Absolute hopelessness - Pray for me?

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ThatOneDudeAlex

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I’ve been struggling with a problem for a long time, but for the most part, have kept it to myself. I can’t take it anymore. I need to let it out, and I truly do need prayers.

Thanks to awful genes, and bad habits, I’ve had bad health problems for many years. At age 9, I was told I have high cholesterol. 11, blood pressure. And now at age 16, I’ve discovered that I’m officially obese.

I’ve been on and off “diets” since the seventh grade, but didn’t take it too seriously until a few months ago. I buckled down, and decided to really make a change. In the process, I lost twenty six pounds, which made me ecstatic! I wasn’t where I needed to be, but it was some great progress. So I kept on it. I was eating smaller portions, and healthier food. Exercising during literally all of my free time. I was on the right track. But for some reason, it stopped working. I gained about half that lost weight back. I was heartbroken, but became more diligent. Ate less, and exercised more. It worked… for about a week. Then I gained it back again.

And this is dramatic change. In the past four days, despite being ridiculously tough on myself, I gained nine pounds.

I feel so hopeless. I’ve consulted doctors, health forums, friends who’ve had similar problems, and I’m told I’m doing the right thing. I’m finding it impossible for me to get out of this situation.

If anyone has any advice on how to fix this, it’s greatly appreciated. But if now, PLEASE, pray for me. Someone I really care about has a very severe eating disorder because they were in a situation like me, and took it too far. I’m doing all I can to keep away from that, but I haven’t a clue what to do…

Thank you in advance for your prayers.
 
I have no advice but I do have compassion and certainly can pray for you and will be doing so. May you not despair - have hope and be diligent in your faith. God’s blessings to you.
 
There is no way that I can know for sure, but the thought that struck me as I read your poat is this: If a person consumes too few calories, the body goes into starvation mode. It uses way fewer calories than normal. That could cause the weight gains you have described. A nutritionist would be able to help you work out a level that is neither too high nor too low for your caloric intake. Some doctors know more that others about dieting and nutrition. There are sites on the internet which could perhaps help you. I would go with one that has a good reputation because some diets can be downright harmful.

I wish you all the best and pray that will guide you on the waay to success, bothe physically and spiritually.
 
Be with me Lord, when I am in trouble.
Be with me Lord, I pray.
Be with me Lord, when I am in trouble.
Be with me Lord, I pray.

Praying for your guidance.
 
Hecares said:
There is no way that I can know for sure, but the thought that struck me as I read your poat is this: If a person consumes too few calories, the body goes into starvation mode. It uses way fewer calories than normal. That could cause the weight gains you have described. A nutritionist would be able to help you work out a level that is neither too high nor too low for your caloric intake. Some doctors know more that others about dieting and nutrition. There are sites on the internet which could perhaps help you. I would go with one that has a good reputation because some diets can be downright harmful.

I wish you all the best and pray that will guide you on the waay to success, bothe physically and spiritually.
Click to expand...
I read this and remembered that one of the things weight watchers says is that you need to consume a certain number of “points” per day, if you go over or under your allotted amount, tne the system doesn’t work. So it seems to agree with what Hecares posted.

I will be praying for you

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. To thee I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.
 
ThatOneDudeAlex,

You have been given great advice in this thread already.
I would suggest a wonderful site that figures out how many calories, fat, etc, that your body must take in in order to loose weight.
It is sparkpeople.com/

It is free and there are lots of tools that will guide you towards a healthier lifestyle. That’s what it all boils down to. You should not be on a diet. You should eat better all the time and continue to exercise. One tip I learned that is a must for anyone… NEVER eat less than 1000 calories per day. Your body requires more so you have calories to burn.

Remember, you are not your family member who had the eating disorder. You are yourself and you have free will to chose what is best for you in your life. Instead of high fat, high sugar, high calorie foods, choose the opposite… always… but EAT and eat healthy.

I will pray for your success. Always know you have many people (in heaven and on earth) rooting for you and praying for you. You have friends in high places.😃

God bless,
~Rae
 
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection,
implored thy help, or sought thine intercession was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins,
my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand,
sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me.
Amen.
 
Lord, I pray that ThatOneDudeAlex can eat three not too big healthy meals a day, plus two snacks, so his metabolism will work at its best. Help him to continue to exercise moderately, and help him to deepen his prayer life. May he not despair over his body weight but be abadoned to your merciful love full of confidence in your merciful love. Thank you, Lord, for hearing my prayer.
 
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation but deliever us from evil.
Amen.

Hail Mary full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God
pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be world without end. Amen.
 
ThatOneDudeAlex said:
I’ve been struggling with a problem for a long time, but for the most part, have kept it to myself. I can’t take it anymore. I need to let it out, and I truly do need prayers.

Thanks to awful genes, and bad habits, I’ve had bad health problems for many years. At age 9, I was told I have high cholesterol. 11, blood pressure. And now at age 16, I’ve discovered that I’m officially obese.

I’ve been on and off “diets” since the seventh grade, but didn’t take it too seriously until a few months ago. I buckled down, and decided to really make a change. In the process, I lost twenty six pounds, which made me ecstatic! I wasn’t where I needed to be, but it was some great progress. So I kept on it. I was eating smaller portions, and healthier food. Exercising during literally all of my free time. I was on the right track. But for some reason, it stopped working. I gained about half that lost weight back. I was heartbroken, but became more diligent. Ate less, and exercised more. It worked… for about a week. Then I gained it back again.

And this is dramatic change. In the past four days, despite being ridiculously tough on myself, I gained nine pounds.

I feel so hopeless. I’ve consulted doctors, health forums, friends who’ve had similar problems, and I’m told I’m doing the right thing. I’m finding it impossible for me to get out of this situation.

If anyone has any advice on how to fix this, it’s greatly appreciated. But if now, PLEASE, pray for me. Someone I really care about has a very severe eating disorder because they were in a situation like me, and took it too far. I’m doing all I can to keep away from that, but I haven’t a clue what to do…

I have some advice, Alex. You have to create accountability in your program. If you or your parents can afford a personal trainer, for even 1/2 hour 3 times a week who gives you goals and demands a certain performance level. If you can’t afford it, maybe you can get a scholarship to the local Y for health reasons and get in some classes there.

It’s all too easy to say, well, I’ll skip today and make it up tomorrow. It don’t work! Trust me.

I will pray for you as well. Keep after yourself in a motivational, not judgmental way.

Thank you in advance for your prayers.
Click to expand...
 
I am adding my prayers as well. 🙂

Just a bit of food for thought:
  1. muscle weighs more than fat. When you exercize, you burn fat and build muscle. This means that inevitably, you will hit a stage when you will hit a plateau, then slowly start gaining weight again - muscle weight. If you are aiming to be trim and healthy, and still keep losing weight, I would give some thought to the possibility of modifying/cutting back on your exercise routine. I’m not a fitness expert, but I have managed to lose and keep off 50 lbs for the past ten years (I’m 42 years old) with sensible eating and sensible exercising. I’ve been around the health and fitness block long enough to be pretty sure that “exercising during literally all of [one’s] free time” is probably a bit too much exercise. Just a thought. 😉
  2. I’m sure you already do, but I can’t stress this enough: drinking water does wonders for weight loss, weight maintenance and portion control. Between 1.5 and 2 litres a day (6-8 medium size glasses) is good for most people. Fruit juices are packed with useless carbs, i.e. sugar. Even pure 100%, not-from-concentrate orange juice. The best and most nutritious way to get one’s fruit intake is to eat fruit, not drink them. I weaned myself off fruit juices years ago and I found it made a major difference.
  3. Ultimately, it’s all about moderation. Be gentle with yourself. Eat what you want - in moderation. If you’re craving a chocolate bar, have a chocolate bar, enjoy it and that’s that. It’s a LOT easier to manage cravings when you indulge them at the early stage, rather than squeeze your eyes shut, pray to God you stop obsessing over that bar you want so much, only to cave in hours later and wolf down 3 bars AND a tub of Haagen Daaz.
Beyond this, I have no advice because everyone is different. Everyone reacts differently to food intake and exercise routines. What works for me won’t work for you or my sister or my best friend’s mother. But in my opinion, everyone can take those three bits up there and adapt them to their own lifestyle and weight loss goals so that it does work for them.

Hang in there. You’ve proven to yourself that you CAN do it. And you can. 👍
 
I’ll pray for you.

I’m not a doctor or a nutritionist, so perhaps you should ignore what I’m about to say.

I have a friend in the health field who is working on her Masters’ thesis about overweight in young women and teens. I’m not sure what all she has discovered, but in talking to her about it, she brought up some interesting things.

First of all, at least according to her, the aversion of overweight is, even among healthcare people, something of an “accepted wisdom”. Nobody ever questions it. But notions change, and they aren’t always health based or based on expectations of happiness. If you look at the figures on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, every last one of the people depicted is visibly “fat” according to our current notions…the men as well as the women. Hard to believe everybody back then got no exercise or ate Twinkies all the time. Hard to believe they all died of heart attacks at age 35, and we know a lot of them didn’t. We, on the other hand, have a different expectation of ideal physiognomy. But is it based on anything other than current notions?

But some people are healthier and happier with more pounds than others, or less. Another thing is the thing about body mass and the percentage of fat. The way most health people determine whether one is “morbidly obese” or not is a height/weight thing that does not take muscle mass into account and certainly not bone size or density. You could, for example, have a Guatemalan (who tend to be very short and stocky, just naturally) and think he/she is overweight based on customary criteria, when his/her percentage of fat to body mass might not be excessive at all compared to, say, a Scot having “ideal” height/weight proportions. And, too, peoples’ fat is distributed differently. An Asian might not appear to have excessive body fat because they tend to have a more even distribution of fat cells, whereas a European, even if he had less body fat, might seem to have more than the Asian if the Scot’s fat is all around his belly/hips.

Knowing everything one needs to know is much more complicated than most healthcare people think it is.

But in addition, she found, by interviewing a great number of women and teens, that most weren’t particularly unhappy about their weight EXCEPT as to the hassle they got about it. And it wasn’t social pressure, exactly. It was more healthcare professional pressure. She found that people who have been “overweight” for a long time (and a lot of them are “overweight” from birth) are less anxiety ridden about it than people who aren’t overweight at all according to customary criteria, and don’t really care all that much what people other than healthcare people think about it. Some are, indeed, put out that other people think they should be anxious about it when, in reality, they themselves truly are not.

Now, cholesterol is a tough thing to really know about. It’s easy to know whether the “bad” cholesterol (versus the “good” cholesterol) is above a norm generally understood to be the health borderline. But norms don’t tell the whole story. Your own body makes it, and will do so no matter what you eat. Now, maybe like insulin, that production can get “out of whack” in an unhealthy way. But there are people who have all kinds of things “out of whack” compared to norms, who are not unhealthy at all. They’re just different.

I’m not in any way pretending to diagnose your situation or telling you what to do. I’m only saying this is an extremely complicated thing, and it is my impression that most healthcare peoples’ diagnoses and recommendations are usually superficial and based on “customary” notions, but it takes very serious expertise to really know whether a particular individual’s overweight, or even cholesterol are potentially harmful to them.
 
One more thing. I agree with those who tell you that muscle weight makes a lot of difference. But water does too. Also, there is a difference between physical exercise and mental exercise. The human brain characteristically burns more energy than the muscles do. Back when I was in college, I could easily lose ten pounds during an “all nighter”. Undoubtedly some of that was water loss. Likely some of it was keeping brain cells firing nonstop over a long period of time, notwithstanding that my muscle movement was negligible.

I’m not recommending “all nighters” whatsoever. But I do think weight loss is a long term proposition and the ups and downs do not always represent gain or loss in terms of a percentage of body fat.
 
Our Father, who art in heaven
hallowed be Thy name
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass
against us and lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus
Holy Mary, Mother of God ,
pray for us sinners
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever, world without end.
Amen
 
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection,
implored thy help, or sought thine intercession was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins,
my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand,
sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me.
Amen.
 
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