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Women NEED to maintain weight due to menopause? Please.
I don't think I said that, but it is a reason women gain belly fat. The body is able to eek a little estrogen from the fat on your belly. Its easier to loose that weight if you do hormone replacement therapy or take phyto-estrogens (eat a LOT of soy, etc).
Breastfeeding and pregnant women NEED to keep their weight up - not tremendously, but yeah, they cant go anorexic at that point in their life and expect to have a healthy and well-fed baby/toddler. Many women easily gain 100 lbs at that time. Maybe not the 98lb soaking-wet, 5 foot woman, but the bigger ones - yeah.
Breastfeeding and pregnant women NEED to keep their weight up - not tremendously, but yeah, they can't go anorexic at that point in their life and expect to have a healthy and well-fed baby/toddler. Many women easily gain 100 lbs at that time. Maybe not the 98lb soaking-wet, 5 foot woman, but the bigger ones - yeah.
I certainly agree with eating properly during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Two women I know who had babies in the 1950s told me horror stories- one of a doctor who yelled at you if you gained more than 2 lbs. per month and another who was prescribed diet pills because the doc thought she'd gained too much. (The baby was born agitated and cranky.) As for a 100-lb. gain I'm not a doctor so I checked Dr. Google.
Underweight women might be expected to gain 28-40 lbs. A 100- lb. gain sounds catastrophic to me unless you're expecting quadruplets. You're just adding a bigger load to your body and more weight you'll have to lose after the baby is born.
I don't think I said that, but it is a reason women gain belly fat. The body is able to eek a little estrogen from the fat on your belly. Its easier to loose that weight if you do hormone replacement therapy or take phyto-estrogens (eat a LOT of soy, etc).
Breastfeeding and pregnant women NEED to keep their weight up - not tremendously, but yeah, they cant go anorexic at that point in their life and expect to have a healthy and well-fed baby/toddler. Many women easily gain 100 lbs at that time. Maybe not the 98lb soaking-wet, 5 foot woman, but the bigger ones - yeah.
This is not directed at you, just jumping off from what you state here.
I can say that depression and other factors contributed to massive weight gain after the birth of my first child. Some weight was gained before the start of my pregnancy, then 25 lbs during the pregnancy, and put on a lot more weight when I used food to self-medicate PPD because I had been conditioned to believe depression wasn't real (you just need Jesus) and was ashamed to seek help and counseling. It was a sad cycle of depressed > self-medicate > depressed because I felt like crap and it was all affecting me. This lasted over a period of several years. But it wasn't a situation of binge-eating loads of cheeseburgers, chips, cookies, etc. I had struggle losing weight even on programs like WW. It became a metabolic syndrome where calories in/calories out was not an efficient and effective way to drop unwanted body fat. The fact that I was breastfeeding for many years meant I was more restrictive in the types of methods I could try without jeopardizing my supply.
(during this time my then-husband put on 60 lbs from the time we married)
Then I watched the Fat Head documentary, read several books, literature/publications, and discovered calorie/carb cycling, intermittent fasting, primal, keto, etc., before any of this became trendy and popular. I adopted a way of eating, based on current nutrition research, that went against traditional diets. And it worked. I dropped 140 lbs in a span of a year. It came off fast and easy with the new tools I used. I could barely maintain a 20 lb loss following WW before but dropped weight with ease and without much fuss by following logical, practical principles.
And I kept it off for several years. Then I was put on a medication with risks of metabolic changes and gained 20 lbs in six months despite no change in diet and activity. I eventually moved and switched doctors and was later put on a different medication. I became pregnant with my third daughter and gained more weight compared to my previous pregnancies, but still gave birth at a much lower weight than my others. Then sht hit the fan. I had a severe post-partum hemorrhage, went into hypovolemic shock and my health went downhill from that point on. I had a long, exhausting recovery, that I never quite recovered from. Within months I had symptoms of hypothyroidism, fibromyalgia, CFS, etc. My joints were painful and my muscles ached. I had debilitating fatigue and had to take a medical leave of absence from grad school.
I was gaining a lot of weight and became depressed. I couldn't function without drinking 6+ cups of coffee a day. I went to the doctors, ER, urgent care several times. I was told it was symptoms of depression, vitamin d deficiency (which I had lower vit d3 levels at the time and supplemented and saw no improvement), just a symptom of excess weight. Except all of the symptoms started before the weight came on. I had been very heavy in the past and did not experience that kind of chronic pain. I spent hours and hours scouring through research for years. I knew it wasn't just "lose weight, feel great." I made several attempts to go back to keto, primal, c/c cycling. BTDT. I knew what to do and what worked before, but it was not working, and the doctors I initially saw didn't listen. I had a doctor check my ESR and CRP to hopefully rule out lupus and RH. All neg. It was really defeating not having answers despite the chronic issues. I eventually convinced a GP to do a full thyroid panel, and as I suspected, low ft4 and ft3 levels, but I was never informed. I ended up paying OOP for further tests.
It wasn't until a visit with an OB, during my last pregnancy, who said the words I've been saying for a few years. Sheehan syndrome. Growth hormone (that regulates body composition, metabolism, growth), thyroid, ACTH, prolactin, etc., can all be affected due to the blood loss resulting in cell (pituitary) death. Most women who struggle with it aren't diagnosed until many years post-incident. For some, 15+ years. Getting on the right meds definitely made a difference. But the combination of pregnancy/breastfeeding definitely affects hormones and weight loss efforts. I've had to play around with eating habits that don't affect my supply. Going back to keto tanks my supply. Going to the doctor only yield desired results if your provider is willing to listen and not assume you're fat because you can't put donuts down. I remember being near tears telling one GP that I was eating 50-75g of carbs, no grains, and still struggling. I knew what the heck I was doing. I had done it all before with great success. And still I was brushed off and dismissed.
This happened to me with my 1st wife (1990s). When we met and dated, she was fine. But she gained more and more weight over time. We were married 7 years. Near the end, she weighed about 300 pounds. As a guy that was about 185, it was not attractive to me. I dealt with it as best I could, but I was in my mid 20s (I was dumb, and was 20 when I got married - way too young).
I am not attracted to heavy women, and it was not a turn on at all. I tried to not talk about it at first. Then, I suggested exercise, but she did not want to. She later let slip during an argument that she had stopped taking her medicine. I asked about this, as I did not know anything about her taking medicine... Turns out that she had taken a Prozac prescription for a while, and she then had stopped. Her behavior/personality changed after she stopped... (but, I never knew she was taking this)... That explained why her personality was so explosive all of a sudden, and she had never told me this. She kept it a secret.
Also, she had been hiding food around the house, and she would apparently eat when she got stressed. I did not know this until I found a package of cookies hidden somewhere in a closet... And, I asked her about it.
When your spouse gains that much weight, and it becomes an attraction problem.... You can feel like a such a jerk. You try to convince yourself that it does not matter, but it does matter... But, you keep your mouth shut as long as you can...
I spoke with a female friend about it at the time, and she seemed surprised... Like I was a jerk because I had a problem with this... Claiming she would not leave her boyfriend if he suddenly gained a ton of weight. This made me feel worse, but I did not want to live with this issue forever.
Eventually, I did stop having sex with her. I could not deal with it, and she was not willing to make any changes.
Last edited by MisterShipWreck; 12-13-2018 at 06:36 PM..
I certainly agree with eating properly during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Two women I know who had babies in the 1950s told me horror stories- one of a doctor who yelled at you if you gained more than 2 lbs. per month and another who was prescribed diet pills because the doc thought she'd gained too much. (The baby was born agitated and cranky.) As for a 100-lb. gain I'm not a doctor so I checked Dr. Google.
Underweight women might be expected to gain 28-40 lbs. A 100- lb. gain sounds catastrophic to me unless you're expecting quadruplets. You're just adding a bigger load to your body and more weight you'll have to lose after the baby is born.
So now the conversation suddenly shifted to (fat) women. Are men not gaining weight? They don't even have pregnancy, menopause or breastfeeding as excuse...
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