Are SSRIs stalling my weight loss, yet I've lost inches?

[adancer]

I've been weight training 4x a week for the past 7 months. lifting heavy and doing drop sets and super sets. I've been eating at maintenance around 2200 - 2300 calories/day.

I do about 3-4 hours of cardio a week, usually 1-2 days of HIIT cardio.

5'6 and 179 lbs, yet I haven't lost more than 3lbs over the past few months.

Yet I've lost 4 inches off my waist, 3 inches off of bust and hips?

How can I possibly not lose much weight, could I really have gained as much muscle as I lost fat?

When I look in the mirror my body looks completely different from last summer when I did mostly a TON of cardio. I'm muscular and much more defined. In fact my upper body gets HUGE many times and I have to tone down the weights.

So I'm now trying to cut at 1850 calories and have been doing this the past 3 weeks. I have a history of bulimia and tried a high protein diet I found on here at 140g of protein a day, and had zero energy, hot flashes, and started purging so I stopped the high protein diet and went back on the diet my nutritionist gave me with lower protein and more carbs. I haven't seen much weight loss other than it will go down for a day and then shoot back up.

Now I'm eating about 110-120g of protein a day. Lean body mass is around 135 (I'm naturally very muscular for a woman and have been a competitive athlete all of my life).

I take Zoloft, Ativan, Buspar, and Trazodone, could that be stalling me? When I first took Lexapro I gained 15 lbs, and I KNOW that SSRIs cause weight gain, but I'm bedridden without them.

[Rowyn]

Why so many meds, some the same type??.

Yes, you can change your body composition without changing scale weight. Its called recomposition. I have done it too.

It sounds from your description of what's going on that you are not able to maintain the proper deficit required for weight loss. You just started to try to cut cals 3 weeks ago, the type of diet you were on didn't agree with you, so you changed it up. So you can't have been on this new diet for more than a week or so? Its too soon to evaluate how its working, especially if you are "trying" to be in deficit versus strictly monitoring your deficit. You can't know how well a diet is affecting your fat loss if you don't track it carefully. Try logging your daily food intake on Livestrong or DailyBurn, they are very helpful.

[momwithmuscle]

What is your fat and carb intake like?

[adancer]

Thank you Rowyn.

I suffer from severe anxiety and depression that came out when I first went into recovery for anorexia at the time, I was underweight and the hospital had me gain over 50 lbs in 3 months eating 4,000 + calories a day. Ativan and Buspar along with Zoloft help the anxiety, and Trazodone is taken at night at a very small dose to sleep as I was waking up at 3am every night.

I still have that "recovery weight" on me and it's frustrating to say the least.

I'm scared to track my daily calories too closely on one of those web sites as that is considered an eating disorder behavior in the recovery world. When I admitted that I was tracking my food on an iPhone app, the moderators of a recovery web site challenged me to stop this as many with EDs have really gone downhill (we tend to get obsessed over calories).

Yet my extra weight has resulted in a broken foot and my foot dr. said I should lose to take the pressure off my foot.

Could I be doing too much cardio as well? I do some pretty intense spinning and zumba classes with one of the top instructors in the country. Usually about 3-4 hours per week.

I have built some really nice muscles, would love to see more of them with less body fat but don't want to jeopardize my recovery at all. From where I was before pregnancy, I think I looked best at 15 lbs less (of course with weight training that could be totally different).

[adancer]

What is your fat and carb intake like?

Rowyn, I can see how your recomposition worked. WOW, great job!

[Rowyn]

Thank you Rowyn.

I suffer from severe anxiety and depression that came out when I first went into recovery for anorexia at the time, I was underweight and the hospital had me gain over 50 lbs in 3 months eating 4,000 + calories a day. Ativan and Buspar along with Zoloft help the anxiety, and Trazodone is taken at night at a very small dose to sleep as I was waking up at 3am every night.

I still have that "recovery weight" on me and it's frustrating to say the least.

I'm scared to track my daily calories too closely on one of those web sites as that is considered an eating disorder behavior in the recovery world. When I admitted that I was tracking my food on an iPhone app, the moderators of a recovery web site challenged me to stop this as many with EDs have really gone downhill (we tend to get obsessed over calories).

Yet my extra weight has resulted in a broken foot and my foot dr. said I should lose to take the pressure off my foot.

Could I be doing too much cardio as well? I do some pretty intense spinning and zumba classes with one of the top instructors in the country. Usually about 3-4 hours per week.

I have built some really nice muscles, would love to see more of them with less body fat but don't want to jeopardize my recovery at all. From where I was before pregnancy, I think I looked best at 15 lbs less (of course with weight training that could be totally different).

Ah, I see, no you don't want to do anything that would trigger your ED. I take it that you approximate what you are eating versus actually tracking? If you have been successful eating at maintenance and recomping (which is what you have been doing), why not keep on doing what you are doing? No, you don't HAVE to do all that cardio. Its good for your general heath and can make you feel better, but it also stimulates the appetite and and can take important energy away from muscle building.

I wouldn't worry at all about the scale. It doesn't matter that you looked your best 15 lbs ago or whatever. You can look great and bad at the exact same weight depending on your lean body composition. Some people of the same height can be shredded at 135 or fat with cellulite at 135.

Focus on your training program and eating at maintenance since you have had good success so far. Here is a good link to training programs if you are not already following one

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hp?t=127023861

Rowyn, I can see how your recomposition worked. WOW, great job!

Thank you, you don't have to "diet" to change your body for the better! Good luck

[toodlepip]

I suffer from severe anxiety and depression that came out when I first went into recovery for anorexia at the time, I was underweight and the hospital had me gain over 50 lbs in 3 months eating 4,000 + calories a day. Ativan and Buspar along with Zoloft help the anxiety, and Trazodone is taken at night at a very small dose to sleep as I was waking up at 3am every night.

I still have that "recovery weight" on me and it's frustrating to say the least.

I'm scared to track my daily calories too closely on one of those web sites as that is considered an eating disorder behavior in the recovery world. When I admitted that I was tracking my food on an iPhone app, the moderators of a recovery web site challenged me to stop this as many with EDs have really gone downhill (we tend to get obsessed over calories).

Yet my extra weight has resulted in a broken foot and my foot dr. said I should lose to take the pressure off my foot.

Could I be doing too much cardio as well? I do some pretty intense spinning and zumba classes with one of the top instructors in the country. Usually about 3-4 hours per week.

I have built some really nice muscles, would love to see more of them with less body fat but don't want to jeopardize my recovery at all. From where I was before pregnancy, I think I looked best at 15 lbs less (of course with weight training that could be totally different).

I get where you are coming from, to a degree, having dealt with bulimia for many, many years and am also currently taking anti-depressants (Wellbutrin). I've haven't had the loss of appetite some get with Wellbutrin (though I'm on a fairly low dose) but at the same time it hasn't caused any gain either.

Talking about tracking cals really resonates. I've had to be really careful with tracking cals and recently stopped altogether (and am maintaining successfully) as I found myself falling into the "good/bad" paradigm and then having a blowout binge because I had exceeded my cal limit for the day or what have you. I now know how to hit my protein numbers without tracking and am doing that along with a whole lot of listening to my body. Though I'm definitely still working on it - I've found a healthy relationship with food and my sanity matters more than a couple pounds.

As for cardio, I'd say do what feels good...not what you think you should do to burn cals, but what revitalizes you and you enjoy.

Best of luck to you.

[adancer]

Ah, I see, no you don't want to do anything that would trigger your ED. I take it that you approximate what you are eating versus actually tracking? If you have been successful eating at maintenance and recomping (which is what you have been doing), why not keep on doing what you are doing? No, you don't HAVE to do all that cardio. Its good for your general heath and can make you feel better, but it also stimulates the appetite and and can take important energy away from muscle building.

I wouldn't worry at all about the scale. It doesn't matter that you looked your best 15 lbs ago or whatever. You can look great and bad at the exact same weight depending on your lean body composition. Some people of the same height can be shredded at 135 or fat with cellulite at 135.

Focus on your training program and eating at maintenance since you have had good success so far. Here is a good link to training programs if you are not already following one



Thank you, you don't have to "diet" to change your body for the better! Good luck

Hi Rowyn,

Thank you. Yes counting calories vigilantly triggers my ED and I will do things like go out to dinner and then purge.

Also reading on here about cheat days caused me to purge twice. I dieted all week and then felt like I was binging out of control, so I stopped doing that. I have had a great recovery for 2 1/2 years and don't want to start bulimia again. I've purged before I joined this site like 3 times in the past 2 1/2 years so I've done really, really well, compared to weekly before, plus abusing laxatives and low weight.

I have been recomping my body, but you're right that the cardio DOES increase my appetite. I actually even broke my foot a few months ago doing too much cardio plus my job of teaching aerobics. The broken foot was a blessing to get me back into weight training, as I really couldn't do much else but that and swim and cycle. But yes it's easy to read stuff on here that can be triggering.

My nutritionist doesn't want me to count calories and focus on losing weight, just to eat healthy and find healthy ways to deal with emotions. I guess it's just hard to "accept" being a certain weight since I was so much lighter when I was anorexic, although unable to work, function and hospitalized and had the ambulance at my house many times.

I'm glad that I joined this site and could see that females don't have to do hours of cardio to be in great shape, as that's what most females do at my gym. Then I made the mistake of going over to the men's Misc when I first joined and their idea of ideal weight is really skewed, yet what do I expect on a board full of mostly 18-20 year old guys?

[adancer]

I get where you are coming from, to a degree, having dealt with bulimia for many, many years and am also currently taking anti-depressants (Wellbutrin). I've haven't had the loss of appetite some get with Wellbutrin (though I'm on a fairly low dose) but at the same time it hasn't caused any gain either.

Talking about tracking cals really resonates. I've had to be really careful with tracking cals and recently stopped altogether (and am maintaining successfully) as I found myself falling into the "good/bad" paradigm and then having a blowout binge because I had exceeded my cal limit for the day or what have you. I now know how to hit my protein numbers without tracking and am doing that along with a whole lot of listening to my body. Though I'm definitely still working on it - I've found a healthy relationship with food and my sanity matters more than a couple pounds.

As for cardio, I'd say do what feels good...not what you think you should do to burn cals, but what revitalizes you and you enjoy.

Best of luck to you.

Thank you toodlepip, I tried Wellbutrin as it's more weight neutral yet it made my anxiety worse. I'm glad that you have learned how to eat your protein without counting and found a healthy relationship with food, what a nice inspiration! I hope to get there someday.

And yes the cardio has given me a broken foot and dealing with being in cast, not good! I saw my instructor with a 6 pack and thought that I would have to teach as many classes as she does to look like that, but just ended up hurting myself

[toodlepip]

Thank you toodlepip, I tried Wellbutrin as it's more weight neutral yet it made my anxiety worse. I'm glad that you have learned how to eat your protein without counting and found a healthy relationship with food, what a nice inspiration! I hope to get there someday.

And yes the cardio has given me a broken foot and dealing with being in cast, not good! I saw my instructor with a 6 pack and thought that I would have to teach as many classes as she does to look like that, but just ended up hurting myself

Did you take wellbutrin long? Initially it increased anxiety like crazy and then balanced out. The first few weeks I thought I was going mad, but it was worth it.

Trust me, I'm still a work in progress, no shining example but as long as I keep inching forward it's all good...and along the way I learn, learn, learn.

I agree with you about the triggering here. While there are a lot of great examples of healthy eating & lifting, there are a lot of people who are obsessional and tipping into ED behaviour and for a while I found myself reading too much here and panicking about what I was and wasn’t doing ‘right’.

I think it’s so easy to getting caught up in the minutiae of it all when for 99% of people it’s not about that. Gotta find what works for you at the end of the day, and for me, it’s really important to find balance and avoid ‘all or nothing’ thinking. So I don’t do ‘cheat’ days either. If I really want something I have it. It’s just food, not good or bad. Maybe it’s just me, but the more I take labels away from food the better, the less power it has.

[adancer]

Did you take wellbutrin long? Initially it increased anxiety like crazy and then balanced out. The first few weeks I thought I was going mad, but it was worth it.

Trust me, I'm still a work in progress, no shining example but as long as I keep inching forward it's all good...and along the way I learn, learn, learn.

I agree with you about the triggering here. While there are a lot of great examples of healthy eating & lifting, there are a lot of people who are obsessional and tipping into ED behaviour and for a while I found myself reading too much here and panicking about what I was and wasn’t doing ‘right’.

I think it’s so easy to getting caught up in the minutiae of it all when for 99% of people it’s not about that. Gotta find what works for you at the end of the day, and for me, it’s really important to find balance and avoid ‘all or nothing’ thinking. So I don’t do ‘cheat’ days either. If I really want something I have it. It’s just food, not good or bad. Maybe it’s just me, but the more I take labels away from food the better, the less power it has.

Well I have a severe anxiety disorder that came out after I gained a huge amount of weight in the ED hospital, so Wellbutrin just made it worse. I tried it as a part of my med cocktail to help with the sexual side effects and weight gain of SSRIs, but then discontinued Wellbutrin after about a year as I started having severe anxiety 24/7, so then the Dr. gave me Buspar and Ativan and the anxiety started to get under control.

Yes it's not worth it to slide back into the ED and I've worked so hard at it, perhaps I can just continue on recomping my body, cut down on the excessive cardio which gave me a broken foot and DOES make me super hungry and drenched to the point of being shaky afterwards. I am enjoying weight training, seeing the results and being stronger in everyday life, and I look in the mirror and see strength and power instead of beating myself up.

I've been an athlete most of my life and naturally muscular with very muscular legs and arms to begin with, so to diet and lose my lean body mass and then gain it back with mostly fat just causes depression, and affects my athletic performance. Thank you everyone for reminding me of what is important, not what the scale says or what some random 20 year old guy on the internet thinks of me.