’s impossible to tell what’s going on with you from day-to-day. more importantly, if in a single week you lost 9 lbs, much of that is likely water weight, but also, you may be losing muscle (i have no idea because i have no idea what you’ve been doing – if i had some idea of your calories + activities this last week, i could make a decent guess of whether you’ve lost significant muscle). if it’s all water weight, your loss next week should be much slower (because of the water weight factor, count your weight + BF% your second week – this week, that is – as your ‘starting weight’, if you’re going to set reasonable goals) Brent: Lucky you:) I don't have any machines in my place plus I have to walk to the gym for about half an hour. I don't have a problem getting up at 5 am. I do have a problem going out at that time. No way I can put any machines in my place. the owner wouldn't allow me. I have no option other than working out outside once again, like with venuto’s book, you make excuses rather than find solutions. there have had to be a dozen posts in the past couple months about how people without machines work out in their apartments. you can buy an exercise (aerobics) video on ebay or amazon for a penny! you can get a rebounder! you can use a jumprope! there are a million ways to work out in your apartment without installing machines if that’s what you really want to do. oh, is the gym 30 mins away or an hour away from where you live? instead of doing cardio at the gym, why don’t you just run home? jenmcc: you are describing something I have been through for about a month. I used to eat plain oatmeal and it doesn't fill me up. after two hours, I hurry to eat cookies and junk food. despite all the sugary food I have had, my blood test came and my sugar level is a bit low ( borderline). the doctor said it is ok. jenmcc is pre-diabetic; if YOU were pre-diabetic, your fasting glucose levels would be HIGH, not low. low fasting blood glucose levels (if they’re low enough) can mean hypoglycemia, and can be caused by a variety of things – e.g. malnutrition (sound familiar?), hypothyroidism (did you run that panel?). how low were your values? it does you little good to assume that because someone has similar SYMPTOMS to you that the things that help them will help you. if you don’t have the same medical condition, their solution COULD help you, but it could also be useless or even detrimental. fasting and reactive hypoglycemias aren’t the same thing. if you think you have an issue with blood sugar following food intake, you need to do further tests that may indicate reactive hypoglycemia. i was going to go back and edit some of this. i got your PM, though, so i don’t want to keep you waiting. i don’t have a lot of time right now + i’m not having a good week, so sorry if some of it came off as harsh.
Fitness	A messy metabolism	Nov 19 2007 00:01 (UTC)	10
hi Safina, i know you were supposed to have blood tests done this past week. i've been waiting to hear the results before posting further advice. have you gotten them back yet? how's the rest of your week been going, in terms of diet and exercise? i read in other posts that you had one good day eating 5 meals a day, and then the next day binged. what's happened since then?
Health & Support	Wellbutrin and weight	Nov 18 2007 08:08 (UTC)	1
Wellbutrin (bupropion) is a dopamine receptor agonist, and there's some evidence that it can cause weight loss in some individuals. e.g. patients on bupropion lost an average of 2.5 lbs in a 12 week study where patients weren't dieting or exercising; patients not taking it gained weight while 28% of people who took it lost 5lbs or more; in another randomized double blind study that put two groups of non-depressed obese people on the same moderate exercise regimen + reduced-cal diet, the group that also took 400 mg of Wellbutrin per day lost 10.1% of their body fat, while the group that took a placebo lost only 5% - a pretty big difference! but there are significant qualifications to this: one qualification is that the weight loss sometimes seen on bupropion is usually not dramatic, and most studies only looked at short-term weight loss (that is, weight which may be - and often is - regained). for some people, the drug can decrease cravings, but that MAY be an effect that some people get more tolerant to over time. also, there ARE patients on wellbutrin who GAIN weight - you should note, however, that fewer patients gain weight on wellbutrin than other antidepressants. in terms of anecdotal reports of people losing weight while on bupropion, there may be confounding factors: many, if not most, people taking wellbutrin do so because they are depressed - for that reason, they may have switched to wellbutrin from a different antidepressant, many of which DO cause weight gain. another qualification - when it comes depressed patients, many of them either under- or over-eat [traditionally seen as a symptom of atypical depression, but plenty of patients with plain old MDD over-eat] while depressed. if wellbutrin helps to resolve the depression, the eating pattern may be normalized (this applies to all antidepressants), and any weight gain or loss may be due to that, rather than a pharmacological 'weight-loss [or gain!] effect'. but there's no doubt that in some patients, wellbutrin can cause some weight loss. i wouldn't count on it to do the work for you though!
Health & Support	Dieting while nursing/calories burned	Nov 18 2007 07:48 (UTC)	2
hi (supposed to be studying on this saturday nite, but oh well!)! well, i haven't had a baby or nursed in well over a decade, but, IIRC, how many calories you burn will depend on how much milk you're expelling (as, obviously, that milk is calories out of your body). it's impossible to know EXACTLY how many calories you're giving your baby on your own (even if you weigh your baby before and after feedings, you still don't know exactly what the caloric content of the milk you fed him or her is - this varies to some extent from woman to woman, but also, based on time of day + when the last feeding was (owing to the variation in fat content) - so long as your baby is gaining weight at a healthy rate, there's no reason to know - ultimately, there wouldn't be a reason to know how many calories are leaving your body even if your baby WASN'T gaining weight at a healthy rate, since VOLUME of milk taken in by the baby is what's correlated with infant growth). how many calories you burn doesn't depend on how LONG you breastfeed - it depends on how much milk is ultimately leaving your body (and women/infants vary greatly in the rate of milk flow). average estimates for a newborn range from about 250-500 calories per day (another study cites an average of 670 cals/day as average energy output for lactating women, but didn't say how old the babies were). as your baby is 5 months, and it would appear from the amount of time you're feeding her that breast-milk is the major, if not exclusive part of his/her baby (is it a boy or a girl? not that it matters here - just curious), the amount of milk your baby drinks is probably at the high end or possibly much higher (weight of the baby matters here, but older exclusively breastfed babies obviously take in more than younger ones). but this isn't what you really need to know - you want to know how to lose fat when nursing :-). congrats on the new baby, by the way! can't believe i didn't say that earlier! it's perfectly ok to operate with a mild calorie restriction while nursing - even in cases of pretty severe malnutrition, the milk women give to their babies is usually fine - the danger with being malnourished while nursing is largely to the mother, not the infant, as your body will take what it needs to feed your baby from YOU, if you are not eating adequately. maternal nutrition generally has only a mild impact on the quality and quantity of breastmilk (this has been EXTENSIVELY studied: e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=p ubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch =9478032&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSys tem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubme d_RVAbstractPlus, there's some evidence that the type of fats you eat can alter the types of fat in breastmilk, but that overall fat content does not change very much based on changes in dietary habits. ok, i'll spare you the findings of all the research unless you're curious). no matter how many calories you're eating, if you're worried that you're not getting "adequate nutrition" (in terms of vitamins and minerals - just as common among those who eat plenty, but all of it junk, as those who don't eat enough), take a supplement (you should probably just keep taking your prenatal vitamins anyways). you can lose weight while nursing, but you don't want to do it TOO quickly (but that should apply all of the time - slower fat loss is more likely to be sustainable + maintained over time). many women 'naturally' lose weight while nursing (that is, without really trying) simply because they keep eating their normal caloric intake, and the fact that they are breastfeeding creates a natural deficit. BUT, the general rule (don't ask me where it comes from!) is that in the first two months of breastfeeding, you don't want to lose more than 1lb/week (which comes out to a daily deficit of 500 calories) because that is when milk production is still being established, and drastic weight loss during that time can interfere with the process. oops, just saw that your baby is 5 months (gotta edit some previous comments!). so, it would probably be ok if you went a tiny bit faster than that, but 1lb/week is actually pretty good weight loss (how much do you weigh?), so if you want to be cautious, stick with that. all studies show that it's BENEFICIAL, not harmful, for a lactating woman to exercise (at least moderately). i assume that in your weight loss, you want to lose FAT, not muscle, right? (if you don't know, the correct answer here is "YES"! ;-) - at least one reason for this is that your basal metabolic rate is largely determined by the amount of lean mass that you have, so losing muscle is just plain counterproductive to fat loss + maintenance of you new body). losing weight too quickly makes it more likely that you're losing large amounts of muscle with the fat, although the more fat you have to lose, the more fat you can lose in a given period (e.g. a week) without also losing muscle. therefore, it is essential that you know your body fat percentage - as your losing weight, you will therefore know how much fat and how much muscle you're losing (the way to preserve muscle during fat loss is through resistance training - i.e., lifting weights): for example (i'm just making up numbers because i don't know your stats, so i'm picking ones where the calculation is easy), if you start at 200lbs and 25% body fat, that means you have 50lbs (200 X .25) of fat and 150 lbs (200 - 50; or 200 x .75) of lean mass (which includes a lot of things other than your muscles - e.g. your bones); if you were to lose 10lbs and STILL be at 25% bf, that means you would have 47.5 of fat (190 x .25) - a loss of 2.5 lbs of fat; the other 7.5 lbs you lost would be muscle. it is essential that you know your BF% so that you don't inadvertently do this! once you know that the weight you are losing is fat, it is relatively easy to figure out your caloric needs (this will be more complicated if you're also losing muscle): say that you lose 1lb (of fat) in a given week. 1lb of fat = 3500 calories. that means you were operating at a 3500 calorie deficit that week, or a 500 calorie/day deficit, NO MATTER WHAT any online calculator or other device tells you about your basal metabolic rate, or how many calories you burn during a given activity, or how many calories are in your breastmilk. that simplifies things, huh? since you're counting calories, you know how many calories you're eating. the easiest way to know how many calories you need is by constantly (at least once/week) taking your weight and measuring your BF%. right now, it's hard to say what your needs are because you lost 10lbs in 1 month, about 2.5 lbs/week, but we have no way of knowing how much of that loss was fat, lean mass, water, etc. the best (and easiest!) way to figure out your needs is to go by your results. lastly, one "trick" of nursing women who want to lose weight is to express (manually or by pump) their extra milk. less full breasts have higher fat content, and how much milk you make depends on how full or empty your breasts are at a given time (hence, for women who aren't making enough milk, "emptying" their breasts is recommended), so you don't need to worry about this reducing the quality or quantity of milk for your baby. you should, however, probably empty them AFTER your baby has fed, for the obvious reason. on an aside, if you do have extra milk (and if you don't, you can easily increase milk flow by extra feedings and expressing as much as you can), think about donating the extra to a milk bank - lose weight and do good at the same time! many women are unable to breastfeed their infants (e.g. women whose babies are so premature that their milk production isn't established yet; infants of HIV-postive women [you may have heard about the relatively simple heating process that kills most of the virus in breastmilk, but thusfar, this is only recommended in the third-world, where the mother's breast milk is all that may be available. in the US, it's still not generally recommended for HIV+ women to breastfeed] - thus, in many cases, the infants who need breastmilk THE MOST are the ones whose mothers may be unable to provide it to them), and because of the enormous benefits of breastmilk, donated milk is the only way to get it to them. if you're thinking of pumping your extra milk as a weight loss trick, you may want to consider giving that extra milk to an infant in need (of course, a lot of factors will affect whether that's feasible or even possible for you - contact your local milk bank if you're interested).
Fitness	Cardio on an empty stomach for Fat Loss!	Nov 13 2007 06:10 (UTC)	2
lest anyone see mecray's photos and think there's some secret out there he can sell you: the website mecray gives (www.cole.mecray.com) leads to the website of a man named john mecray who sells first-edition prints of yaughts - what does that have to do with fat-loss? the website listed on your profile (www.panzerplan.com), OTOH, does claim to be a fat-loss "strategy" with cole mecray as their prime success story (that is, the first-listed testimonial, and the only success story with actual pictures attached) - you can pay (amount of money unspecified - you have to email for details, which is, i assume, when they decide how much of a sucker you are) for them to personally design a diet and exercise plan for you - all things you can easily do for yourself, especially with the FREE expertise and knowledge you can find online. there are no secrets to any of this (and everyone should look with great suspicion at anyone who claims that there are), but if you want all of the "tricks" located in a single source, enough people seem to have found significant amounts of useful info in tom venuto's 'burn the fat feed the muscle' (i dislike the ebook format myself, but a lot of people - including those whose intelligence i greatly respect and who have no affiliation with the website/product they're shilling for - recommend this book, so that's enough for me!). mecray: if you're going to use these forums for obnoxious self-glorification, at least have the decency to be respectful towards those who are trying to provide helpful information to others for free. now, let's truth-squad your comments towards melkor: "Before speaking gospel on weight training you should gather some data, and prove results! Quoting doctors doesn't justify results." what data have you presented - your original post and your website present NO data! your website has not a shred of evidence to back it up, other than four people (and for three of them, no evidence is given that they even exist!) who say it worked for them. i'm sure i could find four people who say the cabbage-soup-diet or even a hot-dog-only diet worked like a charm! i'm also sure i could make up some lovely testimonials about how well "the erinzz astrology-based fat-loss strategy" worked for a whole bunch of people if i were looking into suckering desperate people out of money for unnecessary (or even harmful) advice. real data (as opposed to testimonials) may scare you. don't bash those who like to base their own fat-loss on what evidence out there DOES exist. and as far as claiming that melkor's knowledge and research are useless because he has not met all of his current goals yet, on the website where you're the primary success story (which presents the exact same before/after photo you've shown on your profile here), it claims that you've lost 25 lbs of fat and gained 14 lbs of muscle - for a net loss of 11lbs and a bodyfat under 4%. here, in this forum, you claimed that you lost 50 lbs! if all of the claims were true (LOL), that would mean you lost an additional 39 lbs. since your website claims that at the point where you'd only lost 11 net lbs, you were under 4% bodyfat, it would be a certainty that the majority of the lbs you lost were muscle. and for that reason, i doubt that anybody sane would want YOUR "proven results" on muscle-preserving fat-loss (and lest anybody think that he could have lost some of those 50 lbs before he started the panzerplan, nope, the website makes clear that he'd tried everything before the panzerplan and none of it took the fat off)! thanks anyways!
Fitness	A messy metabolism	Nov 12 2007 07:18 (UTC)	14
hi Safina! you’ve been complaining consistently about fatigue for a long time (since at least april) – you’ve described yourself as “tired” or “very tired” both when you’ve been losing weight (and therefore eating a calorie deficit) and when you’ve been gaining weight (and therefore eating a surplus, although it’s not clear whether you actually ‘gained weight’ during your recent binge, but at the very least eating during the times you’ve been eating close to maintenance or above it); these feelings of fatigue persisted both when you were working out hard every day, and when you weren’t working out as hard (and i gather that there was some time when you weren’t lifting at all for a couple weeks, and you were still complaining about it). from that, i would say that your fatigue may not be related to the amount you’re eating or exercising (although not eating enough and exercising while already fatigued may exacerbate it). doing a quick search of your posts over the last few months, you’ve also complained about other things (mostly vague, non-specific constitutional concerns, but that doesn’t make them any less real or potentially ‘important’) – dizziness, muscle weakness, anergia, joint pain + non-specific body aches, numbness in your right foot that persists after you get off the elliptical, etc. additionally, at least several times, you’ve referenced feelings of depression. before you meet with a nutritionist (especially since you don’t think you need to do so), i would STRONGLY suggest that you meet with your DOCTOR to discuss all of these concerns. To answer your specific question about whether working in an office should make you this tired, presuming that you’re not racking up a sleep deficit in order to wake up in the morning, and that you’re not inordinately stressed out by your job, then working in an office should make you bored and misanthropic ;-), but NOT physically tired. in fact, after sitting at a desk for the entire day, it should feel GOOD to move your legs with a nice walk, and it shouldn’t be taxing at all on a healthy, young person who exercises and gets sufficient sleep. i’m not talking about HIIT cardio here, but some mild-to-moderate cardio should even leave you feel energized, not depleted. On the issue of sleep, it is likely that going to bed at midnight and waking up at 6am (which is what you described as your sleep habits) is not providing enough sleep for you. but i’m not you – i don’t know! On October 26, you wrote the following: I feel very tired even I don't workout. I slept yesterday like dead for 10 hours. so it is not a sleep problem.Today, I am tired and hungry. well, the fact that after days of only sleeping 5-6 hours, you crashed for 10 means that you likely weren’t getting enough sleep during the previous days. The first thing I would do if I were you is go to bed an hour earlier (i assume that you’re waking up as late as you can in order to get dressed + make it to work), if you’re still tired, try going to bed at 10 and waking up at 6. Honestly, what can you possibly be getting done (other than thinking about how much you want to binge eat ;-)) from 10pm-midnight if you’re so exhausted that you can barely walk? sleeping from 10-6 will give you 8 hours of rest. if that’s too much, your body will wake up sooner (and not be exhausted at an earlier time the next evening). it could be, however, that 8hrs/night is still too little for you (it will probably be enough, but we all differ). You were worried at one point about eating immediately before going to bed. i’m going to address your eating schedule later, but if your main problem is a sleep deficit, and if you are tired at 9:30 after you eat your dinner, go to bed without worrying about the fact that you just ate. i believe that it takes longer than 9 hours for your food to turn into permanent fat [which if you’re on a calorie deficit, shouldn’t be happening no matter when you eat it], and so long as you’re not eating sugary, fatty junk food right before bed, it’s not even worth thinking about. in terms of costs and benefits, the cost of fatigue + sleep debt (particularly if it’s making you so tired that you don’t want to exercise) is way higher than any cost of eating immediately before bed that MAY (but probably doesn’t) exist. similarly, the benefits of being well-rested far outweigh any possible benefits of going to bed after you’ve eaten. as Tim (tgpish) told you in a previous post, sleep and protein are very important to muscle repair – and you’re probably not getting enough of either (as Melkor already pointed out in regards to your protein situation, so I won’t repeat it). many of your other complaints MAY be products of exhaustion; on the other hand, it could be that 6 hours of sleep generally is enough for you, and that your exhaustion and other complaints are symptoms of an underlying medical problem (even if you don’t generally ‘feel sick’). it’s also possible that you are racking up a sleep deficit, but that you also have an underlying medical condition, and that the sleep debt is making it worse. i can’t tell you which of these situations is likely. even if you start sleeping 8hrs/night and feel better in most ways, that doesn’t rule out an underlying medical condition that only becomes symptomatic during times of stress (and a sleep deficit, to your body, IS a time of stress). my very BEST recommendation (other than experimenting with more sleep) is that you talk to your doctor. exhaustion can be a symptom of many illnesses + disorders, and it could be that treating a heretofore unknown-to-you underlying condition can remedy this (of course i don’t know that this is the case, but a few simple lab tests can tell you whether it may be, or at least rule out some easy ones). i'm not your doctor (nor is anyone else you may be speaking to over the internet), so i won’t even attempt to give you probable diagnoses or a differential. nevertheless, if i were you, after talking to my doctor, i’d run some basic labs (your doctor will likely do this anyways); at the VERY least, i’d get a sed rate (that’s your erythrocyte sedimentation rate, a simple blood test that measures how long it takes your red blood cells to settle; it’s non-specific, but if you have a high sed rate, it indicates some sort of inflammatory process, acute or chronic – it can indicate that you have an infection, inflammatory disease, or certain kinds of cancer, but alone, a high sed rate can’t usually tell you much), CBC w/ platelets + differential (complete blood count, another simple blood test. this one measures a lot of useful things, like your RBC [how many red blood cells you have], hemoglobin, hematocrit [basically, how much of your blood is composed of red blood cells], MCV [mean corpuscular volume – how big your red blood cells are], WBC [how many white blood cells you have – WBCs mediate inflammation + immune response], MCH + MCHC [the size + concentration of hemoglobin in individual cells], platelet count, and differential [gives you more info on different types of WBCs] – high or low numbers on any of things can indicate many different things, which i won’t go through here for each component of the CBC for the sake of brevity, but, briefly, they may indicate that you have such things as anemia, a nutritional deficiency, infection, inflammatory disease, autoimmune disease, liver/spleen/kidney problems, etc. a cheap and often useful test), complete metabolic panel (measures glucose [since blackthorne mentioned hypoglycemia + a glucose tolerance test, you should know that the glucose test that’s part of a metabolic panel is a fasting blood test, not the OGTT – oral glucose tolerance test – which will take a fasting glucose and then further levels after you swallow a sugar solution; depending on the results of the fasting glucose, your MD may recommend further tests, but you should know that the OGTT is generally not considered very helpful in the diagnosis of reactive hypoglycemia, but there are some more useful tests if your doc thinks that’s likely], calcium, total protein, albumin, several electrolytes, kidney function, and liver function – at the very least get a basic metabolic panel or have your blood chemistry + electrolytes checked), and thyroid tests (at the least, check your TSH, free T4, free T3; you’ll get more info from a complete panel, but it may not be necessary) – all of this should be relatively cheap, even if you’re paying out of pocket (that is, it’ll come to far less than the amount you paid for what sounded like a useless personal trainer ;-)). also, make sure your doctor knows about your sexual history + travel history (which can be beyond useful in determining whether certain tests for infectious diseases may be warranted), your bowel habits, sleep patterns, all the things you’ve been complaining about, and your weight loss/eating habits. since you’ve posted at least several times talking about feeling depressed, i’ll just mention that depression (even dysthymia, which is what you might call ‘mild depression’) can cause fatigue – there’s no lab test for depression, and most of what a shrink will base a diagnosis on will be info that you give him (not entirely – your affect, for example). i have no idea if you were depressed or just having a couple of bad days. but here’s a simple questionnaire that you can take if you think that might be an issue: http://www.med.nyu.edu/psych/screens/depres.h tml; here’s a slightly longer (but not necessarily more valid) test if you want: http://www.findingstone.com/services/tests/de pressiontest.htm ok, now let’s talk about your eating habits. in a previous post, you wanted to know what your maintenance calories are. NOBODY CAN TELL YOU THAT! that’s something you need to find out from experimentation. the numbers given on this site are GUESSES, nothing more, nothing less. and they’re not even GOOD guesses, since they only take into account your age, weight, height, and gender, and not the amount of lean mass you have, which is the most important determinant (for most people) of how many calories they burn per day. you’ve been getting your body fat tested – that’s good. that means you know if you’re gaining/losing fat/muscle. that, and nothing else, is the most important info you need for figuring out what your maintenance calories are (similarly, any number given on an exercise machine, online calculator, or heart rate monitor for how many calories you burn during a given exercise session is also just a guess): assuming that you weigh yourself regularly and consistently (at the same time and in the same way), if lose 1lb OF FAT/week (this won’t hold if you’re also losing muscle; hence the importance of measuring your BF%, because you don’t want to lose muscle, and if you’re losing muscle at the same time as fat, that complicates things), that means you were eating a 3500 calorie deficit that week – or an average of a 500 calorie/day deficit per day, NO MATTER WHAT any machine or online calculator tells you. you should therefore be able to eat 500 more calories per day to maintain, assuming you aren’t exercising any less than you did the week that you lost that lb. of course, to know for certain, you have to try it. maintaining muscle and losing fat is an experiment. if you gain ½ lb of fat one week, don’t look at that as failure, look at it as part of your experiment, and an opportunity to gain useful information about what works for you and what doesn’t. however, i agree with most people that your maintenance (and even weight loss) calories are almost certainly higher than 1200-1300 (since that’s the same number of calories you were LOSING weight at). if, as you suggested, you’re afraid to eat more than that because you feel it will lead to a binge, it might help to realize that at the same time you’ve talked about not wanting to raise calories, you’ve also often complained of being hungry. hunger and constant deprivation lead to binges, as well as your attitude towards the fat-loss process (e.g. if you see eating 1700 calories as “too much” or an amount that’s going to make you gain fat, you may have a tendency to say ‘screw it, i’ve already eaten too much and put on fat. i may as well eat the whole pumpkin pie!’ [hint: this is the wrong kind of thinking!]). if you are emotionally over-eating, that’s a separate issue that you need to deal with (and i’m sure there are people on this website who can provide more info about that). but, if you’re binging due to sugar cravings, hunger, etc., you need to eat more throughout the day. actually, looking at what you wrote previously, you DEFINITELY need to eat more during your day. you eat lunch at noon and dinner around 9pm – that’s 9 hours between lunch and dinner. i’m not at all surprised that you’re crashing in the late afternoon/early evening and craving sugar. you can’t give up fruit? trust me on this, i love fruits + veggies as much as anyone, and i’ve limited myself to about 1.5 servings of fruits + veggies per day (due to malabsorption/intestinal issues that fiber exacerbates) – you can give up anything if its costs outweigh its benefits and if you REALLY want to. but, since you don’t want to (which is fine, btw! a healthy life should be enjoyable, and if you enjoy fruit, that’s great!), you can at least MINIMIZE the effect that eating so much sugar will have on you. right now, you eat a decent meal at noon and basically no more decent meals throughout the day. start here: realize, as Tim told you earlier, that you need to eat 5-6 (start with 5 if that’s tough for you) MEALS throughout the day. your meals can be small (and if you’re eating that frequently, by necessity, they WILL be small), but each meal MUST contain some protein + some complex carbs. examples of meals: a tuna, turkey or egg salad sandwich; a starchy vegetable and some cottage cheese; chicken, veggies + rice; an egg-white omelet, side salad, and oatmeal; whole wheat crackers with low-fat cheese [note: i haven’t tried these meals – i’m a vegetarian and not a dieter, but if you need examples, there are a million people you can ask]. eat as much fruit as you feel you need to, but make fruit your dessert. that is, you eat your fruit AFTER you’ve eaten your meal (and by eating like this, fruit should be enjoyable, but you shouldn’t “need” it in the same way). btw, if you have time to eat an apple, you have time to eat a tuna sandwich and half an apple. when you’re packing your lunch, pack two more meals! right now, you’re using fruit for a quick energy buzz, and not eating anything that will give you lasting energy. try eating 5-6 meals, averaging around 300 calories each (your breakfast will likely be more, your mid-morning and mid-afternoon meals can be smaller). make sure that every 3 or 4 hours, you eat some protein and some complex carbs. fruit must be PART of your meal (dessert, as i suggested, because if you eat your apple first, you may decide that that’s enough and not eat the stuff that you REALLY need), not a stand-alone snack. see if that helps with sugar craving. even if you’re eating as much fruit as you are now, you’ll at least be feeding your metabolism in a decent way and getting up to a number of calories that i suspect is more reasonable for you. try it! if it doesn’t work, eat a bit less! at the most, you’ve had a fulfilling week without hunger and will not possibly have gained very much fat, if any, because of it. you mention not having time to eat in a previous post – again, if you have time to eat an apple, you have time to eat a meal. the time comes in preparing the meal, since you’re at work all day. pack a lunch! it takes 2 minutes to make a tuna sandwich; whatever dinner you ate the night before [which should contain complex carbs + protein!], make extra portions so you can eat some of it for your meal the next day. i don’t think doing the ‘real meal’ thing should take any more than about 15/mins a day to prepare (that is, more than you’re already spending). but if it gives you extra energy, that’s time well spent. incidentally, this is the sort of diet recommended for people with reactive hypoglycemia (frequent, decent meals; no sugar on an empty stomach), although nobody online can say if you have that; even though you seem to experience many symptoms of it, those symptoms could just as well fit a bunch of other illnesses, since they’re generally non-specific. again, see your MD. what is your work schedule? for most people, i tell them that they need to figure out things like how much sleep, protein, and calories they need through experimentation (since we’re all different), but you seem to want the answers to come from others outside of yourself, i’ll help you if you want - if you give me your work schedule (and other obligations that take time), i’ll help you schedule a reasonable day with what i think is probably a decent amount of sleep, exercise, and calories. have you bought + read the book that Tim recommended (Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle)? you’re its target audience + even though it’s expensive (for a book that is; i dislike the ebook format, but for valuable information that will help you lose weight, $40 is a bargain!), i think it will be much more valuable for you than the $500 you spent on a personal trainer :-) [note: i haven’t read the book myself, since i’m NOT its target audience, but tgpish’s recommendation is enough to tell me that it’s a damn good book] again, my main point is that your complaints, seen altogether, sound like there may be a problem other than the amount you’re eating or exercising.
Weight Loss	stress related weight loss..how hard is it on your body	Nov 07 2007 07:46 (UTC)
to be brief, stress-induced weight loss is awful on your body. for your situation, the fact that you're eating WAY below your maintenance levels (whatever that may be), you're almost certainly burning decent amounts of muscle, and it's even probable that MOST of the weight you're losing IS muscle. that's bad because your goal in any fat-loss cycle is to lose FAT while preserving your muscle as much as possible. eventually, when you go back to eating 'normally', that will make it easier to gain weight. if you're eating 500 cals every day, your metabolism will, as much as possible, adjust to that by slowing WAY down and probably going into starvation mode if you do it for long enough. as it takes some time to 're-adjust', you can usually expect to gain back much of the weight. so, to put it simply (perhaps overly so), when people are eating at starvation levels, they lose mostly muscle, and when they start eating normally again, they re-gain mostly fat. sucks, huh? imo, you need to be treating your anxiety if it is serious enough that you can barely eat. even if you were able to eat enough while stressed or anxious, the stress/anxiety would negatively impact on your fat loss b/c it would make it difficult to preserve your lean mass. if your anxiety is situational but nevertheless severe, benzodiazepines (e.g. Valium/diazepam, Ativan/lorazepam, Xanax/alprazolam, Klonopin/clonazepam, etc...)are excellent short-term anxiolytics. if this is more of a 'chronic problem', they're an option, but there are other ones that may be more appropriate. this is really a question for your MD.
Weight Loss	a quick blood type diet question...	Nov 07 2007 07:32 (UTC)
please check out this link for a previous conversation about this: http://www.calorie-count.com/forums/post/6203 4.html in short, the blood type diet is absurd - of course, there's always a tiny percentage of people for whom every kooky idea works. don't take that to mean that the theory behind it is sound (since in this case it's not!)
Recipes	any good pumpkin recipes	Nov 07 2007 00:19 (UTC)	3
pumpkin pancakes/waffles: make the batter for regular pancakes as you usually would, but less milk + much more water, more egg. i like to mix in raisins + pecan chips. only use a little bit of pumpkin or they don't cook as well, then cinamon, vanilla, ginger, allspice, mace, cloves, nutmeg. make the batter REALLY thin, almost watery, don't pour the batter too thick.
Health & Support	horrible endo...plz help/support!!!	Nov 06 2007 08:49 (UTC)
what meds have you tried for pain? any non-pharmacological modalities? what meds are you on now? did any of them work, even partially? side effects? if nausea/vomiting is a problem, are you on anti-emetics? not all anti-emetics are created equal, and not all work equally well in all people, but it would be helpful to know what you've tried + how they worked. i may be able to give you some info about dealing with pain + nausea based my on personal experience + some medical background, but it's hard to do so with so little info!
Weight Loss	Controversy!?!	Nov 06 2007 08:32 (UTC)	14
well, it depends what you mean by 'cheat day'. if you mean a day once a week when you pig out and eat whatever you want, going a couple thousand calories above maintenance level, well, that MAY do some harm (although not as much as you might think). however, can eating more calories at least one day per week help with weight loss? HELL YES! from what i understand, this is because when you're on a consistent calorie deficit, your body eventually adapts to that and can learn to use energy more efficiently (that is, metabolic slow-down, so you burn fewer calories). if you eat at or slightly above maintenance one or two days per week, this prevents the body from adapting as quickly - it "re-sets" your metabolism in a sense. BUT: for this to work as well as possible, it may help to keep the following in mind: this will work best if you see your above-maintenance days as PART of your fat-loss plan, not as an indulgence that you should feel guilty about. if you are on a clean, healthy diet, you shouldn't take these above-maintenance days to mean that you're off it: eat what you usually do (healthy foods), just eat more of them. BUT, do give yourself some indulgences, for psychological reasons if nothing else. allow yourself one treat per week - don't go nuts on it, but 400 or so calories of fatty, sugary, empty carbs will give you a psychological break and, if anything, should be beneficial to your fat-loss.
Fitness	Calves...but I want them bigger not smaller!!	Nov 06 2007 08:12 (UTC)	1
i have itty-bitty calves too. not much you can do to SIGNIFICANTLY increase their size. there may be some things you can do to increase them to a small extent, and certainly make them stronger and get some muscle definition. some people may see some benefit from cardio (running, cycling) - this generally doesn't help those of us with genetically crappy calves. they may get a bit stronger, they likely won't get bigger. there are many ways to do calf raises: i like doing them on the leg press (the one where you're seated in a low recline and you actually add weight plates, not just put a pin in the machine) - i find doing them standing with a squat bar just plain uncomfortable (after doing squats, i just want the damn bar off my neck. if you have good trap muscles + the squat bar is more comfortable for you, by all means, do it!) and i can't hold dumbbells even close to the amount of weight i can with a bar. i dislike seated calf-raise machines because they press too hard on my thighs, and i've never gotten used to the standing calf machine (i think i'd rather do it with a bar on my back!). but HOW you do them is really your call. most people don't do calf raises the way that i find to be the only way to grow genetically awful calves: that is, SLOWLY (it's a small movement, so it's hard to really do it slowly, but if you can do 2 seconds up, hold, squeeze as high as you can, 2 seconds down, you'll feel it more and get much better results), with a heavy enough weight, to TRUE failure (that is, not just when you're feeling the burn, but when you LITERALLY can't do another one - most people give up before this point because of the burn. if you're able to, tough out the burn - go until you've actually reached failure. if i can do a lot of reps, i add more weight to help get to failure sooner, although calf raises are one of the few exercises where i am ok if my reps are in the 12-15 range instead of 4-10). i never saw great gains in my calves, after years of calf raises and all sorts of cardio that utilize the calves. then i read this article about a guy being trained by mike mentzer, and decided to try his approach when it came to my calves: here's the article if you're interested: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/becker22.htm but here's the part about calves: I had only done two sets but my legs were very pumped and I felt a deep growth stimulation in them. He had me take a short rest and then we did calves, most people say they can't get their calves to grow, but I see them bouncing up and down very fast on calf raises. Well try them the way Mentzer made me do them, "Slow Up, Hold at the top, hold, raise up higher, higher, hold, lower slow." You do 12 to 20 reps that way and see if you feel a difference. This is very different from the way most people do calf raises. but it's been the only thing that's helped me make a significant difference in my calves. doing calf raises like this, if you want to truly do it the mentzer way (don't even get me started on what i think of mike mentzer.... he's a raving loon in many respects, but that doesn't mean his training methods are crazy too) , you only do one set. but you'll notice, if you do them like that, one set is enough! IF you really put your all into it (with 3 sets, often either the first 2 are glorified warm-up sets, but by the time they get to the last set, they can't do as well as they could have if they'd just done one truly hard set because they're fatigued). i did 3 sets/calf raises for a long time, and i can tell you that doing one set the mentzer way has been far more beneficial (especially since calf raises burn and are an easy thing to slack on) - it was also WAY harder! but i can't promise that this will work for you (nobody can promise anything, short of calf implants, that will really work for you) - everybody is different. this is just what has worked for me.
Fitness	Needed: home scale recommendation!	Nov 06 2007 07:42 (UTC)	2
ps - from your picture, you have incredible skin! what do you do to keep it like that? i'm 26 and my skin looks basically how it did when i was a teenager (never awful, but icky breakouts from time to time, shiny in some places, dry in others), whereas my teenager daughter has great skin! totally unfair!
Fitness	Needed: home scale recommendation!	Nov 06 2007 07:38 (UTC)	3
the same thing i said for bodyfat goes for your weight in general: unless it's very important for you to know EXACTLY what you weigh at a given time (which won't actually tell you much), it's ok if your scale is a bit inaccurate (e.g. 5 lbs low or high), so long as it is CONSISTENTLY so. that is, just to take an example, it wouldn't matter if your scale shows you that you weigh 130 when you really weigh 135, so long as if you lose 2 lbs, it shows your weight to be 128 (knowing your weight to a certain degree of accuracy is necessary for knowing exactly how much fat or muscle your losing or gaining. but again, you don't NEED to know exactly how many lbs of fat you're losing with absolute accuracy - you need to know that you're going in the right direction. many scales may be inaccurate, but so long as they are precise, you should be ok). here's the more important thing: PICK ONE SCALE AND STICK WITH IT!!! scales may be inaccurate to varying degrees, and you may not know which one is accurate. but it doesn't matter so much. so long as your scale is precise + consistent over time, there's no reason to step onto any other one, since it seems like it's just driving you nuts when you do so and get different results. for weight, just like with body fat, you should care more about the trendline over time, not what your scale tells you RIGHT NOW. when you weigh yourself daily, you do get more measurements so it's easier to know when one or two are bogus, but if it's something you're going to drive yourself nuts over (by not recognizing that the fact that the scale showed a 1lb weight gain since yesterday, taken alone, is meaningless), it may not be worth it to do it that often. there are a ton of things that can throw off your measurement for a given day (and as a woman, sometimes even a week ;-)) - learn to accept that and to not make any decisions based on what ONE weighing (or even several) tells you. if your scale show you weighing 122.5 on monday, 121.3 on tuesday, and 122.1 on wednesday, that's not enough information to say anything - unless you have a lot of weight to lose or doing extreme dieting (unhealthy), you're likely not gaining or losing MEANINGFUL weight (by which i mean, fat and/or muscle, not simply water weight, the amount of food that you've excreted, etc.) that quickly (in terms of the monday to tuesday difference - over 1lb in 1 day loss; or tuesday to wednesday's nearly 1lb gain), so it's probably tuesday that's 'off', although you can't know to what extent (tuesday could be a little low, wednesday could be a little high) - so instead of being upset on wednesday because you weigh more than you did on tuesday, perhaps you should be happy if, say, the entire week before you were getting consistent measurements in the 123 range: it's the downward trend over time, not any given day's measurement that matters. and you need to learn to accept that, whatever scale you're using, so that you don't drive yourself nuts over small, or even large, short-term changes that likely aren't meaningful.
Fitness	Needed: home scale recommendation!	Nov 06 2007 07:04 (UTC)	4
well, you have two questions to ask yourself: - how do they test BF% at your gym, and is it likely to be ANY MORE accurate than the methods you can do at home? - pure economics: because you'll want to tweak your workouts depending on what your BF%, combined with your overall weight, tell you (e.g. are you losing fat, but simultaneously losing more lean mass than is desirable), you want to get a BF test at least once per month. unless you're doing an underwater weighing, there will be inaccuracy to various extents in ALL methods that you use. therefore, if you measure even more frequently (once per week, say), you'll get a 'general trendline' more quickly - otherwise it could take months to know whether you're really going in the right direction, since it's nearly impossible to know that after just a couple readings. if your gym charges, say, $10 for a BF test, over a year, doing it at the minimum of once per month, that comes to $120 - you can buy your own scale (what model you get will determine the price; some very expensive models are in the hundreds of dollars; the omron HF-500, IIRC, recommended by tgpish, is $70-80 new; i believe there are even cheaper ones available - as low as $20-30) or accumeasure calipers (about $8 including shipping on ebay) for far less than that, and take measurements more frequently. again, absolute accuracy (what your REAL BF% is, to a decent degree of certainty) will only be discovered with an underwater weighing. what's important is the trendline (that is, is your method consistent across time: even if it tells you your BF is 22% when an underwater weighing would show it at 25%, that's not your concern [unless your major goal is getting to a certain BF% and being 100% certain that you're at that exact number] - what IS important is that if you lose fat, the method you're using can reliably tell you that. all measurements have 'noise' - things that can throw off a reading here or there, which is why you shouldn't take any reading as gospel, but look over time: are you losing fat without losing significant LBM? so what IS your gym's method and how much does it cost?

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