TheBlackPumpkin

This is a bit of a ramble, so bear with me.

When I was young (like, prior to age 12) I was extremely active, athletic, played several sports. When things went off the tracks and I started gaining weight and becoming more and more sedentary, I didn't really notice the physical changes. It got to the point, that I had been sitting on a computer gaming for so long that the memory of what it felt like to be healthy felt like a mirage; some phantom image that I can almost make out but never quite fully realize.

I'm 28 now, after hitting 550 and slowly making lifestyle changes, getting away from toxic family, etc I'm starting to slowly get my health back, but I'm finding that I don't have any faith in my body or my ability to do a lot of stuff. Either for fear of injury setting me back, or due to just being so out of touch with my physical ability that I haven't quite started to realize what's changed.

I went on a hike the other day, we climbed up some rocks, hit a dead end and had to turn around. For some reason, even though it was maybe at Max like a 3 foot drop, I didn't feel I could jump down and slowly made my way down instead. this is kind of a silly example but I find stuff like this happening a lot. Idk if this is just a lack of confidence issue or if I'm actually just listening to my body and being conscious of my limits.

Curious if anyone else has had similar experiences. I've often said losing 200lbs isn't as life changing as people think because I'm still obese, etc, but I'm starting to wonder if that's actually true or if I'm still just living like I weigh 550lbs and can't do anything moderately athletic when in reality I am probably physically capable of a lot more but have just tricked myself into thinking I shouldn't even try.

Probably something for my therapist honestly lmao

Shady Rascal

I'd say continue to be cautious. Slow and steady wins the race in this game.

I have had three major knee surgeries in my life due to injuries. Each one was a game changer and took a long time to recover from.

You're on a path to improved health right now. I promise you, an injury will completely derail your progress.

You'll get there if you stay consistent.

Clyde1820

Don't blame you a bit. You've entered uncharted territory, this past few years. And now, you're no longer in-touch with what your body's capable of accomplishing physically.

Ditto on the earlier sentiment: take it slow and steady.

A guy I knew once used to be a consistent distance runner. Nobody's race-winner, by any stretch, but he could do 5-15mi pretty easily. Then he let career get in the way, gradually getting out of the exercising "habit" ... and it got to him. By the time he entered his mid-50s, he was ~75 lbs heavier and no longer exercising. So he got back to the gym. Five days per week, religiously. Began walking on the treadmill. Went until he was quite tired, but not over-strained. After about a year, he was down ~40 lbs and his body began telling him he was ready. At which point, he began to do slower quarter-mile jogs, followed by whatever walking it took to recover, then he'd jog again, etc. Eventually, by the end of the following year, he was running a minimum of ten miles daily. At a moderate pace, not pushing it, just what his body clearly "told" him he could accomplish. For him, that worked. He never pushed. He never strained it. He let his body's "willingness" dictate.

Can't say that that'll work for everyone. But it's a good lesson, I think. Don't over-reach the body's ability. If for no other reason than you'll be more likely to avoid injuries. At some point, once you gain back your awareness and ability, your body ought to begin letting you know it's capable of more. Until then, just keep doing the higher-cardio, whole-body strengthening stuff ... religously, daily, with sufficient recovery time that you avoid injuries. Slowly, your body should respond. And once you get to regularly doing a given activity, you'll find that stability, balance, coordination, quickness and all the rest begins to come back. Takes time. Back then, growing up, it did take time to get "good" at something physically.

Given you're uncertain, I'd keep doing the simpler stuff, those activities you can be certain of accomplishing. Say, in the gym, seated/recumbent cycling, walking on a treadmill with hand-holds, cycling around your area, simple whole-body compound-muscle floor exercises, and the like. In time, you'll get stronger, more-agile, more-stable.

Some ideas for various exercises to toss into the mix, now and then, perhaps when you're out at a park or at home and just want 10-15mins of huffin' and puffin' --

https://darebee.com/filter#sort=position&sortdir=desc

RH Clark

You have to get control over your diet. I do understand. When I turned 50, I was pushing 400 lbs. I was 380 lbs. before a big meal. You know what I mean. I had dieted all my life. I started getting fat at age 6 when my grandmother started keeping me and cooking special things for me and guilting me into eating even when I wasn't hungry because she made it specially for me. I would go on a diet and drop 60-80 lbs. by starving myself as many months as I could hold out, and exercising as much as I could. Then I would get tired of being hungry and dizzy and weak feeling and start eating regular again only to gain it all back plus more.

At age 50 I decided I would try something completely different in my dieting approach. I was going to eat whenever I was hungry and eat as much as I wanted but completely cut out specific food groups. on day one I stopped consuming all sugar. I read every label and if it said sugar or any of the many names sugar goes by, I didn't eat it. I quit all bread, I consumed no breaded meats, no crackers, no grains at all of any kind. I also stopped eating rice and potatoes. That's it, just no sugar, bread, rice, pasta, or potatoes. I would eat when I was hungry, but I never cheated by eating any of those things for 2 years. I would eat some fruit but would keep it to an apple or two a week. I ate some strawberries, and blueberries with my Greek Yogart but no more than a normal serving. The point is not to max out on those foods to satisfy the carb cravings. Those cravings will completely stop in 3 months. I did eat all I wanted when I was hungry but as time progressed, I naturally wanted less to eat less often.

I also started cycling, if you could call it that when I got down to just over 300 lbs. I didn't ride out of sight my first ride without getting off and walking but I did a little bit more every single day. By my second year I was cycling an average of 100miles a week. In just under 2 years I went from nearly 400lbs at 50 years old and 6'2" tall to 170 lbs at age 52 with more endurance than when I played football in high school.

You are young enough that if you get a handle on this now you can more easily reverse any damage caused than if you wait as long as I did. Quit all sugar and keep your carbs under 20 grams a day and you will start dropping weight. Eat a whole food diet to be healthy while you are doing it. You can be 100 lbs. lighter this time next year and 200 lighter the year after. Please PM me if I can possibly be of any assistance, or if you just need a pep talk.
PS
I'm 56 now and stay right at 180 lbs. I've kept the weight off 6 years. My current diet is low carb whole food on a 16-8 intermittent fasting schedule. I just eat two small meals in that 8 hour window.

TheBlackPumpkin

Sorry I may not have been clear I've lost 200 lbs, lost 100 in the last year or so. I will just say, carbs aren't the enemy, even refined sugar is extremely useful if you're using it to fuel something (i.e, getting some glycogen back into your muscles on a long ride, 120 calories of sugar isn't so bad if it enables you to ride another 30 mins to an hour.. I'm glad that you've found something that works for you though and it's all about your goals. I did the intermittent fasting thing for a long time and had some small success with it but just decided it wasn't for me. Ultimately it's all just about creating a calorie deficit and cutting sugar and carbs certainly makes that easier.

The way I lost 100lbs over the last year pretty much goes against all dieting advice I've ever heard. There's a lot of misconceptions out there publicly due to the proliferation of diet programs and diet foods. But for me, I did power lifting, 4 compound lifts, squat, deadlift, overhead press and T-bar row on day A. Then squat, bench press, lat pulldowns and deadlift on day B, alternating 3x a week, adding 5 lbs to each lift every time I was in the gym until i failed a set. By the time I stopped due to personal issues not health related I was deadlifting 300lbs while I was still over 380 myself.

​​​​​​The exercising definitely burns calories and it does help. But ultimately you burn about 95-98% of your daily calorie expenditure just...existing. breathing, fidgeting, etc makes up the vast majority. Building muscle increases your basal metabolic rate, so you burn more calories just existing, that's where the real weight loss happened for me.

It's really unintuitive because we're always told to avoid carbs and don't eat much. But it's impossible to build muscle and also be in a calorie deficit. They're two diametrically opposed physiological processes. But the fun part is once you've built muscle and start simply eating and working out to not lose a ton of muscle and are in a deficit, the fat just melts off.

I do also just want to say about the carb thing, it's also really unhealthy and next to impossible to lift or do really extensive exercise with a massively carb restrictive diet. I used to feel like garbage and get lightheaded lifting when I was doing that. Started eating 60-80g of carbs a couple hours before lifting and my gym time became significantly more fun and more productive.

Anyway all I'm saying here is there are a lot of paths to the same goal, but ultimately weight loss is just creating a calorie deficit. The nice thing about muscle is it makes creating the deficit easier and makes keeping the fat off easier because you have to eat more in general just to maintain said muscle so your body just consumes your fat to help.

Sorry went semi off topic. Thanks for the feedback I'll listen to my body when it comes to what I think I can do physically and agility wise for now. Once I'm a more normal weight and don't risk destroying my knee just due to my bodyweight then I'll start jumping off rocks lol
​

slow rollin

In 2020 I did a OMAD of around 500 calories a day or less. It was my own little experiment, dropped around 40 lbs but 10+ of it must have been a mixture of muscle mass and water since I was weak. Even after refeeding around 5-10 lbs I had to go back to the gym and regain muscle afterwards, which is fast due to the muscle memory but not great. I gave up lifting when I was fasting it felt so bad. Still rode my single speed and actually got faster up hills but the level of energy was so low when I had 1 cookie halfway through I felt energetic afterwards to finish the ride.... It wasn't fun, my mind was in a constant state of "fighting" whether it was the standard hunger pangs, walking up a hill, or anything that took physical exertion.

All I can say is take it slow with exploring what your body can do for cardio work. Ride further, walk further, etc. Luckily since you have been lifting weights your joints and muscles should be capable of a fair amount, it's just the breathing struggle I suspect at your size.

I am around 230lbs and 28. I don't like just "jumping down" 3ft to land on a rock or concrete, or asphalt. Yeah I can do it but even absorbing the impact via squatting down it just doesn't feel "great". When hiking I like using "leki" poles which are a glorified stick, so when descending you can use your upper body to hold, resist, and give more control while descending. Was awesome when I did some passes many years ago with my brother.

Keep on trucking man.

RH Clark

I'll say it took me maybe 2 years to realize gravity didn't affect me as much at 170 as it did at 380. It was a while before I stopped crawling down just from a truck bed or going down steps slow and careful. That said, no need to push the limits either. Good luck.

BP,
I'm sorry but you are wrong that it's nearly impossible to do any effective exercise without carbs. It may not be the standard model but plenty of athletes operate on low carbs during the majority of training and competition. The information is available if you care to look, but regardless, please do what you find works for you.

Trakhak

From this page:

"Therefore, while most athletes may perform best on a moderate- or high-carbohydrate diet, some may perform best on a low-carbohydrate diet, and some may perform best on something between these two approaches. At the end of the day, diet is very personal and can vary widely between athletes."

RH Clark

I agree with the above quote,

It was this one I disagreed with.
"I do also just want to say about the carb thing, it's also really unhealthy and next to impossible to lift or do really extensive exercise with a massively carb restrictive diet."

What's healthy isn't a settled science. There's just as much info showing benefits of low carb as there are benefits for high carb. My personal opinion is that low carb is superior when attempting to lose massive amounts of weight and at the same time can be counterproductive for someone much more active and fit trying to drop 10 lbs. There again I am agreeing that different approaches may be necessary for different people. If everything you are doing is getting you to your goals, then I'm all for it.

TheBlackPumpkin

Settled no, but we have a more information now than we have ever had. I don't disagree that cutting carbs in terms of diet helps lose weight, but it does that by creating a calorie deficit. You can still create the same calorie deficit without cutting carbs daily to an insane degree. While different things work for everyone due to life circumstances etc, the way the human body converts and uses fuel is a pretty well known mechanism at this point.

What I'm saying is by all means, cut carbs i.e eat less calories on rest days, lots of protein is always advisable. What I am also saying is, in terms of physical activity, going for a 2-3 hour bike ride or powerlifting for over an hour on 20 carbs or less daily is not conducive to training. Biking as a prime example, if you're riding over an hour, you will bonk sometime after that first hour, especially if you are 20g of carbs total leading up to the ride. This isn't really something that's debated. The amount of carbs does vary person to person for various reasons, but after your muscles have used all of the glycogen stores, that's it. So what's better? Eating 200 calories or so of carbs / simple sugar on a bike ride to go another hour? Or stopping because you hit the wall. There's a lot of data on this, you gain a substantial amount of quality and quantity of training which has a ton of quantitative benefits for muscle gain, vo2 training, weight loss, etc etc.

If you're just dieting and doing light exercise that's one thing and limiting carbs during that is just a good way to remove a lot of calories from your day. If you're doing any form of moderate to heavy/extreme training though, carbs give you more energy to train harder and longer which massively offsets any increased calorie intake from said carbs.

I'm not saying you are doing this, but there is just a lot of misinformation out there in the form of fad diets and marketing to sell low carb and sugar free foods. It's important people be educated on how the body uses food as fuel and to understand WHY they're eating what they are for a purpose and not just shoveling empty calories to get a dopamine hit.

I think we're mostly in agreement on the fact that you need to educate yourself and figure out what works for you as an individual, I just have personally and had many friends get pulled into carb restrictive diets because they're pushed so much in marketing, lose all of their energy, feel like crap when they exercise and then end up gaining weight because they're less active due to feeling like garbage when they workout.

At any rate thanks again, I appreciate the discussion.

Edit: at the end of the day that's really my whole concern in this debate. All or nothing diets overwhelmingly tend to fail long term due to how restrictive they are. Again super glad it worked for you and thats incredible. But the vast majority of people start something like keto (which is what you're really talking about eating less than 20/day) keep slipping in and out of ketosis, feel like crap, gain weight and give up. Plus, it sounds like you've managed to build a healthy lifestyle around it. Research shows though that the overwhelming majority of people that lose weight with restrictive diets gain the weight back or end up heavier.

Glad stuff like that is an option for some people, it's just not something I would recommend to anyone over "simply" building healthier habits and lifestyle choices gradually. It takes more time, sure. But it's by far the most reliable way for the average person

Maelochs

I can really identify with way too much of this thread.

Mr. @TheBlackPumpkin---I echo what others have said about listening to your body and also, one needs to overcome old thought habits. I am unreasonably worried about my knees and ankles at my current weight, but I also know some concern is legitimate. Err on the side of caution, is my route, i guess.

I noticed that one guy said he took a while to realize that losing 200 pounds lowered the load on his body ... . the mind is by far the most powerful muscle.

I am also in the "eat a normal, healthy diet and build muscle" school, but I do realize that every body is different. If keto works for some .... try it and see is all I can say ... same for intermittent fasting.I know a guy who lost a few hundred pounds that way, but I couldn't lose (and keep off) more than about five. Different strokes .....

Congratulations on your journey, which I realize is not over.

TheBlackPumpkin

Thanks I appreciate it. Yeah I've already got early arthritis in both knees due to carrying the weight so young. I stopped powerlifting due to knee pain with squatting because I knew either A my form was wrong and I was doing damage or B it was just inevitable with arthritic knees. Either way it was making lifting unenjoyable. I'll be seeing a physical therapist in the next couple months though, see if they can get my form dialed in and whether that helps or not.