It all happened fast, within a week, when the pieces began to fit together in my mind. It was like living in a fog for months, years even. On some level I could hear my heart telling me this wasn't right for my body, I was smart enough to know that much, young as I was. Yet, I lacked the self-confidence to REALLY speak up, to question what didn't feel right.
It's so common, isn't it? Most women truly believe that dieting should be the lowest number of calories we can "get away with" to sustain our vital body functions. Usually named as 1200, which is incredibly arbitrary considering all the individual differences. There is just NO WAY EVERY woman becomes unhealthy at 1200 calories. For me it was closer to 1800 calories in the beginning when I had a healthier metabolism (it was very sluggish from years of disordered eating but pregnancy with my first and gaining 60lbs really seemed to reset it effectively). That magic 1800 calories is when I began to feel tired and run down, not just hungry but starving and eventually weak. Then it became 1500 calories as my body ate away my muscle (those pounds disappearing so quickly sure looked good on the scale, though....), then I could actually withstand 1200 or 1300 calories a day with several cups of coffee and a couple fat burners no problem. Once a week or so I would lose all control and down every craving I had, which was plenty. Actually it was more like 2 days a week, usually the weekend when most struggle anyway. If I indulged on Saturday I couldn't get myself back on track until Monday. By then it's easy to erase all progress made during the week but my calories were so dramatically low at some points that I was still losing 3-4 pounds a week. I was very active, exercising 1.5 hours a day, walking the dog 30-60 minutes a day, chasing after a one year old and keeping up a "perfect" household daily.
Have you ever heard of the diet cycle? Well I'll do a future blog post on this one but very simply put it's when our bodies try to adapt to the changing stimulus. The body is always searching for homeostasis, a state of being "status quo". When we begin dieting our body will begin to adapt over a period of time by slowing down metabolism (feeling cold, tired, sluggish, unmotivated), increasing hunger hormones and decreasing satiety hormones. What a pain, hey? The lower our body fat levels drop the more our body's compensate. After a while, if we continue to lose weight rapidly (if we're losing 3-4 pounds a week I can guarantee you that is not all coming from fat, you're losing a good amount of muscle), our metabolism continues to decreases, our resting metabolic rate decreases and suddenly we need far less calories to sustain the same weight as we did before. See how this can lead to rebound weight gain?
In a nutshell, this is what happens with any over-ambitious diet and training program. We may be able to compensate and handle it "just fine" for a while, months, even YEARS, but eventually your body will win the battle back to homeostasis. Have you ever seen elite athletes gain mass amounts of weight? Have you ever seen someone who used to be very thin suddenly gain very quickly?
So, back to my story. This is what happened to me. This is what metabolic damage is.
It took about 6 weeks to put on 30lbs. I competed on August long weekend and by Halloween (first picture I have following my last contest) I looked like this.
Should I refresh your memory of what I looked like just weeks before? Ok... I probably should...
Not only was I back at square one but I had actually gone backwards a good 20 pounds and I was MUCH more of a mess than when I began. You see, extreme dieting and "success" doesn't come without a price tag, it NEVER does. What do you think happens when we are told carbs are bad and amazing things like rapid weight loss happen when we stop eating them? What happens when we learn that we can get single digit body fat by restricting calories severely and working out like a gym rat?
* Now I want to clarify something here. Metabolic Damage refers to a lack of the body to respond diet with a caloric deficit (very simply stated). This can vary in severity, mine wasn't as bad as many others, I would call it moderate personally. This is NOT to be mistaken for a severely increased caloric intake due to bingeing or lack of "discipline" (this has physiological factors, though, as well).
This was probably one of the most devastating emotional roller coasters I ever went on. Yes, this was worse than bulimia, at least THEN I had SOME control. Now? I had nothing. I desperately tried restricting myself to 1800 calories a day, doing 45 minutes of cardio, pushing intervals if I could stand it and killing myself with weight circuits. I had learned that I needed to work my ASS off to get results, and I was... but it wasn't what I was doing before, how on earth do you keep up with that in real life?!?!?! You can't... 99% of people can't and if you can I'm not proud of you, it's not healthy for your body or your mind. And it DOESN'T have to be this way!!!! Sadly, it is FAR too common to see girls starving, DYING, doing hours of cardio multiple times a day and living on salad and chicken breast. It's horrifying.
THIS was horrifying. I cannot even begin to describe to you what it felt like to watch your body go from that buff picture right up there, with almost NO body fat, to the one on top within weeks. What that does to your mentality, emotionally... as a woman. I felt FULL of shame and guilt. I switched gyms because I was so ashamed. I could feel people looking at me, some were very obviously thrilled that I crashed and burned, some looked with pity. How could I let myself go after all that hard work? What's wrong with her? WOW, she gained a LOT of weight.
What did my hairdresser say to me? "Oh WOW, yeah, speaking of weight gain I saw your competition pictures!!!!" Ouch. She had mentioned her own struggles with weight, it makes me sad that my "failure" pleased her so much.
I'm going to share some things I wrote to the coach who offered to help me, who'd had plenty of experience with metabolic damage and how to safely repair it over time, but first I have one more disclaimer!
We all have free choice in what we do and don't do. ALL of what I put myself through, the excessive pressure I put on myself to push harder and harder, to be perfect, was all within me. It makes me sad that the trainers we come to trust with our bodies and essentially our lives are not teaching the best methods to getting to stage, to learning balance, and sometimes even a complete lack of scientific evidence on their methods. I COMPLETELY encourage EVERYONE who hires a trainer or coach to ALWAYS ask for rationale on direction, method, choices, plans, ALWAYS ask questions and RESEARCH it for yourself. Join bodybuilding.com and siouxountry.com and learn the ins and outs of competing and training for YOURSELF. We have a personal responsibility to ourselves and unfortunately we can't safely put something of such importance solely in the hands of others. YOU need to look out for YOU.
Next time I'll share some of my deepest experiences in my struggle with a complete loss of control over my body as my wedding day quickly approached. Instead of a super fit, buff body I was expecting to have I was left soft, fluffy and facing the possibility of having a dress that was too small. A bride's nightmare.
<3 Chelsea <3
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