Breakfast: Cottage cheese and mixed greens frittata
This has been my favorite high protein breakfast lately. It keeps me full all day, I get lots of greens in with out eating a huge salad and it could also be portioned through out the day :)
3 eggs
½ cup 4% cottage cheese
126g mixed greens
¾ tbsp butter
Salt/pepper to taste
Pinch of nutmeg and garlic powder
Preheat oven or toaster to 400. Whip eggs thoroughly, add cottage cheese and seasonings and mix. In a skillet, cook salad greens until wilted, remove and set aside. Add butter to heat-proof skillet coat thoroughly using pastry brush. Pour egg mixture into hot skillet, place greens on top, and place in hit oven or toaster oven! Ready when no longer jiggy!
435 calories
Lunch:
2 cups baby carrots grazed on over the afternoon 140cal
Snack:
I don’t have a sweet tooth but my biggest weakness is chips and dip :/ I try to have some through out the week so i don’t binge on a huge bag bc they r my one true comfort food.
10 tortilla chips and ¼ cup refried beans
210 cal
Dinner: Avocado and meat ball salad
100g lean meatball mixture
125g chopped romaine lettuce
¼ avocado
¼ cup 4% cottage cheese
½ lime, juiced
2 tbsp red onion
Salt/pepper to taste
I make four small meat balls and pop them in the air fryer on 350 for 10 min to cook to render out some fat. Then, dice the onion finely, mash the avocado and mix with cottage cheese, salt, pepper, and lime. Kinda weird, I know, but it makes a creamy dressing and adds extra protein w/o making it super unhealthy. Toss dressing romaine and top with meat balls! Enjoy :)
Breakfast: Black Coffee, vitamin D, biotin, 20g of almonds
120 cal
Lunch: 1 cup lentil soup, ½ cup rice, 75g grilled chicken, 1 tbsp bbq sauce
475 cal
Dinner: 1 cup lentil soup
180 cal
Total: 775 calories
I want to be more active on here but i kind of feel like I’m talking to an empty room sometimes so I forget. I wasn’t restricting for a few weeks and my weight kind of stabilized around 160 but I don’t like how it feels. I can feel fat where I didn’t have it before. I don’t really recognize my body as my own and it’s really dyshoric. I don’t hate how I look and my body is healthy but like? It feels at odds w how I feel abt my gender. Like I see a healthy dude but I don’t like the idea of being like a burly man iykwim lmfao. Same way I feel about chest hair. Like, it’s fine and I don’t hate it but it I feel more myself with out it. Non binary things
Yday was a big family event so I ate a non sus amount to make sure no one made comments. I got a lot of compliments on my outfit which I think is just code for I lost some weight bc they’ve seen this outfit before lmfao. They didn’t notice bc i don’t see them often but, I gained some weight back bc I honestly forgot I was restricting for a few weeks bc I became hyper-fixated on sewing and making clothes (Thanks ADHD) and my ED took the back seat for a bit lmfao.
Wearing a mask all day feels like a constant reminder not to eat. I going to try to work out more this week. Everything feels so pointless lately and the election really has me so fucked up. It’s so nice enjoying pizza sometimes and forgetting that we’re spiraling toward a fascist techno-autocracy
Dinner: I was still full so I didn’t eat dinner but I had 4 oz of rum and 1 lime with seltzer lol
240 cal
Total: 768 calories
I weighed myself and noticed i’m 158 which is wild but I’ll keep going. My goal is still 155 by the end of the month but if I lose a little more I won’t complain. I feel like I look the same as I did when I was 174 a few months ago which is…annoying lol. I lost 15 pounds and I look the same :| I probably won’t notice too much until I’m around 150
Let me put you all on pigly.com, it’s a weight loss calculator AND it tells you how many cals your gonna need to eat a day to maintain your current weight and goal weight!
It’s helped me a lot because my biggest fear is not knowing how much I need to eat to maintain my goal weights, but now I know!
you just plug in some current stats, your goal weight, and when you want to reach it. The website will tell you what you’d need to eat to get there! no warnings or blocks if you would need to eat less than 1,000 cals.
Recently I haven’t been able to stop worrying about the dreaded “starvation mode”, and that I wasn’t doing enough to speed my metabolism up… So I looked into it, and I learned a lot of very interesting things! Mainly that a lot of the things I thought I knew about my metabolism was completely backwards, so let’s talk about it! :)
NOTE: I AM NOT AN EXPERT! I just did some basic research and want to share what I found.
As always, all sources used are at the bottom of the post.
So,, what even IS my metabolism?
The word metabolism refers to the chemical processes that go on continuously inside the body in order to to keep you alive and maintain homeostasis. This takes energy to do, which is measured in kilojoules (kJ)
These chemical processes can broadly be divided into 2 groups: catabolism (breaking down food), and anabolism (building repairing our body).
So again: “metabolism” is not a SPECIFIC chemical process, but rather the term we use when talking about ALL of the chemical processes your body uses to keep you alive.
Wait but now I’m confused… I thought my metabolism is what controlled how fast I burn what I eat??
It is! It’s just a bit more complicated. Your body turns food into energy, and uses that energy to function. Any extra energy the body takes in is stored (mostly as fat). Your body’s metabolic rate (or total energy expenditure) is divided into 3 parts:
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
This is the energy you use to keep all the body’s systems functioning correctly (including breathing, keeping your heart beating, adjusting hormone levels, and growing/repairing cells)
Your BMR accounts for 50-80% of your body’s daily energy usage, and seems to be what people are usually referring to when they talk about “speeding up” or “slowing down your metabolism”
Thermogenesis (Thermic effect of food)
This is the energy your body uses to digest food and drink, and to absorb, transport, and store nutrients.
Thermogenesis accounts for 5-10% of your body’s daily energy expenditure.
Energy used during physical activity
This refers to energy used by physical activity. this includes planned exercise like biking, running, walking, swimming, etc; and all incidental activity like moving from room to room and even fidgeting!
This one really varies from person to person, but for a person who has about 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a day, physical activity accounts for about 20% of daily energy use.
So basically, a lot of people use the term “metabolism” when they are talking about how many calories their body burns just living when they should really be using the term “BMR”.
And when people say things like “the daily recommended calories for an average adult is 2,000” they are saying that the average person’s metabolic rate uses about 2,000 calories worth of energy a day! that’s kinda crazy, right?
Ok cool, so can the “speed” of my Metabolic Rate change?
Yes! Kinda.
You see, Thermogenesis is out of your control, and your BMR can kinda be affected by different things you can do, but as far as I know the changes are not significant. And you can increase your physical activity to burn up more calories to, but I get the feeling you guys know that ;)
Your BMR is the only one of these that is both in your control, and not. It’s calculated using your sex, age, hight, and weight; but is affected by things like starving (decrease in up to 15%), caffeine (small increase), and even the temp of your environment.
Unfortunately, there is no magic thing we can do to just make our bodies use significantly more calories for our BMR. We CAN try to maximise our BMR by doing strength training (muscle requires way more energy to maintain than fat), and by “high restricting” or planning some high calorie days to help prevent your BMR from slowing due to lack of food!
A quick note for my fellow nonbinary and trans peeps: There is plenty of research out there that shows that your “biological sex” matters less than your “hormonal sex” when calculating your BMR. this is because most BMR calculations look for lean body mass vs fat cause they require different amounts of energy to maintain, and women are more likely to have more body fat (there are many reasons for this, but I won’t be going into it today).
So you can do a couple of things:
1) If you have not taking hormones, then you can calculate using your AGAB (assigned gender at birth)
2) If you ARE taking hormones, or are “fully transitioned” then you could calculate using “male” if your taking T, and “female” if you are taking E. If your microdosing or your transition is incomplete then you could calculate twice (once with male, and once with female) and average the 2 numbers
3) You could look for calculators that DONT include the gender question! they exist! The Katch-McArdle Formula for calculating your BMR does not have the gender question.
That was a lot, can you summarize it?
Absolutely!
TLDR: “metabolism” is an umbrella term for “everything your body does that requires energy.
Your metabolic rate (aka how much energy your body uses) is determined by 3 parts: thermogenesis, BMR, and physical activity.
Thermogenesis is out of your control
BMR is affected by your actions to an extent, but you can’t "speed it up” to use more calories. It can be slowed down if your body feels it needs to conserve energy because you aren’t eating enough, an it can slow down by 15%
Physical activity is totally in your control (for abled body people anyway, I know physical activity is different for everyone). The more you move, the more energy your body uses, and the more calories your burn
As always, I love you all, drink some water, and stay safe <3
-dismal
Sources (I encourage you all to read as they go more in-depth and are easy reads)
Wow, my eating disorder really has me eating 635 calories instead of the usual 1300 cals the day before my doctors appointment so I can weigh less…. + a 18 hour fast
Wow, I really did this for my appointment to be canceled
In the bright side, I woke up to weigh 139lbs!!! I’ve never seen the 130s before so this is super exciting
Wow, my eating disorder really has me eating 635 calories instead of the usual 1300 cals the day before my doctors appointment so I can weigh less…. + a 18 hour fast
I binged today for the first time in 2 months. I feel awful. I hate myself so damn much. My brother and I got into an argument and I havent gotten so upset in such a long time. I dont know why it made me have the urge to emotionally eat so badly. It didn’t help that I havent lost a pound in 2 weeks. I was only eating 900 calories a day too (occasionally eating 1300 cal when I really needed it). But eating 1300 cal today wasn’t enough. I ate 1955 calories today. Im never going to be skinny :(
I’ve been eating 900 calories for the past 2 weeks without binge eating and I am at my breaking point. The connection between my brain and my mouth has disappeared. I have a serious lack of energy. I cant even stand up without getting dizzy and seeing black dots. I’ve chewed 23 fucking packs of gum. No, I’m dead serious, my jaw is so fucking sore. I’ve lost about 4 pounds and its almost not worth it. I ate 1300 calories today and I feel like a failure. I’ve eaten 1300 calories before and its actually helped me not binge for the longest time ever but the slow weight loss had me so impatient. It doesn’t feel as bad as a binge. Actually, I feel better, but still, I know I’m going to be heavier when I weigh my self in the morning. :(
I made a goal to myself that when I weighted 150lbs that I was finally going to allow myself to post on Instagram again. I weighted myself this morning and I’m at 148lbs. I took a good look at myself and now I’m going to wait till I weigh 130lbs to post.
I HAVENT BINGED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN TWO WEEKS AND HAVE BEEN GETTING ANNOYED ON HOW FAT MY STOMACH STILL LOOKS BUT A FEW MINUTES AGO I WAS CHANGING MY CLOTHES BUT THIS TIME IN FRONT OF MY MIRROR AND MY LEGS LOOK SOOOOO MUCH SMALLER AND MY BUTT FATTER I NEVER NOTICED BEFORE BUT I AM HERE FOR IT
