Doubting Family

[KosmicKittyKyo]

Okay I'm not sure if any of you have this problem but I want to get out of the way that I'm NOT anorexic. I've never had an eating disorder except for overeating when I was younger. I've been playing DDR every day for at least two hours and my family has seen me playing. But everytime I talk to my mother since I've started she harps on me about eating too much. The problem is, I barely eat and she never sees me eat. A typical day goes like this.

Breakfast: 1 bowl of cereal, 1 glass of milk, (Maybe 1 banana but rarely)
Lunch: 1 turkey and cheese sandwich, Diet soda
Dinner: 1 serving pasta or casserole (depending on what dad cooks), diet soda

Throughout the day I drink diet soda and water and I rarely snack, and if I do it's veggies.

I know that if anything I'm undereating but my family still keeps telling me that I eat too much and that my progress is nice but I'd make a lot more if I cut back on my eating. How can I convince them that I'm not overeating without starving myself? Does anyone else have similar problems with family who are unsupportive?

BTW: I've made okay progress. In 10 days I've lost half a pound (Doesn't sound like much, but every bit counts), I've also lost half an inch on my waist and two inches on my hips. x.x Gained an inch at my bust. Don't ask me how THAT happened.

[abrannan]

Try this, write down (as exact as possible) what you eat on a particular day. Ask them to write down exactly what they think you ate that day, then compare the two. Better still if you have a food log of precisely everything you've been eating, complete with calorie counts, and a listing of what your BMR is, so you can show them that you are, in fact, operating at a calorie deficit. I'd be happy to explain to them the concept of "starvation mode" and why you want to avoid your body entering that state.

[KosmicKittyKyo]

Thanks so much for your suggestion. I'm going to try it and a feel a lot better in general after having the chance to vent. (My fiance comes to the site sometimes and he saw my post and sat down and talked with me.)I think that a good deal of it might be my mother's own insecurities because she had trouble cutting back on food when she was dieting.

[xookittieoox]

Don't let your family discourage you!

It sounds like you're doing a great job at eating healthier. If you eat any less you wont be eating enough.

My advise to you....don't even respond to their critism. Do what feels right to you. A few months from now you're going to be a new person....laughing at them while their jaws are on the floor.

Good Luck!

[KnOxViLLe]

abrannan said:

I'd be happy to explain to them the concept of "starvation mode" and why you want to avoid your body entering that state.

I don't really understand this. I always thought it was best to eat small amounts of food. (I mean, I know not eating a cracker and a glass of water for the whole day is healthy), but I just thought if you ate a reasonable breakfast, lunch and supper and drank a lot of water that was best.

Can you please explain this concept for me. I want to make sure I don't experience this...

[abrannan]

Human beings, whether you think we evolved, were made, or some combination thereof, are built for survival in the wild. To understand "starvation mode" you have to think of it in terms of early primitive man.

So here you have a wandering neanderthal, let's call him "Joe". Joe, through hunting and gathering, consumes a pretty steady diet of about 2500 calories per day, and all that time hunting on the plains has him fairly well muscled. He's consuming a few more calories than he's using, so there's a little bit of a fat reserve for him built up.

Now, we've got a calamity, a wildfire races through the plains he hunts in, destroying most of the plant life, and killing or chasing off most of the wildlife he hunted. Now, he can only manage to scrape together about 500 calories of food/day, and he's trying to move to a new area to hunt. How does his body help him?

Well, natrual predators are gone, but there's no real hope for increased food in sight. The body has a choice, it can:
a) burn the emergency reserve of fat it's built up, at the full body's demand of 2000 calories/day
or
b) burn off some muscle, which will reduce the body's calorie needs per day, before dipping into the fat reserves.

Obviously, the body will opt for option B, in order to make those emergency fat reserves last longer, thus prolonging the length of time Joe has to find new food before he dies.


The key to successful, healthy dieting is to reduce your caloric intake to levels that are below your BMR, while not panicing your body into reducing your metabolism to keep you from starving. As you said, a reasonable breakfast, lunch and dinner with plenty of water is best.