Weight Loss and Exercise #5

That's great! I didn't like water much when I went on lithium and had to learn to drink it (not hard when you're that thirsty). Now I drink lots of it but I do remember the struggle to change from soda to water.


How is your stomach today?

Great that you dropped the goal of being at a certain weight by October.

I would suggest that you develop fitness goals and shift your focus from weight to fitness. Whatever matters to you: stronger, faster, nimbler, exercising more regularly, you name it. Just not the # on the scale. Plus, fitness goals are more in your control with far less chance of a disappointment down the road.

My quads were seriously sore today after the dumbbell exercises at Orangetheory yesterday evening.

Today, I have not time to exercise but I will wear my weighted vest while cooking. I have a lot of cooking to do.

It turns out that all that weight lifting has been paying off!!!

I just went to Trader Joe's. As the clerk was ringing my groceries, I realized that I had forgotten to buy water with electrolytes. I asked if it was Ok for me to run get something else. The clerk said yes. I ran to where by the entrance to the store they have packs of water, found the 12-pack of 1.5 liter bottles, grabbed it, and ran back to the clerk with it. Then, I raised it further to place on the checkout platform. And it did not feel heavy for me.

12X1.5L=18 liters of water. Not. So. Bad.

Ever since I started wearing my glasses my stomach has been totally fine. I've been able to do so much these last 3 days since I haven't felt sick.

Yeah I know what you mean by the Lithium thirst. I think I've gotten it on Wellbutrin. I've been so thirsty for water since starting it.

I keep gaining instead of losing weight

I love when that happens! I remember one time, i went to slam closed the hood of my 1977 Chevy Nova, and it felt like Superman did it, it was so light!

I've been waiting to hear this kind of news from you. You work so hard! You keep me going - you should get some orange points for that!

I will take the orange points from you!!

I don't get what the deal is. These last 2 days I've burned more then half the calories I've eaten and walked more than 5 thousand steps when I was only walking like less then 300 before. And I weigh 217. Which means I've gained. Again. I had to buy jeans online since the stores didn't carry my size. I mean what am I doing wrong? Plus gaining this rapidly doesn't sound like its very healthy or good in general. My smart watch has been telling me my stress level has gotten to the point where I need to take a breather. It never used to do that. I'm 31. Dying of a heart attack in your 30's is rare but not unheard of

Again, the human body is not a car. Gallons in equal miles out for a car, but calories in do not equal fat burned for a body. Or whatever you think the equation is.

Exercise - the extra walking - is holding water (addl weight) in your muscles, until they process it. THEN it might show a weight loss, IF you actually had to draw from fat stores, rather than just using any glycogen in your liver. Two days of walking does not burn fat. Unless you are walking 25 miles a day. Which i would not recommend. But you might want to look into training for the breast cancer walk, where they walk 25 miles a day for 3 days. But you work up to it slowly.

Where did you get this idea of instant fat loss? Its 3500 calories to lose one lb, and you have to pee it out, which means your body has to do all kinds of metabolic processes to convert fat to waste products.

Idk but I'm on Wellbutrin and I've heard you lose a shyt ton of weight on that. I have the lower appetite part. So why wouldn't the weight loss part follow too?

Anyways I am aching from my 2 days of non stop activty and my watch told me I did too much and not enough relaxing. I took an Aleeve and I'm lying down.

Maybe find a children's book on the body and how food and metabolism works? I cant explain it to you in a post. I looked at "Boosting Metabolism for dummies" - that has all the info.

I mean, I'm not stupid if thats what you mean. My body has been through menopause too.

No. Some weight loss but not a ton. And it is not instant. See on Drugs.com:

Does Wellbutrin XL/SR cause weight gain or loss?

From another source: "non-smokers who took bupropion lost 7.1 pounds over two years."

Wellbutrin for Weight Loss: How Effective Is It? | Ro

I'm just saying if your only eating 1300 calories a day but burning 2000, eventually you will start losing. Calories in calories out is the most basic diet there is.

Not at all. I was just thinking, like not even ozempic loses weight that fast. And ozempic works on hormones, whereas welbutrin works on brain receptors.

I think back on some of my old diet plans, and i am appalled at them. My dr told me to "just eat vegetables". Right - and an hour later youre hungry again, just like the joke about Chinese food. It's really hard.

My first goal in selecting my diet now is two-fold -
no heartburn and no constipation. Then its, how is
my morning blood sugar. Those things can be measured immediately or the next day, but weight change takes about a month to show a real loss (or gain). If you want to weigh yourself every day, they advise you to still only evaluate the total change after a month.

Okay, but thats still one week to lose 1 lb (3500 calories).

If you have the money, you can get a wearable continuous glucose monitor (CGM), wear it for several months, and learn how your specific body reacts to specific foods, drinks, combos of food and drink, exercise, sleep, and the rest. That is far more advanced than calories in, calories out. It is just pricey. But you can optimize based on the data. Can be eye-opening.

If you eat too little, your metabolism will slow down as the body thinks you are risking famine and tries to preserve precious resources. You will be burning fewer calories at rest. I do not think your wearable tracker accurately reports on what you burn at rest. Eating too little is a very common cause for the weight loss plateau.

The technology with which wearables report on stress is not well developed. Take it with a grain of salt. If this has never before but started happening, yes, it could be that something is really happening in your life and triggering a stress response but can also be a glitch. Most likely you are overreacting and there are no causes for concern, but just in case, why don't you go to your GP and ask for the blood panels to check on your heart? Even if your risk is low, it is still a good idea to get bloodwork done at your age as this will establish your baseline, like a benchmark.

I think you are so preoccupied with the idea that you can lose weight fast that the preoccupation alone stresses you out. And if it stresses you out, it can spike your cortisol level which in turn can make it really difficult to lose weight. So most likely, for your own good, you need to relax about your weight and not monitor your calories in and calories out to the last little calorie. After all, you have been doing it for so long lately and it has not worked, so why not re-assess your strategy based on data?

Focus instead of finding ways to move that make you feel joy. You have your VR headset–does not it allow you to select from a wide variety of workouts? Surely there must be something that you simply love doing. and then, success will breed success, as one of my DBT group leaders a long time ago used to say.

Low intensity cardio training today followed by 75 mins of restorative yoga.

And I cycled on an upright bike at the gym! Normally I avoid upright Peloton bikes and only use the recumbent bike because I like to sit on the large cushion on the recumbent bike. The hard narrow Peloton seats make my sitz bones hurt. But it turned out that there is another brand of vertical upright bikes at the gym called Expresso and the seats are fairly wide and soft. I did just 1 mile. It took my 7 minutes 28 seconds. I do not have ambitious plans: I will continue doing just 1 mile every time I come to the gym for cardio, and will see if I can eventually cycle faster. After I feel comfortable enough, I will explore the bike. It has this huge screen and probably lots and lots of preprogrammed rides. What I really liked today was that 1 mile was not on a straight line: no, I was navigating a terrain and had to use the controls to turn left and right and sometimes rather abruptly. That was FUN!

Also did 33 mins on the recumbent elliptical with the chest press add-on and 18 mins on the rowing machine, covering 2000 meters. For the first time I connected the rowing machine to the app ErgData which will now track my workouts at the gym. In my apartment complex, the rowing machine is by the same manufacturer but really old, before Bluetooth connectivity, but I will manually add my workouts at home to the logbook in the app to keep it all in one place.

Yeah and cortisol goes straight to belly fat. Ive read somewhere. But you could sure prove it by me.

I was kinda heavy on soda today. I know what I need to do not to drink so much. I don't need to be reminded how bad it is for me. I get it.

Food wise I've been doing ok. I had an Atkins low carb meal for breakfast and I have an Uncrustable thawing for lunch. I had 10 dill pickle rice crisps for a snack. Dinner will be a TGIF hamburger slider.

I'm at 1,355 calories, 160 carbs, and 43 grams of protein. Which I know is pretty low in protein.

I have just listened to a podcast with a well known MD about thr three types of fat. Belly fat yes, cortisol goes straight there, definitely provable by me as well. The worst fat is liver fat.

The MD explained that acute stress leads to weight loss while chronic stress leads to weight gain.

I should find the podcast in my YouTube watch history and post here.