alexseanchai | (no subject)

Writing didn't happen. Media didn't happen.

Exercise did happen, in the form of ALL THE STAIRS. MY FUCKING ROOM IS FUCKING CLEAN.

Didn't spend anything except paying my Etsy bill, but not for lack of trying—I want a complete set of Supernatural magazines, and I found on eBay a set of eight issues including six I don't have, auction ending a few hours ago, and I bid $60 which was the absolute most I could afford to spend today, and I was winning at numbers from $25 to $50 until the last seven seconds. They went for $85. I'm currently trying to talk myself out of spending that $60 on five issues I don't have being sold individually on cinequest.com.

I am frowning at my food diary spreadsheet, and either my eyeball measurements are underestimating what I ate or I'm eating a lot less than the government guidelines say I should be. The first makes more sense because this was pretty much a normal day foodwise and if I were eating about what I should be I wouldn't be gaining weight. (I'm now in the upper end of what the BMI charts say is normal, which is twenty-five pounds above what my driver's license says and it was accurate when I got it, and fifteen to twenty pounds of that went on in the past year.)

Sleep nao.

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(This is probably none of my business and you possibly know all this already, but I went through a LOT of misery in my teens and early 20s trying to diet and lose weight and failing miserably, and doing a lot of damage to myself both physically and emotionally, so I feel vaguely honor-bound to say something. I apologize if I am overstepping, and if I am, feel free to delete.)

The first makes more sense because this was pretty much a normal day foodwise and if I were eating about what I should be I wouldn't be gaining weight.

It can be a lot more complicated than that -- I gain weight on 800 calories a day until I hit the weight my metabolism wants me to be, and when I went on metformin for my PCOS, I lost 40lb without changing a thing about what or how much I was eating. Weight gain (or loss) can be about metabolism as much as it is about food intake sometimes!

Which is not to say that it isn't possible you're mismeasuring, but if you're pretty certain you aren't, it's also possible that your metabolism has changed (you're around the age when it's common for many endocrine-system changes to kick in as you go from physical adolescence to physical adulthood), that your body is processing food differently, that your calorie requirements are different than what standard guidelines say they should be, or any one of three dozen other explanations. Bodies are incredibly individual and there's no one size fits all!

The BMI is an incredibly inaccurate tool -- it's meant for measuring populations, not individuals, and it has pretty much no scientific basis; it was made up by a statistician and most studies show it has extremely poor correlation with "health" until you get to the extremes. This is not to say that you may not be at your ideal weight for your particular body, but please don't use BMI as an unqualified indicator of what your ideal weight should be!

If you've gained 15-20 pounds in a year or so and you can't remember any serious changes in diet or exercise level, it's possible that you have some endocrine weirdness going on, such as insulin resistance or PCOS or any one of half a dozen things that can cause your body to change how it stores and accesses energy from food. (It's also possible that your daily caloric intake needs are higher than what you're giving it, and therefore it's in "starvation mode" and storing every bit of energy you throw at it; I know multiple people who have lost weight by increasing their daily calorie intake.) There's really no way of saying without more information.

An endocrinologist would be able to do a fasting blood glucose test and a full metabolic bloodwork panel to get more information (and even a GP can order the tests, although an endocrinologist is better at interpreting them); once you have insurance coverage you might want to have them done. In the meantime, I really wouldn't be too worried about the number itself: just try to aim for a properly balanced diet and a reasonable amount of exercise and let the scale do what it wants.

I do have insurance coverage and I actually got stuck for both of those on Friday.

But yeah.

Oh, excellent, then! Here's hoping the results contain some things that can lead to useful suggestions.

Your clean room is brilliant, and so are you.

You could very well be gaining weight because you need to, and your body is desperately trying to get you to the size you need to be. BMI is complete and utter bullshit. And women in particular need more food than the government guidelines say.

Also, if you're exercising, you're gaining muscle mass, which weighs more than fat.

Edited 2012-12-04 16:44 (UTC)

I was stuck at a hundred five pounds from when I stopped getting taller to when I went to a college where the food plan options included an all-you-can-eat buffet with an ice cream bar, and a year of near-daily ice cream ended with me at a hundred fifteen pounds where I stayed for the next few years. So if my body does actually want me to be a hundred forty or a hundred fifty pounds, how come the weight gain is only in this past year, when I don't have newly acquired ice-cream-bar access to explain it?

Didn't see your edit--my exercise habit is kind of nonexistent, that's one of the things I'm trying to fix, so muscle mass isn't exactly an issue here.

Edited 2012-12-04 16:49 (UTC)