Discouraged

[DannyMegan Tracy]

hey - I'll jump right in. 27, 2 days into my third week of W30. I have insulin resistance and have had it since childhood. I have hypothroidism and interstitial cystitis and pelvic floor dysfunction. I started w30 at 280 lbs. Up until Monday I was cruising and feeling so positive and like I was getting great results on my W30. I haven't cheated at all! Excercise is causing me too much pelvic and back pain tho. On Monday I gave in to temptation- I weighed. I know I know, like I said Its truely a temptation and I gave in . I may be even more Addicted to that damn scale than sugar. I have tried a bunch of weight loss plans and always struggle bc health issues get in the way and I get down or I just don't see results. Edited by moderator to remove scale results... I know it's "not" about weight/ and no I'm not "just gaining muscle". A person close to 300 lbs... Come on. I had high hopes my body would start burning and that this would work to help get some of the weight off and reduce my risk of becoming diabetic. I feel burned out and dis interested in eating healthy or eating at all for that matter. How do I pull myself out of this? Why haven't I lost more?

[SugarcubeOD]

Hi there;

 

Congratulations for finding and committing to the Whole30.  First, the Whole30 is not a weightloss diet.  It's part of a journey to better health and yes, while some people lose weight on it, it's not always the biggest priority your body has.  Your first sentence explains a lot of why you may not be seeing weight loss in the amount that you would like... your body is very likely prioritizing healing these various medical conditions... you have some serious things going on in your body and 30 days is not going to fix them all and also garner you a huge weight loss number.  I wish I had better news but for a lot of people, 30 days is just the beginning to their health journey.  You didn't gain the weight in 30 days and you aren't going to lose it in 30 days.  

 

What non scale victories have you had that you can celebrate right now?  Maybe these will help you commit to keep going on this plan and give your body sufficient time to heal and self regulate...

[DannyMegan Tracy]

So far .. Tired and an upset stomach... I had headaches all through week two but I went to the chiropractor and they have settled. I can't see much yet that's improved as a result of W30.

[DannyMegan Tracy]

It's very hard to not consider weight loss at all when since you were a child weight loss has always been hailed as the cure all to your medical problems.

[AmyS]

One thing that can help when you're not sure what to do next, is to think about what made you decide to do a Whole30 in the beginning. It may be that those reasons still motivate you, or that something else has come up that keeps you going.

 

If you go back and read your first post above, you can see a progression: things are going fine, and then you get on the scale. Then suddenly everything gets questioned.

 

We are all told that losing weight will fix all of our problems, and this means we are all lied to. The scale is not and will not ever be anything other than your current relationship to earth's gravitational pull.

 

If you'd like some specific tips on how to proceed with Whole30, post a couple of days worth of meals, water intake, any exercise, sleep, stress levels, and anything else you deem relevant. We can help offer some tips and encouragement.

 

But please, don't throw away the last three weeks because of a number on a scale. Just throw away the scale.

[Xandra]

You said hypothyroidism, and I know that thyroid troubles and weight gain often go hand in hand. Close friend of mine had thyroid issues and lost no weight on W30 (she's a former gastric bypass patient), but still said it was the best nutritional plan she ever tried. She stuck with it over the course of a year, and as her thyroid condition improved, the weight came off. Slowly but surely, she lost the weight and has kept it off ever since.

So I'm sympathetic to your desire for weight loss but I also hear your body trying to recover from a lot. Be gentle with yourself and give this detox period to your body as a gift.

[DannyMegan Tracy]

Thanks guys, I'm glad yall mentioned maybe my body focusing on healing. It's going to take more than 2 weeks to do that. And what I remember from the beginning was how I finally came to the realization that rather than trying to lose weight (and it not working) to get healthy was backwards. I need to get healthy first and a healthy weight will follow. Thanks for that reminder. I think I might throw away my scale. I have a seriously unhealthy relationship with it. I do need to give my body this gift. Thanks! In other news I ordered pizza for my family for dinner and I had healthy leftovers instead. One more successful day of whole 30.

[ladyshanny]

It's very hard to not consider weight loss at all when since you were a child weight loss has always been hailed as the cure all to your medical problems.

As women, we're told that weight loss is the cure to all of our everything problems.  Medical, relationship, work, financial.  Get skinny, be a better person.  Lose weight, be more valuable and deserving of unconditional love. Be the perfect marketed body type and rule the wooooorld!  

 

Instead of spending another second wishing for something you may never be (and yes, we all have a front row seat to our own performance of "if I just work harder, try harder, live harder, I'll morph into a perfect person"), I wish for you that you would eat every meal of whole, nutrient dense, colorful and varied food and know that you are honoring the beautiful human that you are.  I wish for you that you would stand outside and breathe in fresh air and walk around if your body wants to.  I wish you would spend this time loving you just the way you are.  

[praxisproject]

If you have a lot of health issues, it can take time. Your body won't prioritise weight loss over healing (and nor should it), there's hormones to fix, cells to rebuild, your body has to trust that you're going to treat it right (even if you've fed it right for 30 days, if you've been starving it for 2+ years before that (and some of us have been doing it a lot longer - eat less move more), it's not going to trust that food will keep coming). I've eliminated a number of health issues though Whole30 and cutting some foods out of my life and adding others in more regularly. I've had some other big changes from having my wisdom teeth out, getting regular blood work and making other lifestyle changes (even including my job!). Consistency really helps your body trust the "new way" things are going.

 

It may shock you, but even when morbidly obese you can still be starving yourself, be undernourished. Weight is terrible at identifying the difference between muscle mass, bone mass and fat, only the DEXA scan provides that kind of info, your scale gives the same level of context for you that it does for a non-metabolic rock. Most athletes come up as overweight or obese going on BMI numbers, it's a measurement, but it's a crap measurement for health (and a dubious measurement of many other things).

 

If you work on your health, the rest will follow.

 

If the old stuff didn't work, it's time to try new stuff.