Crash Diet -> Healthy Diet

[RedLantern]

Originally Posted by why

I won't get into all the details, but essentially the body stores energy. Always. This is why meal timing doesn't matter much and why people can skip lunch or go for a walk without requiring an IV drip of glucose to keep themselves alive along the way.

So what you're saying is, in spite of popular rhetoric, I WILL be a be able to start my day and function if I don't eat something as soon as I wake up?!!

 

[why]

To speak more specifically to JD_May's case (or anyone else in a similar situation):

When the body is in a severe prolonged energy deficit, it puts incoming energy toward normalizing bodily processes (repairing tissue, raising hormone levels, increasing kidney filtration rate, whatever). So a person that's been eating very little and expending lots of energy through work (physics not paycheck) starts eating more and their body stores it, just as it would store the energy if there wasn't a deficit. But the body doesn't store it strictly as a belt-buckle overhang, it stores it in skeletal muscle tissue, connective tissue, around organs, inside the liver, and various other places; don't think of stored energy strictly as fat: stored energy can be any macronutrient, from muscle tissue to glycogen. It's all usable stored energy.

Like I said in my previous post, the body always stores energy, and it has feedback mechanisms to regulate how it uses the stored energy. When energy stores are low and constantly depleted, it uses the feedback mechanisms to start conserving energy to keep all necessary functions active. Anabolic hormone levels drop, since they're not necessary. Sex hormones drop, since they're not necessary. Organ function is slowed to conserve energy. Tissue repair slows due to the lower anabolic hormone levels, since repairing tissue requires a lot of energy. Body temperature lowers due to less energy being used inside the body in all these processes.

So why not just eat three large pizzas (or for the clean freaks, 5lbs. of oatmeal and flax seed)? Aside from the digestive issues, the body can only do so much so fast. Eating three large pizzas might be fine for a one-time meal to replete a lot of the glycogen stores, but beyond that there's a lot of fat in the pizzas that the body will store as well. So why not just have the oatmeal (or for less fat, cream of wheat or something)? Well, that stores less fat and gets energy stores back up, but the body doesn't all of a sudden speed up a decreased heart rate, dilate the arteries, normalize hormone levels, repair all damaged tissue, etc. These take time, especially when the body has been in such a severe deficit for so long. On top of that, doing this all at once can lead to refeeding syndrome.

That's why I say that the best thing to do is just to eat normally for a while. Once the body gets back to a normal level (and 'normal' isn't a finish line or anything objectiviely qualifiable either), resume a restricted-calorie diet. Remember when you first started dieting and the weight dropped off rapidly? Your body had not yet caught up the the deficit you created, so it kept using energy as if nothing changed. Eventually the feedback mechanisms caught up, and your body started to conserve energy. You exercised and used a lot of energy, so it conserved more energy. So you exercise more, and it conserved even more energy. So you eat less to give it less energy...and you can see where this eventually leads.

After you're content with where you are, 'normal' means just eating and exercising as you always do. Say your birthday comes around and you drink a 12-pack and ate a big steak, so your body stores it. You realize you ate too much yesterday, so you exercise and skip breakfast and lunch, and the body returns to its 'normal' level, so you eat normally again. That's a much easier way to live than worrying about tiny details all the time.

 

[Hartmann]

Thanks for the informative responses, why.

 

[whacked]

Originally Posted by why

After you're content with where you are, 'normal' means just eating and exercising as you always do. Say your birthday comes around and you drink a 12-pack and ate a big steak, so your body stores it. You realize you ate too much yesterday, so you exercise and skip breakfast and lunch, and the body returns to its 'normal' level, so you eat normally again. That's a much easier way to live than worrying about tiny details all the time.

 

[AR_Six]

Originally Posted by why

That's why I say that the best thing to do is just to eat normally for a while. Once the body gets back to a normal level (and 'normal' isn't a finish line or anything objectiviely qualifiable either), resume a restricted-calorie diet. Remember when you first started dieting and the weight dropped off rapidly? Your body had not yet caught up the the deficit you created, so it kept using energy as if nothing changed. Eventually the feedback mechanisms caught up, and your body started to conserve energy. You exercised and used a lot of energy, so it conserved more energy. So you exercise more, and it conserved even more energy. So you eat less to give it less energy...and you can see where this eventually leads.
Well I might end up having to do that - just eat normally again. If I do, though, I expect I'll gain a bunch of that fat back right where it was before, if not all of it. The point of this thread is to figure out a way to get around that eventuality, if at all possible. If there's a way to reach the same point in terms of recovery from the conservation mode I am in but not get that fat back, or get more muscle back instead, then I'll go with those as plan A and plan B. See where I'm going with this? I'd rather not have to write off a couple of months and start from scratch if I can help it.

 

[why]

I don't know why you think you'll gain 30lbs. of fat by eating normally for two weeks.

 

[thekunk07]

^ime, and that's all i am referencing, it has been good to ease in with a one week period of working toward a deficit, followed by a crash like RFL, then something easier to maintain like bodyopus or ud 2.0 "” which has become basically my full time diet. you will make it too easy to gain weight back eating "normally". My plan to make things permanently bearable is carb cycling of near no carbs on my 1 inactive days, very low on cardio days and moderate to heavier carbs on days i am training hard.

 

[APK]

There's gotta be some middle ground between what Why and Kunk are saying, JD. You've admitted you don't know much about nutrition. Regardless of what we consider the definition of such a broad term such as "nutrition" to be, let's agree that this probably at least means you were eating too much junk before.

Sounds like you don't have any desire to look like a cover model, so it might not be vital to micromanage your carbs and such. If you're considered about putting fat back on, do what I suggested before and calculate what your maintenance level is. Depending on how many calories you're taking in right now and what your maintenance is, you may want to ease back up to the latter over the course of a week or two.

You're making this more difficult than it needs to be, especially since you sound like you just want to be a somewhat slender guy. Judging by your posts before, it sounds like you spent about a year cooped up in a library, getting little physical activity, and probably eating junk food and/or excess calories considering your inactivity. If you're being active right now and eating cleaner, there shouldn't be this impending sense of doom that you'll become a fatass by eating at maintenance. You might put on some pounds, but that doesn't mean you're putting on FAT. That's why you shouldn't live and die based on what the scale alone says.

 

[db_ggmm]

You all need to stop using the word "normal". "Normal" in the states is a diet of gluttony. Why's "normal" is maintenance, JD's "normal" is above maintenance and involves weight gain, kunk's "normal" involves carbs and intolerance.

 

[whacked]

Originally Posted by db_ggmm

You all need to stop using the word "normal". "Normal" in the states is a diet of gluttony. Why's "normal" is maintenance, JD's "normal" is above maintenance and involves weight gain, kunk's "normal" involves carbs and intolerance.

There's more to it than just counting calories. A "normal" diet also implies something different than an aversion to carbs and an meticulous obsession with "healthy foods", much of which describes JD May's current diet/state of mind.

 

[DeadDJ]

Originally Posted by why

Say your birthday comes around and you drink a 12-pack and ate a big steak, so your body stores it. You realize you ate too much yesterday, so you exercise and skip breakfast and lunch, and the body returns to its 'normal' level, so you eat normally again. That's a much easier way to live than worrying about tiny details all the time.
So wait, this both works and is a good idea??

 

[AR_Six]

Originally Posted by Why

I don't know why you think you'll gain 30lbs. of fat by eating normally for two weeks.
I'm worried about gaining back a bunch of fat, even if it's not 30lbs, if it's even half that that's no good. I tried eating normally for 5 days earlier this month and jumped up 7lbs, got back on the crash diet and got rid of it again... I would like a better plan. Not that those 7lbs were necessarily all fat (probably partly water), I have no idea how much of it was but I sure don't think it was 7lbs of muscle.

Originally Posted by APK

You're making this more difficult than it needs to be, especially since you sound like you just want to be a somewhat slender guy. Judging by your posts before, it sounds like you spent about a year cooped up in a library, getting little physical activity, and probably eating junk food and/or excess calories considering your inactivity. If you're being active right now and eating cleaner, there shouldn't be this impending sense of doom that you'll become a fatass by eating at maintenance. You might put on some pounds, but that doesn't mean you're putting on FAT. That's why you shouldn't live and die based on what the scale alone says.
Yeah this about sums it up perfectly. I am gathering that the best option is to gradually work up to maintenance, keep working out at a high level and do as much weight training as I can manage without overworking myself in order to make sure that as little as possible of the weight I'll gain back is fat. As for being obsessive about it Whacked, I'm obsessive about pretty much everything. As a character trait it has its benefits and drawbacks.

 

[APK]

Stop getting on the scale so often. Go buy a tape measure and keep weekly tabs on key areas such as your true waist, love handles, etc. That's your best for making sure whether you're putting fat back on or not. Losing your mind over a few pounds up or down is stupid because anyone's weight can fluctuate a few pounds over the course of a day.

 

[why]

Originally Posted by JD_May

I'm worried about gaining back a bunch of fat, even if it's not 30lbs, if it's even half that that's no good. I tried eating normally for 5 days earlier this month and jumped up 7lbs, got back on the crash diet and got rid of it again... I would like a better plan. Not that those 7lbs were necessarily all fat (probably partly water), I have no idea how much of it was but I sure don't think it was 7lbs of muscle.

Most of it was probably water (at least 5lbs. or so likely given your stature) and the rest is traces of accumulated food in the digestive track (ever eat corn and have it appear in excrement two days later?).

 

[whacked]

Originally Posted by JD_May

I'm worried about gaining back a bunch of fat, even if it's not 30lbs, if it's even half that that's no good. I tried eating normally for 5 days earlier this month and jumped up 7lbs, got back on the crash diet and got rid of it again...

Actually I'm sure most of it is water. It'd take some serious binge drinking to exceed your maintainance intake (which is at a slightly depressed level after the body had adjusted to your previous diet) by 3,500 calories (approx. 1lb of bodyweight) times 7 divided by 5 = 4,900 calories. Each day.