@insejn
That sounds like fairly sound advice actually. I just wonder why you’d say to stop the weight training? We’ve kinda just got her back into it after not doing it for about a year or two. And the supplements to help with cortisol? thanks bud.
@MarkKO - yeah it’s been tough. But we’re kind of desperate.
@whang - hmm, she doesn’t seem to have those kinds of symptoms though (POS).
@hrdlvn - thanks for the suggestions I’ll look into the PCP thing! her health insurance isn’t great so likely we’ll have to pay OOP. Even a quick trip to the doctor to have a chat costs a couple hundred. I’ll also look up discountedlabs.
@mertdawg - great knowledge as always. Appreciate the insights!
But I had totally spaced cortisol. I looked up the symptoms and she has some of those. Ok, time to get some checks methinks.
I am still really wondering how to genuinely determine TDEE (mainly NEAT) in this situation. Like, isn’t NEAT relative to (sorry if I don’t know the medical term) how much energy your body decides to expend - you know how some people just spend energy through fidgeting and talking etc, but some people just do close to nothing? In her case, if she’s not at work, she’s horizontal. And we live by the water, she loves where we live, but even in the summer I have to drag her outside just to walk. So yeah, calculating total dailies is a bit of a mystery. All I know is, intake has always been low.
I considered that, but it’s not really sarcastic to group someone with nutritionally ignorant people because you think he’s nutritionally ignorant. Maybe it’s sarcastic towards doctors.
So you believe in metabolic adaptation, but you just think people are wrong to call it “metabolic damage”?
Wouldn’t the prevalence of severe depression in the experiment suggest the possibility of lingering harms? People have been found to have significant increases in health hazards for up to 2 years after severe stress or a bout of depression.
In my experience when people speak of “metabolic damage” they mean that they have messed up their metabolism and can no longer lose fat in some cases gaining fat on very low calories. I believe that is BS. At the end of the day if you do not eat you will lose weight.
That is not to say that not eating can not have bad side effects but, I would not place that on metabolic issues. If I recall in the Minnesota studies did the participants not sit around talking about food for hours? That would not be an effect of metabolic damage they were starving. They may have had physical/mental problems but, they were still losing weight.
I must’ve missed the info about her not working out currently, if so then of course don’t stop. Yes, for anti stress menagement. I forget to mention about B6 suplementation, diaphragm breathing…there are plenty things that will help with that and I’m not inventing the wheel here. Regarding to calculations I think it has to be trial and error at first plus monitoring / logging closely activity and intake. Also, like others mantioned, she must find acivities that she likes to increase NEAT, otherwise she’ll wont fully devote to the process…maybe she like to play on drumms and don’t know about it
This. The break from weight training is to reduce stress as much as possible. She’s probably going to have to spend a long time slowly upping her calories to reach a normal intake level.
I’m just not so sure about the break from weights is the only thing. We workout at home using dumbbells for about 30 minutes. Do one body part in a session, usually around 10-12 sets split between a few exercises. And this is to give her body a reason to keep the muscle (along with the protein and leucine) in a deficit and not eat it up. Where poss.
Plus, like I say, there’s been no weights in almost two years, so this feels like a step in the right direction. Unless maybe it’s better to do frequent rests over periods of days?
So hard to get the calories in. I gotta start thinking liquid meals. Every meal time is a war whereby I’ve calculated all the macros and the plate just looks daunting, and inevitably a decent amount gets left, and we haven’t reached anywhere near the daily goal. I’m thinking it’s partly because the meals are just too damn healthy to stomach.
Sleep is just about adequate. About 7-8 hrs per night, odd night is less. Some periods of insomnia if there are life stresses.
You said she had thyroid issues and nodes removed? When a surgery is done at the thyroid this messes up all the hormones and the thyroid can become under active.
I think you need to start from there - TSH, T4, T3, Reverse T3 and I would also test all other pituitary hormones plus estrogen and testosterone.
What you describe if she is not lying to you about calories seems like a hormonal issue.
@baumbodies I think the only way I can think of, besides eating a not so healthy diet (i.e. including starches and wheat) is to add some bulk in liquid form. But, like someone else said, maybe the viscous cycle is broken by moving more, in order to increase appetite. No other meds. She was on birth control for years and we went off that for about 3-4 years just because we were sure that it was the culprit - it wasn’t. So back on those again.
@vonko1988 - yeah I do think you’re right. Would be super duper expensive to get all those done but I think it’s needed. It was just the nodule that was removed under local anaesthetic so not sure if that’s the same as what you’re thinking.
25% would look pretty fit on a woman with a typical build. It would be comparable to about 18% or so on a man. Does she want to lose fat? A 135-140 pound female at 25% bodyfat in her 30s I would guess would be around 1600-1800 calories a day baseline. I’m not doubting the percentage, but I am wondering because a lot of women would look good in a swimsuit at a real 25% if they have decent muscle.
weeeell. It’s a subjective one really. Some people suit 25% and some don’t. I think that much on a woman in her 40s is tricky. It’s not a huge amount though to be fair, the goal would literally just be add about 10lb of muscle and lose about 15lb of fat.
I proposed break from training because I misunderstood that she was doing it for long time now. If You resumed it after long break, then there’s no need for break. Just make sure to not overdo it in terms of intensity and volume, if she’s tired all the time, killing it in the gym without proper intake is bad idea. Like others said, she need to regain her appetite. Also, for women, in order to have healthy hormonal levels etc. it’s crucial to eat healthy fats. I’m afraid she might be very damaged in this departament (30% of intake should be goal…and on other note, normally for healthy, active woman, who is lifting weights 1500kcl should be a low end so if one don’t loosing weight on that level, then You should increase NEAT rather than deficit…it’s really tricky situation to increse NEAT when there’s no appetite).
change up the training. preferably to a full body or upper/lower template. will stimulate appetite also
perfect world up calories to maintenance, join a gym and run through high volume fatloss programs off this site like below…
If going to stick to home equipment do a bunch of these…
@insejn yeah I hear that. All makes sense. So we had a talk recently and agreed on increasing food and NEAT as a starter. The goal being to get the appetite back. And to maybe introduce some tastier foods at the expense of being perfectly healthy. Also, I have heard that super high intensity fat burning workouts are bad for someone with potential hormone issues like high cortisol.
I have often questioned how many carbs to put into the mix. We usually restrict quite a bit, so maybe around 30-40g on a low day to 60-70g on a high day. And try to stay away from starches. But I see ripped women eating white rice and gluten free toast all the time.
@RampantBadger I’ll check those links out. At the moment she doesn’t have the energy for full body, nor the time or budget for a gym but it’s all on the cards.
I think I got quite a lot from this post so thanks to all. Just ignored the calories in/out zealots with their usual aggro.
I really have come to learn that the body has other ways of dealing with calories. There’s likely dozens of systems that get the volume turned down in a deficit as a way to keep fat stores, from hormones to respiration to digestion. It’s still a quantifiable energy though, but impossible to calculate i.e. you can’t say, well my respiration is down so that’s 30kcal a day. I blinked less so that’s 3kcal.
In a way it’s still calories in/out then, but, it’s not ONLY one’s fat weight that’s for grabs. Muscle, glycogen and all the other systems I mentioned take a hit. It’s just unfortunate, aesthetically, that fat stores have a huge priority in the body if enough crash dieting takes place.
You keep dropping hints that your cooking doesn’t taste good and your diet plan is super restrictive and “clean.”
Tell us more about the foods that make up the diet.
I don’t know exactly what y’all are eating, but I agree with insejn that fats are important for health. They help with absorbing nutrients and hormone production. Is she getting enough?
