Is it possible to not lose weight on this diet?

If you want to get rid of overweight
spring
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Is it possible to not lose weight on this diet?

Post by spring »

I have been on the diet for a while. I am concerned because I am not losing weight. Is it possible to not lose weight on the diet and just maintain the weight you're at? I am 56 kilos at the moment and I seem to gravitate to this weight for some reason when I relax a little in my diet. I am five feet tall and at my lowest on Wai's, I was 48 kilos. The median weight for someone my height is around 51 kg, I aiming for 47 kilos and then I will try and maintain it.

I am not strict on the diet, as I eat more protein than I should, but my munch foods is mainly carbs. However I drink juice and oil and eat raw eggs.

Admittedly I do not exercise as much as before. When I achieved the weight of 48 kg I was walking 90 minutes a day.

I don't know what to do. I hate exercise of any kind and can't fit the 90 minutes into my daily schedule easily and I don't want to spend the rest of my life having to walk 90 minutes just so that I can maintain a good (low) weight.

(Also even at my low weight days, I found it hard going because I would often feel ravenously hungry even though I was eating fruit meals (with plenty pf oil) every 3-4 hours. When I felt like this, fruit and oil was the last thing that looked appetizing to me. I also ate three egg yolks a day. I also do not like cucumber and tomato salads that much but forced myself to eat them as I was sick of eating sweet things all day long.)

So I am wondering are some people just naturally heavier? Will their body hang onto body fat even though their weight is above the upper limit of normal (not by much), even if they follow the diet with some munch food but don't exercise?

Or is it the case that some people will not lose excess bodyfat without exercising? I have a highly sedentary job.

Also my bodyfat is distributed around my trunk.

Is the distribution of the bodyfat a clue that my fat gain is different to other people's? I lead a highly stressed life - part of it is personality and part of it is environment I guess - and it seems to me my life has been stressed out for a long time - it's getting better, I left a longtime job that was killing me but now I have another type of stress in my life - could this be why I find it hard to lose bodyfat? Because my body is sending out "fight and flight" stress hormones (cortisol) constantly and that's why the fat accumulates around the waist?

And does that mean I will have a harder time fighting flab than most other people? Because I have to 'fight' my hormones as well?

Note, I don't suffer from acne at all so I am not following the diet for that reason. Perhaps losing weight is harder than clearing up one's skin on this diet because weight loss takes longer to achieve and skin shows belmishes in one or two days whereas you might not realize you've gained weight until after a couple of weeks (due to normal daily weight fluctuations) and so there is less of a motivation to be that strict because the feedback cues aren't that instant.

I know what people are going to say, "Relax more; and cut out the munchfood and start exercising more (walking or similar gentle exercise) ..." Grrrr .... to be honest I don't enjoy being on this diet and munchfood is the only thing I look forward to eating all day, and I hate walking - the weather is hot and humid even in the evenings and I find it a boring activity to do. I can't "relax" because doing things like meditation or yoga stresses me out even more for some reason. And there's nothing much I can do about my environment.
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Oscar
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Post by Oscar »

I think two of the problems with munchfoods, if not adhering to Wai's advice in the book, are: 1) appetite enhancers/addictive substances, 2) greater difficulty in determining what/how much the body needs.

ad 1) you might eat more because of these.
ad 2) your body might not give you clear (enough) signals.

I don't believe some people will be naturally heavier, aside from being taller, having more muscles, and/or other anatomic differences.

Also, I think that we don't need to do exercises to control our weight, as long as we (can) give our bodies exactly what it needs.
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Post by Corinne »

Spring,
You mentioned in another thread that you were getting bored...
It's true that there seems to be little variety where you are but I also think that munch foods are responsible for this as without munch foods the fruits you eat become so much tastier, differenciated and satisfying.
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Post by Corinne »

I myself feel less need to excercise than before when on a regular diet and also when i used to eat wai + munch-foods.
spring
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Post by spring »

Corinne wrote:Spring,
You mentioned in another thread that you were getting bored...
It's true that there seems to be little variety where you are but I also think that munch foods are responsible for this as without munch foods the fruits you eat become so much tastier, differenciated and satisfying.
I think it's boredom and because we live in such an artificial society. Our ancestors lived in the tropics and had access to 'real' fruits, not the artificially cultivated sort and selected for its kind, but the wild fruits. These wild fruits may have been more satisfying and there may have been more variety and the act of scavenging for these foods may have used up more energy than modern man uses up in the course of his life ie. without deliberately exercising. They might have tasted better too. I don't like the taste of fruits which are available today.

I have tasted really nice fruits occasionally in the past but I find it harder and harder to find these sorts of really tasty fruits nowadays. I don't have much access to tropical fruits and I really like them but I have to make do with the poor variety and the poor quality of fruits: tasteless apples, insipid oranges and blah bananas. Occasionally I come across a nice variety of fruit, like some grapes I had the other day but they were very costly and I could not afford to eat them more than once in a blue moon.

The other aspect of the artificial environment we live in is the availability of these munch foods around us. Mouth-watering munch foods whose pictures and smells assault our senses. It's like trying to live like a monk in Sin City, one virtually has to adopt the vows of the ascetic to avoid the temptations all around us. And it's so easy to indulge in munch food just once, and then again, and again, and then you are doing it daily.

And munch foods are so much more appealing when there is a dearth of exotic luscious tasty wild fruits around.

So it's a double whammy.
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Post by spring »

I am wondering is it possible to not lose weight or even gain fat when one eats a Wai diet but eats the foods at the wrong times? When one isn't hungry but bored, angry or depressed? That is the same amount of food that somebody who is following the principle of Wai eats but in their case only eating when hungry, but in my case, eating the food at the wrong times (when glycogen depots are full), although overall it's the same number of calories in both situations?
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Post by Oscar »

I think that if the number of calories is the same, the effect will be the same.
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Post by Brian »

Oscar wrote:I think that if the number of calories is the same, the effect will be the same.
This is not my understanding... are you sure?
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Post by Oscar »

Given the person is on the Wai diet, I think so, no? Even though calorie intake won't be on the 'right' times, the body will store it as fats, and use the fats later. Because the fat intake will be enough to ensure the body there is no food/fat shortage.
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Post by Brian »

It was my general understanding that if there is an energy shortage, that then the body will resort to numerous energy stores to meet its requirements.
This includes fat deposits, but also muscle tissue and other sources.

So what this means is that if you consume 1000 calories that are unneeded and they are all stored as fat (for ease of example), and there is then an energy shortage, that these 1000 calories stored as fat will not be fully utilised but rather only partly and in conjunction with other sources.
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Post by RRM »

spring wrote:I am wondering is it possible to not lose weight or even gain fat when one eats a Wai diet but eats the foods at the wrong times? When one isn't hungry but bored, angry or depressed? That is the same amount of food that somebody who is following the principle of Wai eats but in their case only eating when hungry, but in my case, eating the food at the wrong times (when glycogen depots are full), although overall it's the same number of calories in both situations?
If you eat food at the wrong time (when glycogen depots are full), that extra energy will be stored as fat. While as in the optimum situation, that extra energy would have been used to keep blood glucose at adequate levels.
In your situation, you still need to keep your blood glucose at adequate levels (when not bored/depressed & eating), so that you either end up eating more (to compensate for the energy that got 'lost' as it was stored as fat) and gain fat, or you end up not keeping the blood glucose at adequate levels which is compensated for by the body by converting muscle protein and adipose fat into available energy.
The latter is experienced by the body as a 'temporary' food shortage (because why would you not want to keep your blood glucose at adequate levels?), which also might end up in overeating eventually.
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Post by Oscar »

Yes Brian, that is correct. But liver glycogen depots can last you 8-12 hours, so you'd have to wait quite a long time, and/or use up lots of energy.
Also, since the amount of calories stays the same, and the size of the stomach will be relatively small, in order to eat those calories you have to spread the intake. So I think chances of the glycogen depots emptying up, blood sugar being low, and glucose energy needed before new energy coming in will be slim.

All in all, I think the conditions are a bit unrealistic anyway. :)
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Post by Brian »

Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear.
... I was going to write out a reply but RRM seems to have said what I was trying to get at...

Anyway, I think we're on the same page. :wink:
spring
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Post by spring »

RRM wrote:
If you eat food at the wrong time (when glycogen depots are full), that extra energy will be stored as fat. While as in the optimum situation, that extra energy would have been used to keep blood glucose at adequate levels.
In your situation, you still need to keep your blood glucose at adequate levels (when not bored/depressed & eating), so that you either end up eating more (to compensate for the energy that got 'lost' as it was stored as fat) and gain fat, or you end up not keeping the blood glucose at adequate levels which is compensated for by the body by converting muscle protein and adipose fat into available energy.
The latter is experienced by the body as a 'temporary' food shortage (because why would you not want to keep your blood glucose at adequate levels?), which also might end up in overeating eventually.
How depressing. If you eat at the wrong times, you end up not just fatter but with wasted muscles.

This is how somebody who is suffering from excess cortisol output looks: poor muscle tone and truncal obesity.

That's me at the moment. :cry:
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Post by Oscar »

Brian wrote:Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear.
... I was going to write out a reply but RRM seems to have said what I was trying to get at...

Anyway, I think we're on the same page. :wink:
Yes, and you were clear, don't worry. :D
The conditions in the question were such, that they prompted my funny answer. ;)
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