Fat and arthritic but needing to live healthier. Help?

Discussion in 'General Advice' started by Newlyread, Sep 13, 2015.

  1. Newlyread

    Newlyread Killer Queen

    I think I'll check that out in the coming months because the shoes I have now are really not doing me any favors. Pinched nerves and numb toes are the worst.

    So is the plague. D: Hope you feel better soon!
     
  2. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    you can get insole pads at the drugstore, that could do something. do you have flat feet? i didn't even know i had flat feet until my physio pointed it out, but apparently lack of spring in your arches can have devastating effects on your hips, knees, and back. and you can acquire flat feet as an adult if you're overweight, just the extra weight stretches everything out. but it can be fixed with exercises like scrunching a towel with your toes, a bit of googling should find some.
     
    • Like x 1
  3. An Actual Bird

    An Actual Bird neverthelass, Brid persisted, ate third baggel

    Sorry this was like three months but I just watched this exact video. Seeing these quotes was pretty trippy. I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt that way about it ... Anyway yeah, I'm in this thread sniping ideas. On the topic of yoga, instead of using actual yoga instruction vids (except at the beginning to learn how to do it), I just incorporate some of the poses into my grab-bag of an exercise routine so I don't have to listen to the woo :V It's probably not the most efficient way to exercise, but it works for me.
     
    • Like x 2
  4. reiyel

    reiyel Active Member

    with yoga i feel like it really depends on the teacher and on the kind of yoga they teach. i had a teacher who was all fairly factual and shit (she gave us a lot of stuff about how to get back up safely if you're a fragile person and/or you had/are scared of a bad fall, that was interesting. there were lots of old people and people with bad joints in that class) and this year's dude is all "meridians" this and "concentrate your awareness here and the energy will follow" that. you should just skip the woo woo intros and go straight to the how to positions, imho. (it's gonna be annoying if they slip it in between everything, though, and sometimes you can't be looking at the tv every other second to check your stance and being guided by voice is actually important... argh :( )
     
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  5. Rongeur

    Rongeur ~Heartless Bitch Extraordinaire~

    YO this is old but. Is this still ongoing, and if so, have you gotten to the dr to check for the 'beetus lately? Drinking and peeing an absurd amount is a common early sign.

    Also, keep fighting the good fight, dude. I'm rooting for ya.
     
    • Like x 1
  6. Newlyread

    Newlyread Killer Queen

    Yeah, that's what I've ended up doing. I might not be doing it right but OH WELL. Also, pretty wild you found the same video as me. That would kinda trip me out a bit too!

    Unfortunately the video I was trying was pretty much woo all the way down. And I don't have anything against people who do yoga for the spiritualism aspect, but it just ends up frustrating me too much to relax, lol.

    Luckily my body got used to the new diet and there's been no peeing marathons since! I appreciate the concern, though, and it's something I'll look out for.

    Thanks!
     
    • Like x 3
  7. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    so you know those pedal dealies we were talking about earlier? i figured out how to put mine on the floor at the side of the bed, and lie across the bed with my legs hanging off, such that i can pedal while i lounge around and read. and it feels so good to fidget fidget fidget, my adhd self got addicted.

    result: i have done at least half an hour of extra cardio every day for the past four days. my thighs are good-sore. but i keep waking up hyper in the middle of the night. :/
     
    • Like x 3
  8. budgie

    budgie not actually a bird

    @jacktrash what time of day do you generally pedal during? i find certain types of exercise give me an energy spike, so i can't do them too soon before bed.
     
  9. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    afternoon, generally. i haven't been having trouble falling asleep, i've just been waking up feeling Totally Rested And Ready To Do Stuff at 3am, but if i get up, an hour later i'm crashing again.
     
  10. budgie

    budgie not actually a bird

    i'd suggest just waiting it out and seeing if it's a 'getting used to the exercise' thing or a chronic thing.

    the other question is whether your hour of wakefulness impacts the rest of your day. if you're feeling as rested as you did before and it's just annoying, then maybe keep a bedside book/project for 3 o'clock. if you're a zombie because of it, then probably something needs to change.
     
    • Like x 1
  11. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    huh, you know, i'm sleeping a little later, but only by about as much as i was awake for. so yeah, maybe i'll just roll with it. make myself a cup of decaf, read some spooky stories on my tablet, call it Me Time. :D
     
    • Like x 2
  12. Newlyread

    Newlyread Killer Queen

    Yeah, my husband has way more energy now that we're doing a regular regimen and his sleep schedule was all screwy for awhile. I'd say you'll probably get used to it but I do know you've had some sleep troubles in the past, so IDK. Glad to see it's not impacting your life too badly though!

    How is the pedaling on your knees?
     
  13. jacktrash

    jacktrash spherical sockbox

    well, i was having a lot of trouble with it when i was sitting in a chair, so that's why i'm so happy about the lying-on-the-bed position. it's a lot easier on my knees. i guess reclining bikes exist for a reason. :D
     
    • Like x 1
  14. Chiomi

    Chiomi Master of Disaster

    And actually recumbents are pretty specifically designed for people who have the same general location of back pain that you do! Though recumbent trikes are distinctly less satanic than proper bicycles, if you want to look into doing the same kind of thing as you're doing now but outside once it stops being a frozen wasteland.
     
  15. Newlyread

    Newlyread Killer Queen

    Time to necro this thread with depressing as fuck news.

    After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

    "It has to do with resting metabolism, which determines how many calories a person burns when at rest. When the show began, the contestants, though hugely overweight, had normal metabolisms for their size, meaning they were burning a normal number of calories for people of their weight. When it ended, their metabolisms had slowed radically and their bodies were not burning enough calories to maintain their thinner sizes.

    Researchers knew that just about anyone who deliberately loses weight — even if they start at a normal weight or even underweight — will have a slower metabolism when the diet ends. So they were not surprised to see that “The Biggest Loser” contestants had slow metabolisms when the show ended.

    What shocked the researchers was what happened next: As the years went by and the numbers on the scale climbed, the contestants’ metabolisms did not recover. They became even slower, and the pounds kept piling on. It was as if their bodies were intensifying their effort to pull the contestants back to their original weight."

    "Most people who have tried to lose weight know how hard it is to keep the weight off, but many blame themselves when the pounds come back. But what obesity research has consistently shown is that dieters are at the mercy of their own bodies, which muster hormones and an altered metabolic rate to pull them back to their old weights, whether that is hundreds of pounds more or that extra 10 or 15 that many people are trying to keep off."


    So what's the point? Even if I know, scientifically, that I'm working hard and sacrificing and trying so damn much, I will never get the results doctors demand of me in order to get my knees fixed. In order for my husband to be treated like an actual goddamn human being instead of some disgusting freak. I guarantee you our doctors haven't read any articles about this and if I tried to talk to them about it, they'd override me and tell me to stop making excuses and to just LOSE WEIGHT ALREADY, YOU FAT FUCK

    I will never get the results the world demands of me. I will never be anything but fat and slowly dying.

     
  16. strictly quadrilateral

    strictly quadrilateral alive, alive, alive!

  17. Newlyread

    Newlyread Killer Queen

    Thank you.

    For what's it worth, I'm not stopping my attempts to be a healthier person. I walk daily despite the pain, I eat healthy. I'm trying to take care of myself and my husband the best I can. It just feels futile today.
     
  18. Narren

    Narren Wisdom: -

    Hi. This is my first post on this forum, so hi Kintsugi!

    Last year, I decided I wanted to lose weight--I had realized that since I left high school I'd gained like... 5 pounds a year, and this was getting silly. Also, I had a friend who just graduated from a Nutritionist program, so I decided to steal fire from the Gods, as it were, and I got a lot of information. I have tried to transcribe it into a useful format. This is all of the information a doctor *should* give you instead of saying "lose weight".

    I hope this doesn't come off as condescending, and I'm really sorry if it does. That is not what I am trying to do. I hope this information helps you understand what's going on. Losing weight is hard and it takes a while. It is good that you are doing things to change your situation. Hopefully this information helps too.

    TL:DR version:
    1) If you are overweight, your body will tell you to eat more food than you should be eating.
    2) If you are underweight (and especially if you have a non-binge eating disorder), your body will tell you to eat less food than you should be eating.
    3) These are long term things that I wish I could tell you will just go away, but they won't for a long time. You (unfortunately) have to find habits that work for you to lose(/gain) weight and keep it on(/off).
    4) To start: Keep a food log with you. Spend about a week logging everything that goes into your mouth, one page per day. This is harder than it sounds, but opening the journal before you start eating will help.
    5) Go to www.supertracker.usda.gov, and make an account. Look at the US Government's suggested caloric intake for your age/sex/height(?)/activity level
    6) Then try to use their tools to reverse-engineer what your average daily caloric intake is.
    7) If you have any particular medical conditions/concerns that make you think you shouldn't eat less, talk to a doctor/nutritionist. Usually most health insurance plans make it easy to see a nutritionist, because they save money if you're healthy, and being overweight is correlated with a lot of stuff. Some nutritionists offer free consults. They can give you a plan that is more tailored to you than I can, and they can adjust things along the way.
    8) To lose weight, eat about 80% of your recommended caloric intake, but no less than 75% of your recommended caloric intake. The supertracker website actually probably will give you those numbers. I believe they have a 'weight loss' section built in.
    9) You should lose about a pound a week. Incidentally, your weight fluctuates enough that you may weigh yourself at a bad time and not notice you're losing weight for a bit. The best bet there is to weigh yourself every morning and keep a spreadsheet. I try to do it immediately after taking a shower in the morning (I bring my laptop into the bathroom so I can play music while I shower, and I weigh myself after drying myself off but before leaving the bathroom. Then I update my spreadsheet!)
    10) You are playing the long game. Don't stress yourself out about precisely hitting targets. A pound a week is a healthy amount of weight loss. You will need to do this for some number of weeks.
    11) To stop losing weight, return to the normal caloric intake that you are supposed to have. Try to not go back to your 'old eating habits' because they're what got you in trouble in the first place. Learning to eat until satiated is your best friend here, because you're already eating less food than you cooked.

    More complicated stuff/thoughts:

    First of all, the #1 way to lose weight, according to nutritional science is to adjust your diet. This is because:

    1) To lose weight optimally, you want to consume about 80% of your recommended caloric intake. Eating more is worse. Eating less is also worse.
    1a) Eat less than your recommended caloric intake on average to lose weight. Eating the caloric intake on average causes you to maintain weight.
    1b) Eating drastically less than your recommended caloric intake (< 75% puts your body into starvation mode. This is bad. Don't do it. It makes it harder to lose weight).
    2) (A simplified model:) I need to eat about 2000 calories a day to lose weight (2400 calories/day is the amount of food I should be eating, and I rounded up), if I don't exercise.
    3) If I'm eating 3000 calories a day, I need to burn 1000 calories in exercise. That's probably 2 hours of swimming (a little under), depending on the intensity.
    4) If I'm eating 2500 calories a day, I need to burn 500 calories in exercise. That's a bit under an hour of swimming, depending on your intensity. If I swim for 2 hours, my body goes into 'starvation mode' and it gets complicated.
    5) I can't swim for 2 hours a day, and even if I could swim for 2 hours a day, I do not have the physical strength to do so.

    There is the apocryphal study of the Nutritionist who is hired by [food company] to conduct a scientific study to determine if their new cooking process is more or less healthy than the old process. The nutritionist takes two groups of people and gives them bags of [snack] in a double-blind way, gives them basic nutrition instructions ("This is how to eat in a healthy way, these are the things to do, etc."), and sees what happens. Invariably, both the control and experiment groups lose weight, because the problem isn't [snack food] is unhealthy, but that we eat too much food without realizing it.

    You are probably eating too much food. Most of America is eating too much food. We live in a culture where we tell people things like "Make sure you finish all of your food" and then serve people huge portions. To make it worse, one we gain weight, our own bodies basically fuck us over. Basically, your fat cells secrete a hormone when they are empty that makes you feel hungry. The more fat cells you have, the more hormone. When you lose weight, what you have actually done is emptied out a whole bunch of fat cells, so you win a prize. It's hunger! This means you are generally hungrier, and will feel hungrier, until the fat cells die. No problem, that happens quickly, right? No, actually it takes about seven years to go away completely, but it does happen. Note that this also works in reverse, and people with chronic eating disorders actually feel full earlier (they eat less). I believe the mechanism is slightly more complicated, but that doesn't matter here.

    You can learn to eat until you feel satiated (you have consumed about enough food) instead of eating until you feel full (you do not want to eat more/have run out of food). The more overweight you become, the greater the disparity between those two can be. I try to dispel my incorrect notions re: food consumption with data. As long as you're keeping track of your diet and eat about the right amount of food, you will probably be okay, even if you feel a little hungry. Honestly, having a lot of cooked vegetables and snacking on them can help a lot too with that kind of hunger.

    The reason people tell people who are losing weight to eat vegetables is that a lot of vegetables (especially big leafy ones) are very low in caloric density. Also vegetables contain a lot of minerals/vitamins and you want to make sure you're getting those, too. So by eating a lot of lettuce or kale or whatever, you feel more full (the sensation you're used to) while consuming less calories. The problem with this (and why it doesn't work for everybody) is that you still don't know what you're actually trying to do or how much to eat.

    A side note: A lot of people will tell you that counting calories is problematic or unhealthy. I disagree, with a caveat. You are playing the long game. You want to consistently eat less calories than your average daily caloric intake should be to lose weight. You're not going to have a perfect idea of how many calories you're eating. You don't need one. This takes a while. So don't stress over the number of calories you ate on a given day, because you're not going to know how much you've eaten, precisely. What you care about is what your average caloric intake looks like, and where it compares to where you're intending to be.

    None of this is to say that this is hopeless. It's also not easy, and it's a long term numbers game. It also means that you can't necessarily trust what your body is telling you (which sucks). Luckily, SCIENCE (tm) has some suggestions and so does GOVERNMENT (tm). I really recommend the USDA's Supetracker (https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/CreateProfile.aspx) for a lot of information. It's a pretty good resource, but because I do a lot of home coking with weird ingredients, I don't use their website for anything other than figuring out what my caloric intake should be. The big takeaway here is that what you need to do are build habits that work for you and then keep doing them, even after you've lost weight.

    I am not a nutritionist, I just bothered one and took a lot of notes. If you have any other questions, I can pass them along, but I cannot really answer specific questions for you ESPECIALLY because I am not even able to begin evaluating you. I hope some of this helps.
     
    Last edited: May 3, 2016
  19. Newlyread

    Newlyread Killer Queen

    That's a lot of information, some of which I already knew and a lot that I didn't. Thank you for compiling it.
     
  20. Newlyread

    Newlyread Killer Queen

    But, again, it's not like I'm sitting on my ass scarfing huge portions every day. I don't stuff myself.
     
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