I’m not sure which is normal, but for me, high intensity exercise (keeping that heart rate up for at least 30 minutes) will suppress my appetite for quite some time after the workout.
I don’t know what the general consensus on Weight Watchers is, but my wife has joined again, resolved to lose weight this time. She is following the points system, staying within her daily points allotment, and eating better, more healthy food. She also joined a gym, and goes walking. Today, she bought some hand and ankle weights. She started a month ago, and is currently down 19 pounds, give or take. She’s very happy about it. So am I.
Apparently, you don’t have to starve yourself to death, or choke down rice cakes, or subsist on rabbit food. A diet of healthy food, following the plan, and excercising is having beneficial effects on my wife. It also worked for my mother, who went down to 130 for awhile on the same plan in the 1970s, until she gave it up. There’s my anecdotal evidence. Congratulations to everyone who is losing weight!
Have you tried keeping a food diary? Sometimes people forget things they’ve eaten through the day. I just can’t see you being that overweight if that’s your real regular diet so either you’re forgetting stuff you’ve eaten or else there’s definitely still a thyroid issue. I’ve heard that people can have thyroid symptoms and problems even when their scores are within the supposed ‘normal’ range.
I wonder if one of the doctor-Dopers will have some advice about this…
My mother is in Weight Watchers, and her biggest complaint is exactly the one Sattua already mentioned–seeing “success” stories with people who lost 75 pounds over 6 months (or 15 pounds in two weeks) by cutting out two Big Gulp Mountain Dews and replacing the morning donuts with a granola bar.
Mom’s slightly plump and eats mostly healthy food. Portion control is the big thing she needs to work on.
My recommendation is that without changing anything, start logging everything you eat with a program like Fitday or DietPower. Write down everything. Get a scale if you don’t have one. No changes otherwise, just logging.
After a few weeks, you’ll see patterns. You’ll see, perhaps, that most of your calories are from things like noodles–which aren’t very filling. You’ll find that you aren’t getting much protein or fiber. You’ll discover you’re eating way more, or way fewer, calories than you should.
Once you see what your actual lifestyle is, you can change small things until you get to be where you need to be.
Quackwatch takes a dim view of Perricone. Very dim.
I recommend Weight Watchers. I eat just bout everything I want and I exercise 3-5 times per week. I’ve lost 80 pounds. Good luck to you.
Weight Watchers is the only thing that ever worked for me. I lost 40 lbs. though the scale now tells me I’ve officially put it all back on. Sigh. I’m going back on the program this week.
To second what other people have written (particularly Glory), you must internalize that you are going to learn how to eat and live healthier (hopefully including exercising more) for its own sake. For your sake.
Don’t “go on a diet”. This statement to yourself implies that it is a program done to achieve a specific weight loss goal, and once achieved, you will “go back to normal”. This is what causes yo-yo dieting: it’s your “normal” lifestyle that has caused you to gain weight over the years.
Also, depending on whether you’ve lost fat instead of just losing weight, you may actually have damaged your metabolism by using a starvation diet (i.e., one that involves skipping a lot of meals or consuming very few calories). This will only accelerate the rate of “gaining it all back” when you “go back to normal”. Meaning your new “normal” may end up being several pounds heavier than your earlier normal.
As for the symptoms mentioned in the OP – I recommend seeing a doctor if it doesn’t go away soon, but it may be simply dehydration. Most people don’t drink enough water, and if you’ve increased your activity level at all you may well need to drink even more, as your body requires water to drive its metabolic processes.
Buy a large 1.5L bottle of water, and finish and refill it at least once a day (in other words, drink at least 3 liters of water) every day for a week, and see if you don’t feel a lot better!
you’ve got to be kidding. I’m 110# and would starve on your diet.
My suggestion:
Don’t change your diet. For a week or so, keep a journal. A VERY strict journal. Weigh & measure everything you eat. Either your perception of food is waaaay skewy or you have thyroid issues. Actually, it might be skewed perception–I had a heavy friend–he didn’t seem to eat all that much crap, but his perception was way off and he didn’t even seem to realize it.
On that day, I kept very close tabs on what I actually ate, after posting that list in the morning. There were two deviations: I had a bottle of Killian’s lager instead of the red wine, and I ate a crystallized plum instead of the dried figs.
Yesterday’s menu:
A slim-fast shake for breakfast (I’ve got the stuff, I may as well use it up)
Four falafel patties about 2.5" across for lunch, unadorned
1.5 bananas (first one I tried was mostly rotten) and a 100-calorie bag of popcorn in the afternoon
Two half-inch-thick slices of baguette with green olive tapenade, when I got way too hungry before dinner
Sashimi for dinner: the iceberg lettuce salad with ginger dressing, a total of about 8 oz of raw fish with lots of marinated ginger, three mouthfuls of rice, three mouthfuls of green tea ice cream
One Yoplait light yogurt and a cookie before bed
So I’ve got thyroid issues, right?
Like I said, you need to journal for a while, including how many calories are in everything you eat over a longer term than 1 or 2 days. I don’t know by glancing at your menus how many calories you’re consuming.
My understanding of thyroid issues is that hypothyroid makes it something like 10% harder to lose weight. It’s definitely not something where you can only eat one carrot and gain 100 pounds (obviously you’re not describing something that extreme).
Again, I doesn’t sound like your body is burning enough calories naturally throughout the day (and night) to be able to sustain a lower weight. Certainly deviating from this type of diet (by lowering your intake) would not only be boring, but perhaps even unhealthy in the long run. Look at your OP, for example.
If it were me, my goal would be able to eat much MORE and still be able to sustain, even lower, your weight. That means increasing the intensity of your workouts over time, increasing your muscle/fat ratio (decreasing your body fat %), learning more about your thyroid “issues” and knowing that what you can change might take six months or even a year before feeling right about it. At just 26 years old, you are much more capable than just going on walks. You’ll get much more energy, stamina, self-confidence, better sleep, etc., with a higher-impact workout routine, and yes, you’ll eventually be able to eat MORE this way.
IMO you’re not eating too much food, but neither are you eating the right kind of food. It sounds like you’re not eating enough fruits and vegetables, not getting enough fiber, and maybe are not gettng enough protein. Although you’re not eating too much food, your diet is pretty refined-starch heavy and light on fruits & vegs.
Tapenade is oil-based. Falafel is fried in oil. Bananas are high starch, and although otherwise a good choice, probably should not be your first choice for fruit/veg. Iceberg lettuce is nutitionally worthless. White bread, french bread and crumpets are refined empty calories. Ditto ice cream, cookies, and candied fruit, which are high-caloric as well. One serving of protein per day is probably insufficient. Whole milk and butter are not good choices for someone trying to eat well or lose weight.
On the Weight Watchers program (which is not a diet), you try to eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. You increazse your fiber intake and you probably would want to increase your protein intake as well. You learn to make better choices for overall nutition, not just for weight loss – whole-grain instead of refined starches; fat-free dairy. You add variety to your diet (using “diet” in the larger sense of the word) and you become more aware of the nutritional “bang for the buck” of whatever you are choosing to eat – and you can choose to eat whatever you want, really, which is why it isn’t a diet.
I agree with those who have said that your diet doesn’t need to be reduced, but it could stand to be improved. I think in your case you would find that you are actually eating more food, not less, but feeling less tired and headachy, and probably, over time, combined with a consistent workout, losing some weight. You don’t have to go to WW to make dietary improvements; you can do that on you own. But the way you’re eating now doesn’t sound particularly healthy to me. Since I’ve got my own weight issue to tackle (again), you can take all this for what you think it’s worth. 
Jayjay and I are attending Weight Watchers also. I find the meetings to be very helpful. There are alot of people in the same boat we are, and they are a great source of advice. 5 servings of good fruits and veggies per day are at the top of our list. Whole grains once per day, lean proteins, dairy, lots of water, and some great snacks round out our eating plan. We have eliminated most sugars, white flour, and fat from our diet. It is working very well for us so far.
I’m slowly becoming sold on the idea of trying Weight Watchers. To jodi: ouch. The whole milk is only in my tea, and only a splash–notice that otherwise I’m drinking skim. The butter was one teaspoon. Three mouthfuls of ice cream? The iceberg lettuce was at a restaurant–there’s no option. There was no french bread/white bread dichotomy, just the two small pieces of baguette–the sandwich bread the day before was, as I carefully noted, wheat. On that day I had the turkey and the chicken as pure protein sources (plus the dairy); yesterday I had more than two servings worth of protein in the fish plus the protein in the falafel, which are mostly chickpeas, plus the dairy. About five servings of fruit and vegetables: on day one I had the tomato (1), the banana (2), and the soup vegetables (1), so I fell one short, if I graciously ignore the plum. Yesterday I had the bananas (3) and the lettuce (1), so I fell one short again. So I agree that I can do better in that regard.
Advice that I’m ready to start taking right away: eat more fruit and vegetables, track calories (on FitDay, I think), and try to get more exercise.
I just put the two days of eating into FitDay. It comes out:
Day 1: 1788 calories
32% fat, 43% carbs, 20% protein, 5% alcohol
Day 2: 1698 calories
27% fat, 46% carbs, 27% protein
So I am a little high on carbs and a little low on protein. Which surprises me, since I’m eating the RDA of protein foods (2-3 servings of 3 oz each).
I didn’t mean my post to be “ouch”-inducing. That was just my quick-n-dirty take on what you posted. But IMO and with respect I don’t see why you’d try to “defend” what you’re doing now, if what you’re doing now isn’t working for you. IMO you could make smarter (and more) fruits and veggie choices, and you could probably eat more protein. As I said, take that for what it’s worth. If you’re happy with the choices you’re making now, then fine; you certainly don’t have to explain or defend them to me or to anyone.
Most people who try to lose weight and fail do so because they just don’t have the right information. Nobody has told them the right way to lose weight, and given them the right information to understand the problem and make the right decisions. I recommend Bill Philipps’ book ‘Body For Life’. He’s a bodybuilder type, but you don’t have to be a bodybuilder (I’m not) to get a lot from this book. It’s the only single book I’ve ever read that explains about food, nutrition and diet; and about how to exercise properly; and also addressed the emotional and motivational side of the whole issue. This is a genuine recommendation, I have no connection or self-interest.
I would like to chime in with some others - cardio and weight training is the key to long term weight loss.
Cardio will increase your metabolism and allow you to burn existing fat/calories. Your metabolism stays up for a while and then drops again. If you build muscle your metabolism has to speed up to compensate for the new need.
Eat healthy and combine cardio and weight lifting.
I would recommend Body-For-Life-for-Women.