Velocity Undetermined

Quoted message said:

I'm a little disoriented.

I've dropped about 13 pounds I think. But the needle on my bathroom
scale now has both its annoying little arms wrapped around the same
number. It's been that way for three days. I'm perplexed.

I know, all right? I know that this is an excellent loss and I
shouldn't get all whiny before even a month has passed at 20-35 carbs.
It just doesn't feel right. It feels slow, or too hard or something
and I feel like I should have cut through at least 20 pounds by now.

I even bought some ketostix today. I've realized that ketostix are
really just a babysitting device, but anyway good news! I had a very
satisfying interaction today with my own urine and discovered that I
am burning fat at an almost terrifying rate.

But it still feels wrong. Slow. I should have more energy. I don't.
My head feels fuzzy, like there's too much space between my eyebrows.
The worst part is that the extra padding on my abdomen is sitting
there without budging like my cat Elvis and that is *not* what
normally happens. Normally that's the first thing to go.

I can't tell if I'm just paranoid because of all the [censored] I read about
trashing your adrenals with drugs and the hormonal roadkill left
behind by antidepressants, or if I really am in a new, unpleasant type
of homeostasis.

Then I made the mistake of reading this book ( I'm a librarian so I
can scoop books off the New Titles shelf and get them back on by
morning) called Cheat to Lose, which basically sort of says what Doug
says about leptin and I'm wondering if I should cycle. Or hold steady.
Or just calm down for another month.

Or what.

c
gone completely quantum

Take a deep breath. Relax. You probably didn't put the 20 on in 2
weeks.
You can do it. It's fine. Breathe.

Didn't Duffy say it would be different this time?

[email hidden] wrote:
:: I'm a little disoriented.
::
:: I've dropped about 13 pounds I think. But the needle on my bathroom
:: scale now has both its annoying little arms wrapped around the same
:: number. It's been that way for three days. I'm perplexed.
::
::

Quoted message said:

I'm a little disoriented.

I've dropped about 13 pounds I think. But the needle on my bathroom
scale now has both its annoying little arms wrapped around the same
number. It's been that way for three days. I'm perplexed.

"Three days" is meaningless. Period. If you stall for three weeks,
then it *might* be time to do something different. Nothing's broken
yet; no need to fix it.

Quoted message said:

I know, all right? I know that this is an excellent loss and I
shouldn't get all whiny before even a month has passed at 20-35 carbs.
It just doesn't feel right. It feels slow, or too hard or something
and I feel like I should have cut through at least 20 pounds by now.

You're setting the bar awfully high, expecting 20 pounds in a month.
That can happen, especially if you're very obese, but it's not typical.
Ten pounds in a month is fast, and you're already ahead of that, so be
thrilled.

Quoted message said:

But it still feels wrong. Slow. I should have more energy. I don't.
My head feels fuzzy, like there's too much space between my eyebrows.
The worst part is that the extra padding on my abdomen is sitting
there without budging like my cat Elvis and that is *not* what
normally happens. Normally that's the first thing to go.

Many people say they don't get the same energy boost and whoosh from
repeated low-carb attempts as they did the first time. I've noticed
this myself, though I don't have an explanation for it. Maybe the
difference just doesn't *seem* as big because I've experienced it
before. I still like my naps, although they aren't as long or as
mandatory now, and I still get tired easily. I started taking fish oil,
but it's too soon to tell if it's doing much.

Quoted message said:

I can't tell if I'm just paranoid because of all the [censored] I read about
trashing your adrenals with drugs and the hormonal roadkill left
behind by antidepressants, or if I really am in a new, unpleasant type
of homeostasis.

I think I mentioned before that I trashed my adrenals years ago, and
that's a hard thing to recover from. You may want to look at your
supplements with regard to that; rebuilding adrenals need a lot of
certain B vitamins and some minerals -- in some cases many multiples of
the RDA. The good news is that by going low-carb, you're taking away a
major source of stress on the adrenals, but they still take time to
heal.

Quoted message said:

Then I made the mistake of reading this book ( I'm a librarian so I
can scoop books off the New Titles shelf and get them back on by
morning) called Cheat to Lose, which basically sort of says what Doug
says about leptin and I'm wondering if I should cycle. Or hold steady.
Or just calm down for another month.

Doug can speak for himself, but I think you need to give it at least a
month of stalling before you start looking at "resetting" things. If
you're one of those people who gets excited about every number on the
scale, weigh yourself every week or two instead of daily, so these
little 2- or 3-day ups and downs don't get you down. Mental stress
doesn't help your adrenals heal either.

--
Aaron -- 285/254/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz

Quoted message said:

I've dropped about 13 pounds I think. But the needle on my bathroom
scale now has both its annoying little arms wrapped around the same
number. It's been that way for three days. I'm perplexed.

I know, all right? I know that this is an excellent loss and I
shouldn't get all whiny before even a month has passed at 20-35 carbs.
It just doesn't feel right. It feels slow, or too hard or something
and I feel like I should have cut through at least 20 pounds by now.

The time scale for fat loss is month to month not week to week or
day to day. There hasn't been even one dieter in all of history
who was happy with that fact, but disliking a fact doesn't magically
convert it into fiction.

Relax. You are doing fine. So you're past the point of water loss
and into the stage where water retention bounce dominates the
day to day scale readings to the point the scale readings are
meaningless until the next new low registers. It's frustrating but
it IS a *victory*. Seriously. Boot camp has been completed.
Other folks understand that and of course you won't now. But
relax and in a few months there will be plenty of new lows.

Quoted message said:

I even bought some ketostix today. I've realized that ketostix are
really just a babysitting device, but anyway good news! I had a very
satisfying interaction today with my own urine and discovered that I
am burning fat at an almost terrifying rate.

Darker isn't better, you know. Think about what the sticks are
designed for - They are designed to detect fatal ketoacidosis.
When they turn dark black, the reaction is to call an ambulance
not celebrate. But of course no non-diabetic low carber ever
gets that sort of out of control ketone generation. Still, pink
beats dark purple.

On the other hand don't take any action to change the color of
the sticks. Most actions don't have the effect you would expect.
Just let your metabolism do its own adjustments.

Quoted message said:

But it still feels wrong. Slow. I should have more energy. I don't.
My head feels fuzzy, like there's too much space between my eyebrows.

The book says the way to deal with that is add another 5 grams
to your weekly quota ahead of schedule. In the first two weeks
I've never been convinced that helps - Folks clear up by the end
of Induction without change most of the time so the normal
approach is to move the calendar forward another week aka wait.
But if you aren't on schedule remember what the quotas are week
to week - 20, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and so on until you've spent
your week out of ketosis to find your CCLL (5-10 lower than the
quota that kicked you out).

Quoted message said:

The worst part is that the extra padding on my abdomen is sitting
there without budging like my cat Elvis and that is *not* what
normally happens. Normally that's the first thing to go.

I think you're remembering a different time scale. "Objects in
mirror appear closer than they actually are" to steal an expression
from a part of my car ...

Quoted message said:

I can't tell if I'm just paranoid because of all the [censored] I read about
trashing your adrenals with drugs and the hormonal roadkill left
behind by antidepressants, or if I really am in a new, unpleasant type
of homeostasis.

No. You're just in a hurry. Just like every dieter in history.

Quoted message said:

Then I made the mistake of reading this book ( I'm a librarian so I
can scoop books off the New Titles shelf and get them back on by
morning) called Cheat to Lose, which basically sort of says what Doug
says about leptin and I'm wondering if I should cycle. Or hold steady.

The idea of cheating to lose has absolutely no resemblence to what
I state about leptin resets. A cheat is usually with the carbs you
want the most. A reset is generally with the carbs you want the
least. The cheat sets up a terrible feedback cycle of overdoing low
carb, then cheating because of the stall that was generating, then
cheating on the wrong food, then getting a whoosh, then going back
to overdoing low carb because of the guilt of the cheat and back and
forth in an ever worse cycle until some cheat throws you off plan for
a very long time and no lesson is learned from the trauma. A leptin
reset is a deliberate knowing plan of using the most boring carbs you
can find at a decided upon time for a decided upon reason for a
decided
upon duration, followed by returning to plan.

Cheating may tap the same hormone feedback loops as a leptin
reset, but that's where the resemblence ends.

Quoted message said:

Or just calm down for another month.

There is NO reason to do a leptin reset in the first SIX months. And
then only if you failed to follow the directions and have not moved on
to OWL. It isn't even the 3rd or 4th thing to try in response to a
stall and you're extremely far from stalled.

Calm down for a lot longer than a month. You are wildly flailing at a
time when there isn't any reason whatsoever to expect anything is
wrong. Don't take any action other than following the schedule of
carb quotas, using the carb ladder, and checking for new lows weekly.

You are doing FINE. Do NOT search for extremist actions then make
up justifications for those extremist actions. And absolutely do not
take tiny bits of my low carb integrative hypothesis and use those
bits out of context to justify doing the wrong thing. That would be
like glancing at the title page of DANDR and switching to eating
nothing but steak for the next year.

Aaron Baugher said:

You're setting the bar awfully high, expecting 20 pounds in a month.

Once the initial water loss is complete, it borders on the impossible.
There is NO reason to *expect* the *impossible*. That is a plan
deliberately targetting frustration.

Quoted message said:

That can happen, especially if you're very obese, but it's not typical.

Even dropping 20 during the water loss of Induction tends to be
from bloat caused by a previously unknown food intolerance where
that food was removed during Induction IMO. Add that food back,
rather than increase carb counts, and the water retention reappears
instantly if that was the cause.

Quoted message said:

Ten pounds in a month is fast, and you're already ahead of that, so be
thrilled.

Also do some arithmatic on calories. Even though "a calorie is a
calorie" is nonsense and "calories in equals calories out" assuming
fixed calories out is even worse nonsense, calories do have some
meaning and they are useful for approximations -

A pound of fat is 3500-4000 calories. Human metabolism ranges
from 800 calories per day (in a concentration death camp or anorexia)
to 5000 calories per day (in elite olympic class athletes). Neither
extreme is anywhere near expected so call it 1500-2500 calories
per day for a regular human. If you burn 1000 calories per day of
fat in excess of what is eaten and mange to stay near 2500, then
the loss rate is 2 pounds of fat per week, 8ish per month. In normal
circumstances that's the maximum possible fat loss rate that can
be hoped for. Except this sort of maximum and you are setting
yourself up for frustration. NEVER discount real losses and NEVER
get frustrated at success just because you *want* to get unrealistic
results.

Quoted message said:

Many people say they don't get the same energy boost and whoosh from
repeated low-carb attempts as they did the first time. I've noticed
this myself, though I don't have an explanation for it. Maybe the
difference just doesn't *seem* as big because I've experienced it
before ...

Each time starting seems to roll the dice over again for what the
experience will be like. I have no idea why. It's only folks who
cycle often who start getting repeatable symptoms.

Quoted message said:

I'm a little disoriented.

Ok, take a deep breath. Those skinny things on the ends of your arms,
they're fingers... so far so good? ;-)

Quoted message said:

I've dropped about 13 pounds I think. But the needle on my bathroom
scale now has both its annoying little arms wrapped around the same
number. It's been that way for three days. I'm perplexed.

Aside from what the others have said, a few thoughts...

First, this should all be old news for you. Go read your old posts,
you've been through all this before with much success. If all else
fails, dig out your old before/after pictures and remind yourself what
a YEAR can do.

"Days" is too short. I've mentioned this before... I keep a graph of
my weight each day, and only look at *trends*, which take at least a
week or two to even show up. See the first half of [*] and you'll see
that you CANNOT determine the trend from any single day's measurement;
it takes at least two weeks of them to see that I was going nowhere.
Graphs at http://www.delorie.com/health/

[*] http://www.delorie.com/health/20030724-chart.html

Quoted message said:

It just doesn't feel right. It feels slow, or too hard or something
and I feel like I should have cut through at least 20 pounds by now.

How much water did you think you had in you? If you want more data,
here' something you can do to see that your *fat* loss is consistent:

* Get a body fat measuring thing. Either the funky scales or calipers.

* Every day, calculate the actual amount of fat and lbm in your body.
Again, trends are more important than specific numbers, since the
process is imprecise. I say "every day" only to make it a habit,
and get enough measurements for the averages to be more accurate.
You could do it once a week if you want, but it so, do it three
times and take the average.

* Graph "lbm" vs "weight" for a few weeks. You'll see that they don't
always move together; the interesting changes are the diagonals -
up+right and down+left mean changes in water weight, not changes in
actual body composition. The UL/DR changes are actual body
composition. See [*] for an old sample of mine, light orange is
older measurements, dark orange is newer.

[*] http://www.delorie.com/health/20051212-weight-lbm.html

Even without the graph, some people have noted that their %bf on the
funky scales changes a few days before a whoosh. I think the body
burns fat, producing water, but retains it for a while, so you don't
see a change in weight until it decides to get rid of the water.

Quoted message said:

I can't tell if I'm just paranoid because of all the [censored] I read

Ok, stop and look at your diet. Is it reasonable? Are you getting
all the proteins, EFAs, vitamins, minerals, and fiber you should be
getting? Are you getting reasonable calories? If so, don't worry
about it yet.

OTOH I recall you having problems with too much soy protein last time
around, you might want to look up your old posts about that and make
sure you're not repeating past mistakes.

Doug Freyburger said:

Also do some arithmatic on calories. Even though "a calorie is a
calorie" is nonsense and "calories in equals calories out" assuming
fixed calories out is even worse nonsense, calories do have some
meaning and they are useful for approximations -

This might be interesting reading...

"Determining the Maximum Dietary Deficit for Fat Loss"
http://www.mindandmuscle.net/articles/lyle_mcdonald/maximum_fatloss

Hollywood said:

Quoted message said:

I'm a little disoriented.

Quoted message said:

I've dropped about 13 pounds I think. But the needle on my bathroom
scale now has both its annoying little arms wrapped around the same
number. It's been that way for three days. I'm perplexed.

Quoted message said:

I know, all right? I know that this is an excellent loss and I
shouldn't get all whiny before even a month has passed at 20-35 carbs.
It just doesn't feel right. It feels slow, or too hard or something
and I feel like I should have cut through at least 20 pounds by now.

Quoted message said:

I even bought some ketostix today. I've realized that ketostix are
really just a babysitting device, but anyway good news! I had a very
satisfying interaction today with my own urine and discovered that I
am burning fat at an almost terrifying rate.

Quoted message said:

But it still feels wrong. Slow. I should have more energy. I don't.
My head feels fuzzy, like there's too much space between my eyebrows.
The worst part is that the extra padding on my abdomen is sitting
there without budging like my cat Elvis and that is *not* what
normally happens. Normally that's the first thing to go.

Quoted message said:

I can't tell if I'm just paranoid because of all the [censored] I read about
trashing your adrenals with drugs and the hormonal roadkill left
behind by antidepressants, or if I really am in a new, unpleasant type
of homeostasis.

Quoted message said:

Then I made the mistake of reading this book ( I'm a librarian so I
can scoop books off the New Titles shelf and get them back on by
morning) called Cheat to Lose, which basically sort of says what Doug
says about leptin and I'm wondering if I should cycle. Or hold steady.
Or just calm down for another month.

Quoted message said:

Or what.

Quoted message said:

c
gone completely quantum

Take a deep breath. Relax. You probably didn't put the 20 on in 2
weeks.
You can do it. It's fine. Breathe.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

🙂. Thanks. Just a little diet darkness there in the early morning
hours...

c
when is a person officially too old for scale weight tantrums?

Quoted message said:

"Three days" is meaningless. Period. If you stall for three weeks,
then it *might* be time to do something different. Nothing's broken
yet; no need to fix it.

Okay, yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I probably need to eat a little
more, and eat a little more protein.

Quoted message said:

You're setting the bar awfully high, expecting 20 pounds in a month.
That can happen, especially if you're very obese, but it's not typical.
Ten pounds in a month is fast, and you're already ahead of that, so be
thrilled.

Bah. Thrilled. I'm annoyed. My body is such an incorrigible
animalthing.

Quoted message said:

Many people say they don't get the same energy boost and whoosh from
repeated low-carb attempts as they did the first time. I've noticed
this myself, though I don't have an explanation for it. Maybe the
difference just doesn't *seem* as big because I've experienced it
before. I still like my naps, although they aren't as long or as
mandatory now, and I still get tired easily. I started taking fish oil,
but it's too soon to tell if it's doing much.

Actually I realized today that I sort of do have more energy, in a
different way. I don't have the loopy, leap out of bed feeling I had
when I was near goal, but then I'm not near goal. But all morning at
work I was coherent and reasonably cleanburning -- and I realized
several hours into the morning that I forgot the coffee completely.

Quoted message said:

I think I mentioned before that I trashed my adrenals years ago, and
that's a hard thing to recover from. You may want to look at your
supplements with regard to that; rebuilding adrenals need a lot of
certain B vitamins and some minerals -- in some cases many multiples of
the RDA. The good news is that by going low-carb, you're taking away a
major source of stress on the adrenals, but they still take time to
heal.

I remembered something today. I think I must have been some kind of
glandular monstrosity when I started losing weight five years ago. I
weighed 280 pounds! I had no energy. I was starving ALL the time;
hypoglycemic and jittery and simultaneously almost dead of
exhaustion. Wired and tired,so they say.

Sick, actually.

When I started lowcarb back then the weight fell off me like water,
but still it took *time*. I really wonder if the "time to heal"
factor is the real issue -- because after a year, I was literally a
completely different person in just about every way. It wasn't just
that I was a whole person's worth thinner as much as...I wanted to
exercise, I slept well, I had good concentration and a sense of
general optimism. I don't think that was because I was *thin*. I think
it was because I wasn't *sick*.

Time to heal? I hate time, it never acts at all like you expect it
to.

c
I like space. Gimme space instead.

Quoted message said:

The time scale for fat loss is month to month not week to week or
day to day. There hasn't been even one dieter in all of history
who was happy with that fact, but disliking a fact doesn't magically
convert it into fiction.

hey! Does too! I do it all the time!

Quoted message said:

Relax. You are doing fine. So you're past the point of water loss
and into the stage where water retention bounce dominates the
day to day scale readings to the point the scale readings are
meaningless until the next new low registers. It's frustrating but
it IS a *victory*. Seriously. Boot camp has been completed.
Other folks understand that and of course you won't now. But
relax and in a few months there will be plenty of new lows.

Sigh.

Quoted message said:

Darker isn't better, you know. Think about what the sticks are
designed for - They are designed to detect fatal ketoacidosis.
When they turn dark black, the reaction is to call an ambulance
not celebrate. But of course no non-diabetic low carber ever
gets that sort of out of control ketone generation. Still, pink
beats dark purple.

Well, yesterday I was actually in the purple/browns. Either I ate too
much coconut bark or my spleen is on fire -- I'm guessing A. But as I
said, it was all very entertaining.

Quoted message said:

The book says the way to deal with that is add another 5 grams
to your weekly quota ahead of schedule. In the first two weeks
I've never been convinced that helps - Folks clear up by the end
of Induction without change most of the time so the normal
approach is to move the calendar forward another week aka wait.
But if you aren't on schedule remember what the quotas are week
to week - 20, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and so on until you've spent
your week out of ketosis to find your CCLL (5-10 lower than the
quota that kicked you out).

You know, I don't ever remember doing that. I remember not being
hungry at all, settling at 1300 calories with one salad a day and a
couple of slices of diet bread, and using the fact that my
hypoglycemia seemed to be coming back as a guide to whether my carbs
were too high or not. I lost way over a hundred pounds in like seven
months -- the last 30 took me another six. By that time I was more a
calorie girl than a carb girl and unfortunately I'm basically right
back above that last 30.

Quoted message said:

I think you're remembering a different time scale.

I think you must be right. How could I have gone through seven months
of absolute dedication to this whole thing and now be blown away by
three weeks of Chubbette Awareness?

Quoted message said:

You are doing FINE. Do NOT search for extremist actions then make
up justifications for those extremist actions. And absolutely do not
take tiny bits of my low carb integrative hypothesis and use those
bits out of context to justify doing the wrong thing. That would be
like glancing at the title page of DANDR and switching to eating
nothing but steak for the next year.

Lol...I was wondering what you would think of that book. Thanks for
the review.

c

dammit, i was hoping this was the chocolate chip pancake diet.

Quoted message said:

"Days" is too short. I've mentioned this before... I keep a graph of
my weight each day, and only look at *trends*, which take at least a
week or two to even show up. See the first half of [*] and you'll see
that you CANNOT determine the trend from any single day's measurement;
it takes at least two weeks of them to see that I was going nowhere.
Graphs athttp://www.delorie.com/health/

[*]http://www.delorie.com/health/20030724-chart.html

🙂. Hey I forgot about your awesome webcharts. I know I went through
this the last time I had quite a bit of weight to lose ( and hey, man,
in five years it's never happened before now) -- it's less, almost,
about eating and more about adopting the right relationship to the
time that's passing. In five years, I have *never* felt this "going
too slow" thing. Suddenly it all can't happen fast enough and that's
at a top weight about eighty pounds shy of where I was five years
ago.

Weird. My Time got joggled somehow.

Quoted message said:

* Get a body fat measuring thing. Either the funky scales or calipers.

* Every day, calculate the actual amount of fat and lbm in your body.
Again, trends are more important than specific numbers, since the
process is imprecise. I say "every day" only to make it a habit,
and get enough measurements for the averages to be more accurate.
You could do it once a week if you want, but it so, do it three
times and take the average.

* Graph "lbm" vs "weight" for a few weeks. You'll see that they don't
always move together; the interesting changes are the diagonals -
up+right and down+left mean changes in water weight, not changes in
actual body composition. The UL/DR changes are actual body
composition. See [*] for an old sample of mine, light orange is
older measurements, dark orange is newer.

[*]http://www.delorie.com/health/20051212-weight-lbm.html

Oh! I wanna do that! More pacifying entertainment for the impatient
weight loss infant in my head.

Hey did you ever go and get your metabolism tested by that place? What
was it like? What did they say?

Quoted message said:

OTOH I recall you having problems with too much soy protein last time
around, you might want to look up your old posts about that and make
sure you're not repeating past mistakes.

Oh, yeah -- I didn't even think about it till you mentioned it. It's a
little notch in my head -- before I googled myself I thought, oh, it
wasn't that bad. Now I see it was. But I'm off soy except for the very
occasional Atkins bar. I did this one straight.

I think it's just been five years since I got on this train and I
forgot all the little things that make the experience...so special...

c
are we there yet?

Quoted message said:

🙂. Hey I forgot about your awesome webcharts.

One of them was your design, too :-)

Quoted message said:

it's less, almost, about eating and more about adopting the right
relationship to the time that's passing.

I think "dieting" would work better if you could form good habits,
then ignore the whole problem while you get on with your life, only to
realize a year later that you're really healthy all of a sudden :-)

It's a big "if" though.

Quoted message said:

Hey did you ever go and get your metabolism tested by that place?
What was it like? What did they say?

I did. 1470 kcal/day just to be alive, 1950 for an "average" day.
That was at 150 lbs (i.e. 10x kcal/lbs just to be alive, 13x for an
average day, a little lower than what the popular numbers are).

Basically, you just sit still and breathe into a little device (looks
like a cell phone with a big straw) for ten minutes, and it pops out
the answer (the 1470) based on measuring CO2 and O2 in the air going
in and out.

I'm not sure how much that information helped, though, other than to
know that my metabolism is a little lower than average. There are so
many things that affect metabolism that one (somewhat artificial[*])
particular number isn't much of a reflection on real life.

[*] the moment you get up and walk away, the number changes.

Jackie Patti said:

Quoted message said:

c
dammit, i was hoping this was the chocolate chip pancake diet.

I love your taglines. I read all your posts just to see the next
tagline. 😉

The fun part is figuring out which you can make true. I think I have
(or can make) a recipe for LC chocolate chip pancakes.

Googles....
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.diet.low-carb/msg/52b93ee834328819

LC chocolate is a common recipe, make chips from that and add to the
above.

Quoted message said:

c

dammit, i was hoping this was the chocolate chip pancake diet.

I love your taglines. I read all your posts just to see the next
tagline. 😉

--
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/

Jackie Patti said:

Quoted message said:

c

Quoted message said:

dammit, i was hoping this was the chocolate chip pancake diet.

I love your taglines. I read all your posts just to see the next
tagline. 😉

--http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/

🙂. It keeps my mind off the scale. And I figure it's a small way of
saying thank you for reading me go on and on and on about my
bellyfat.

c
Some people only stare at their navels. Others seem to have to narrate
the thing.

Try eating less and exercising more.

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I'm a little disoriented.

I've dropped about 13 pounds I think. But the needle on my bathroom
scale now has both its annoying little arms wrapped around the same
number. It's been that way for three days. I'm perplexed.

I know, all right? I know that this is an excellent loss and I
shouldn't get all whiny before even a month has passed at 20-35 carbs.
It just doesn't feel right. It feels slow, or too hard or something
and I feel like I should have cut through at least 20 pounds by now.

I even bought some ketostix today. I've realized that ketostix are
really just a babysitting device, but anyway good news! I had a very
satisfying interaction today with my own urine and discovered that I
am burning fat at an almost terrifying rate.

But it still feels wrong. Slow. I should have more energy. I don't.
My head feels fuzzy, like there's too much space between my eyebrows.
The worst part is that the extra padding on my abdomen is sitting
there without budging like my cat Elvis and that is *not* what
normally happens. Normally that's the first thing to go.

I can't tell if I'm just paranoid because of all the [censored] I read about
trashing your adrenals with drugs and the hormonal roadkill left
behind by antidepressants, or if I really am in a new, unpleasant type
of homeostasis.

Then I made the mistake of reading this book ( I'm a librarian so I
can scoop books off the New Titles shelf and get them back on by
morning) called Cheat to Lose, which basically sort of says what Doug
says about leptin and I'm wondering if I should cycle. Or hold steady.
Or just calm down for another month.

Or what.

c
gone completely quantum

DJ Delorie said:

Quoted message said:

🙂. Hey I forgot about your awesome webcharts.

One of them was your design, too :-)

Quoted message said:

it's less, almost, about eating and more about adopting the right
relationship to the time that's passing.

I think "dieting" would work better if you could form good habits,
then ignore the whole problem while you get on with your life, only to
realize a year later that you're really healthy all of a sudden :-)

It's a big "if" though.

Quoted message said:

Hey did you ever go and get your metabolism tested by that place?
What was it like? What did they say?

I did. 1470 kcal/day just to be alive, 1950 for an "average" day.
That was at 150 lbs (i.e. 10x kcal/lbs just to be alive, 13x for an
average day, a little lower than what the popular numbers are).

Basically, you just sit still and breathe into a little device (looks
like a cell phone with a big straw) for ten minutes, and it pops out
the answer (the 1470) based on measuring CO2 and O2 in the air going
in and out.

I'm not sure how much that information helped, though, other than to
know that my metabolism is a little lower than average. There are so
many things that affect metabolism that one (somewhat artificial[*])
particular number isn't much of a reflection on real life.

[*] the moment you get up and walk away, the number changes.
I did. 1470 kcal/day just to be alive, 1950 for an "average" day.
That was at 150 lbs (i.e. 10x kcal/lbs just to be alive, 13x for an
average day, a little lower than what the popular numbers are).

Wait a minute, I remember now. I was surprised it was less than 1500
because you seemed to burn a lumberjack breakfast just batting an
eyelash.

I wanted to do it too but then I think I got distracted, being a
refugee from the law and so forth. And like you said, that number
probably changes for just about any reason, from sunspots to sugarless
gum.

c
they wouldn't let my metabolism into canada...

Quoted message said:

I did. 1470 kcal/day just to be alive, 1950 for an "average" day.
That was at 150 lbs (i.e. 10x kcal/lbs just to be alive, 13x for an
average day, a little lower than what the popular numbers are).

Wait a minute, I remember now. I was surprised it was less than 1500
because you seemed to burn a lumberjack breakfast just batting an
eyelash.

I wanted to do it too but then I think I got distracted, being a
refugee from the law and so forth. And like you said, that number
probably changes for just about any reason, from sunspots to sugarless
gum.

c
they wouldn't let my metabolism into canada...

DJ Delorie said:

Doug Freyburger said:

Also do some arithmatic on calories. Even though "a calorie is a
calorie" is nonsense and "calories in equals calories out" assuming
fixed calories out is even worse nonsense, calories do have some
meaning and they are useful for approximations -

This might be interesting reading...

"Determining the Maximum Dietary Deficit for Fat Loss"http://www.mindandmuscle.net/articles/lyle_mcdonald/maximum_fatloss

Damn, how did I miss this one? I thought I had read every one of
Lyle's article on bodyrecomposition.com. The page says that this
article was added in early 2006, but I'm sure I've visited the page
since that time.

The very neat and tidy claim is that, through dieting, body fat can be
coaxed to yield only 31 calories per pound.

Since there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat, 31 calories per pound
represents only 0.8% of the energy. In other words, your fat stores
can dwindle by at most 0.8% per day.

Loss of fat is therefore regarded as exponential process, simialr to
radioactive decay, capacitor discharge or cooling.

We can determine the half-life of fat: the theoretical number of days
required to cut your body fat in half, no matter where it is at.

This is simple:

log 0.5 / log (1 - 0.008) =~ 86.3

So, at least eighty six days to cut your fat in half. Let's call it an
even ninety.

E.g., assuming no lean mass change, to go from 50% body fat to 33%
body fat, 25% to 14.3% or from 10% to 5.3%.

These numbers seem overly optimistic, but not wildly out of reach,
like they are about the right ballpark for a theoretical maximum.