Your current approach to nutriton is literally killing you. Full stop. This is why you have the hormone profile of an 80 year old. That is dangerous.
Gaining bodyfat is a positive thing for you. The things you keep saying are bad for you (the grill nights, actually eating enough food) are the very things you need. You have been made aware of this numerous times. Your brain won’t allow you to accept it because you are suffering from an untreated disorder. You previously told me you had a plan in place to receive treatment for it: how is that plan going?
This is incredibly frustrating to read. You can’t know that. You’re looking for excuses. The sooner you realize that you’re trying to rationalize something irrational, the sooner you can start to get better.
I don’t blame you for not necessarily understanding this (that’s in the definition of irrational thinking), I would blame you, if you’re not trying to understand this by employing a therapist to help you. You’re stronger than that. Take action. The later you do that, the harder it will be.
I’m not trying to scare you, I’m just listing facts.
Anna, you tend to emulate me a lot. Would it at all influence your decision if I revealed to you that I sought the aid of a therapist before in a time of need?
I’m planning on going to counseling when my insurance covers it again. Since I’m at home, my student insurance got suspended. Healthcare policy in the states is absurd, but I can understand the incentive of profit maximization so I’m not that pissed off necessarily.
The plan I was referring to was to eat in a managed surplus and gain weight. By managed surplus, I mean within my control- no random deviations, justifications etc. The idea is that the absolute amount would be a surplus, but I would also build confidence that I won’t go “off the rails” or “get sloppy”
I’m a bit late to reply, and you’ve already received sound advice that I’ll more or less echo. In particular, what @T3hPwnisher writes here is something worth internalizing,
I’m not too comfortable about expressing this in paragraphs containing the word “you” and so rather than type out words with the best of intent, I’ll simply chronicle what I’ve been doing recently and perhaps that will influence you in a positive direction.
First, I stopped tracking. Granted, this was not a concious choice, but something that happened out of circumstance so I do not take any credit for putting it into action. But, not tracking leaves mental energy to be used for other agendas (including getting through that it was, for me, unsettling to not track).
Secondly, I actively started attempting to conquer my internal dialogue around my weight-gain. I try to focus less on “damage mitigation” (fat gain), and more on undoing already present damage (eating disorder).
If we place dietary habits (even disorderly ones) on an axis, like so,
<—Eating disorder — Sane Tracking — Habit-oriented or rule-based eating — See food—>
I’m finding that I have to maybe move toward “See food” moreso than habit-oriented/rule-based eating just to get “unstuck” as it were. What do I mean with habit-oriented or rule-based eating? That’d be something like, only eating carbs on training days. Long-term, I’m okay with ending up in such a place as long as those habits do not cause me undue distress when they cannot be employed. Right now, I’ll “force” myself to have a cookie even if I don’t want one. Basically, a really unguided form of self-managed exposure therapy.
What does this result in? Well, I’ll be honest: I’m gaining weight. Some of it is fat. That has to be fine. I could gain weight at a more modest pace, and still have every single mental problem around food that I had at a lower bodyweight but I don’t want to merely weigh more but still have the same mental hang-ups that I had previously. I want liberation, and freedom.
I can try to lose the fat more sanely later. Maybe. It’s potentially true that I’ll be (to paint a word picture) a sober undereater. For me, I don’t believe everything will be undone in a jiffy. So, I’m not rushing to get back to getting rid of that adipose tissue until I feel confident I won’t reignite the problems. If it takes X amount of years to adopt a behaviour of any kind I guy-guess it’ll take a similar amount of time to undo. So, looking at my log, I’m 28 now, started with this at 25, not saying my relationship beforehand was great either but that’s a 3 year stint. So, yeah, getting to a heftier anchor size and staying there for quite some time is definitely part of my internal “plan”.
Right now though, I push fat loss ideas to the side. I don’t actively have to think about them in the now, as the manner in which how one loses fat remains the same then as it does now so I don’t have to go stoking those embers.
Yesterday, I missed reps on my bench. Thursday (rest-day, ordinarily <100g carbs), I didn’t eat as well as I could have. Maybe I would’ve missed those reps anyway. But, I did allow myself to think that if I’d eaten more on Thursday I would’ve gotten those reps. Today, also a rest day I was about to do the same. But I’m training tomorrow. So I decided to eat today.
Some people, they can do lean gains. I’m not able to do that right now and retain sanity. I’ve opted for simplicity. Losing weight means going hungry. Gaining weight means being full. I’m going for full.
This might have less to do with this,
and more to do with you not having a healthy relationship with nutrition to begin with.
Don’t start sentences like this with “unlike you”, you can never know what someone decides to not share or what the actual truth of their life experience has been. All you can say is that you struggle with emotional eating, but again I refer back to my argumentation above: maybe emotional eating isn’t the problem, it’s the entire matrix of your relationship with nutrition that’s a bit wonky. To be fair, emotional eating is maybe the norm. Comfort food is a well-established term after all.
I’m not going to be an advocate for or against standard meals, but if that ends up being something that works for you, those surprises should, if your goal is to gain weight, just be like finding a free 1UP you didn’t even have to pay for.
Have you considered until then to join an online support group?
Do you believe this will allow you to escape the mental thought patterns currently trapping you? I’ve not read the book myself, as I can’t afford a copy at the moment, but I was recommended one that deals with escaping eating disorders where one of the initial steps is to have a solid meal plan for week days but practice eating more intuitively over the weekend. But, and it’s important to emphasise this: it’s an initial step. Not the only step. I believe, when I have your attention on this topic it’s worth juxtaposing your plan against this,
Trying to stay lean and gain weight at the same time are goals, sure, but what is your actual goal? If it’s to change the narrative that you’ve had around food for the last 4000+ posts, then I think you have to remove the first clause of this paragraph to do so. Or at least allow yourself to not remain as lean as you are.
From experience with communicating with you, I fear you might draw up examples of other people that are lean and seem to be healthy and so on and as a premature response to that whether or not you articulate those thoughts: their experiences do not matter. What matters is that your endevour to stay this lean is clearly causing your body and mind harm. And, those are the ones you got, so it’s them you have to adapt to.
As an adult, it’s up to you if adapting means living a shorter life or finding a bodyweight that causes you less stress to exist at.
Thank you so much! This was very helpful.
I really like the idea of 1-2 “untracked days” as a start.
Ostensibly, to get strong while staying as lean as possible
Why? I really don’t know.
On most days, I feel like I’m living in some fancy VR simulation. Most of the time, I’m an “active player” but sometimes (usually when I’m not occupied) I “step away from keyboard” and “watch my avatar” or make stuff difficult for no reason
To be clear: nothing in your currently set goals aspires to change that your relationship with food and exercise is having a harmful impact on your health?
Keep yourself to this if your intent is to not have so much of your conscious mind be occupied with what has occupied it since I made your acquaintance.
What is it you think that motivates your desperate desire to be so lean? I’m possibly overstepping, but my impression has long been that you are not motivated by how others view you as in you try to maintain an unsustainable aesthetic to be appealing to whichever person you are trying to attract but rather it seems like you desperately want to distance yourself from your childhood-self?
To clarify: this was essentially what I was challenging. I understood that your plan was to seek counselling and I was clarifying how this had been impacted.
I do not care about whether others find me aesthetically pleasing, unless of course it’s directly related to my future prospects( ie dressing up for a job interview)
