Eating gluten-free And Gaining Weight

[luvrdeo]

I had heard before that to lose weight, you only had to eat fewer calories than you burned... but I never really believed it was that simple. It is, actually. There's more to being healthy - nutrients, etc - but there are exactly two ways to lose weight:

1. Exercise more

2. Eat fewer calories

Exercising is great, but it only gains you like 200 calories for a lot of time & effort... whereas a tiny, tiny bag of chips is over 300 calories. So controlling diet is actually the easier way, at least at first (exercising helps your metabolism get better, so it's good for the long run).

I am telling you this fresh off of having lost 10 pounds myself (and still going) so I hope you believe me when I say, it's not as hard as you might think: try counting your calories. For one week, even - you only have to keep going if you really want to. For one week, write down everything you eat. There are completely free websites that can help you do this, and they're super easy to use. Most of them have apps so you can do it from your phone. (I use MyFitnessPal, but there are others).

This does several things:

a) Makes you think twice about eating something, since you have to mark it down.

Helps you to realize where your problem areas are. (I never knew *just* how many veggies you need to eat to match a cup of rice. Sure, you're not as full from veggies, but subtract just a little rice and add some carrots, and you're golden).

c) Makes you feel less guilty about the "bad" things you eat. There is no cheating - just eat a little less elsewhere. No worries.

d) Gives you more motivation to eat less. Back when I didn't think about it, I'd eat 3 links of sausage without blinking. Now I know that that's 750 calories! No thanks, I'll just eat one, and supplement it with something else. Or butter on popcorn! It just about triples the calorie value! Maybe I'll have just a little less of that...

e) Motivation to exercise. You get free eating later when you do!

Do that for a week, and you'll learn so much that you probably won't need to keep doing it. (Although it gets easier because the app will remember the things you eat a lot or have eaten recently).

Good luck!

I mentioned above, I've had a personal trainer for 10+ years, and 110% know how to eat properly, and how many calories to take in to be in a deficit and lose weight. I am (was) the queen of working out and being in amazing shape. My problem is, I have ZERO and I mean ZERO energy since this all started. So, to make up for the fact that I can't drag myself to the gym, my diet, which was low-calorie and ridiculously clean to begin with, is now even leaner than ever before. I eat hard boiled eggs for breakfast, an apple for a snack, turkey, sweet potato and 1/2 an avocado for lunch, a protein shake for an afternoon snack, and broiled salmon, 1/2 cup of rice and steamed veggies for dinner. No salt, no butter, no junk whatsoever. It's around 1200 calories, and about as clean as you can get.

Congrats on losing 10 lbs though, that's great!

Oh and I can use myfitnesspal in my sleep, it's been drilled into me for years by my trainer! Great site!!

[parmeisan]

Just wanted to say that most of that was for the original poster. After having read through the thread more (yeah, I should have done it first) I did add some more. This (editted in, so you might have missed it) was mostly for you:

PS. I do know how hard it is to find motivation for this sort of thing when you are in gluten withdrawal or just feeling fatigued. If you're not there yet, put in on a shelf in your mind and do it later. There's no hurry. You'll feel better soon.

You said you're pretty new at gluten-free, right? I think that it's probably just going to take some time before you get the energy levels you're used to having. If they don't end up coming back, then something else is the problem: that level of fatigue is not normal. (Although I'm sure most of us went through a stage where we thought it was). Figure out what's sapping your energies, and I'm sure you'll be just fine.

[luvrdeo]

Just wanted to say that most of that was for the original poster. After having read through the thread more (yeah, I should have done it first) I did add some more. This (editted in, so you might have missed it) was mostly for you:

You said you're pretty new at gluten-free, right? I think that it's probably just going to take some time before you get the energy levels you're used to having. If they don't end up coming back, then something else is the problem: that level of fatigue is not normal. (Although I'm sure most of us went through a stage where we thought it was). Figure out what's sapping your energies, and I'm sure you'll be just fine.

Luckily I go back to the doctor next week, as I don't think how I'm feeling is normal. No one my age should be grounded to the couch on the weekends!! I apologize, I thought you were referring directly to me, and I used to live in the gym, so feeling this way is terribly hard for me right now! Yes I'm fairly new, and unfortunately, have gotten no relief from removing gluten. Hopefully I get more answers next week!