Nine months in and nothing is happening

Kim,
I’m in the same boat, breastfeeding a 16 month old and not sleeping because I’m being awakened by the kids and then too wired to fall back to sleep. I have only been doing it for 1 month and I have just given up. I have gained 7 kg/15 lbs in a month and that’s where I said enough. Matt said that not sleeping will make put on more fat and by breastfeeding, your metabolism is further compromised. So why temp the fate? I was fairly happy before, had some minor issues that I will just put down to age and will focus on something else for now. I took some good points from this program, like limiting my liquid and just generally resting even if I can’t sleep and I stopped taking my temperatures as of yesterday because I don’t want to stress myself over it. I think that if I was sleeping and not breastfeeding the results would have been different. I can’t however continue not knowing what weight I will ballon up to and causing myself a great deal of stress and anxiety. So I am just eating more carefully now, certainly not doing anything crazy, hoping the weigh will slowly fall off and hoping even more weight will fall off once I wean my babe off. Thanks for sharing your story, you have confirmed my belief that I have made a good decision stopping this program.

As someone with a long history of disordered eating and many, many failed attempts to correct course, I feel very strongly that my own key to success has been persistence and commitment to seeing it through no matter what bumps in the road. From my perspective, having spent 20 years starving myself, a 2.5 degree increase, even if it has “stalled out” is HUGE! I understand that 9 months of “stalled out” temperatures can be disappointing, but my thought is to “keep your eye on the prize.” The changes aren’t entirely linear with this process. And weight gain can be part of it. If you’ve restricted for a long time then weight gain is both inevitable and also, in my opinion, an inherent part of the healing process. Not only is it an opportunity to heal physically, but also emotionally. Those of us who have treated our bodies so badly and developed distorted views of normalcy and health and feeling good (restricted eating creates starvation highs because of stress hormones) need to reset everything. We can’t afford to feel the way we used to feel when restricting since that is part of the problem. We have to reorient to what it feels like to be actually healthy. It’s a process. We have to learn to love ourselves and our bodies no matter what. We have to learn to stop obsessing over these little details that ultimately are insignificant. We have to learn what is truly important – things like our families, life, the natural world, sunrises, and beauty – rather than all the sensations and thoughts and obsessions we used to focus on. That’s my two cents. I’d say focus on the benefits and see it through. What you did before didn’t work. You know that. Remember that. Be willing to do something different, even if it is uncomfortable for a while. Because the benefits far outweigh the discomfort. For me there is no question. I’ve gotten to a point where the discomforts are far less than they were for a while, and more often than not I feel good and grateful for the choice to see this through.

Ladies, I’m not in your same situation with breastfeeding and not sleeping…but, I’ve been there, done that with 3 kids! For many years, I didn’t think I’d ever sleep through the night again and I couldn’t WAIT to lose weight. I hope Matt does weigh in on this post at some point, but I wanted to encourage both of you to just focus on eating plenty of food to both feed your babies sufficiently and to feed yourselves sufficiently. I also want to encourage you to stay the course, as J-Lo did above, regardless of the bumps in the road. I’m taking my own advice here, too, as I’m experiencing my own bumps in the road (peeing like crazy, headache, and cold hands/feet/nose today, for some reason). I read in the Trusting Your Body II post yesterday that too many people stop at “179 Degrees” and miss out on the health and body fat improvements they could have had because they jumped ship just a little too soon. Hang in there!!

Kim, one more thought. I am not really restricting calories, perhaps you should look into “health at every size.” It’s a book and the author has an internet site as well and it is about intuitive eating, stopping the war with out bodies. It is not about stuffing your face, but about eating what you want, as much as you want and whenever you want. So you don’t necessarily have to eat salt and sugar and starch as some sort of prescription but you allow yourself to eat exactly what you want, totally relying on biofeedback. And who could be the best teacher than your own body. So maybe stop measuring your temperatures because it easily becomes obsessive and rather focus on trusting your body that is knows what’s best. And what’s the difference between Matt’s program and this? With Matt’s program unfortunately I have stopped relying on my biofeedback and was trying to push my temperatures up by eating too much and always salt with everything. I wasn’t enjoying it as my body was screaming for some fruit as an example, but instead I had some sweet biscuits and corn chips because I though that’s what I should have. So I really have only myself to blame. If I had followed my instincts perhaps I would’t have gained all this extra weight.

It does seem like attempting this process without getting sleep is a bad idea. Won’t it just backfire? Maybe these ladies should back off from it until they know they can get proper sleep?

Kim, I sometimes find that our own body is not always clear in what it needs, I agree. However sometimes the craving is so strong, it is unmistakable. I find that when my stress system is activated I never crave salt, yet strangly it always helps. Also cheese doesn’t really do it for me as I have just found out in the last couple of days as much as salty biscuits do. And I don’t need many, just a handful. However, it doesn’t help for long, half an hour later my stress system is activated again. Frustrating. And I don’t even do eat for heat any longer, but it helped me tremendously to realise what are all these weird moods and when I’m stressed and what to do about it. I just wish my racing heart would go away now….sigh I think motherhood and breastfeeding seriously messes up women’s hormones! For the last 4 years I have been pregnant, breastfeeding to pregnant again to breastfeeding. And I have tried to lose the weight too fast and now I regret for being so hard on myself.