Need Help, REALLY Skinny But With Lots Of Flab, Face Looks Way Worse After Gaining Weight Post-Keto

[theanonymousone]

Hey everyone

I'll try to keep this as short as possible; I am 28 now. EDIT: 5-11 tall.

I lost a lot of weight when I was like 21 or so, I was like 190-200 and I went to 147-ish at my lowest (at maybe age 25-26), but I was really happy with everything, I had a great lean face, etc. I did lots of cardio, cycling, jump-rope, Insanity, running, etc.

So all this started when I went from my paleo diet to a keto diet. I was mostly doing this to try and improve my anxiety but that's irrelevant, so I was doing as good or even better on keto, felt and looked great (both face and body, even though I was basically just skinny AF), etc., then maybe after a year or so (maybe less, not sure) on keto, I started adding a cheat meal every day because I wanted to reward myself and I'm an idiot. So this obviously spiraled out of control and over a period of maybe 6 months to a year I gained probably almost 20 pounds, and I'm pretty sure NONE of that was muscle. At my heaviest I was like 157, and I looked like a hot air balloon, but still more or less thin with my clothes on. My face was understandably not as good as before I gained this weight, but it was still ok, considering my health. But I was bloated beyond belief, with gas, all that stuff. It even started causing heart palpitations, so I went to a cardiologist who gave me a holter monitor for 30 days and he said I was doing fine so whatever.

So after the cardiologist said I'm fine to exercise with as much intensity as I want I started cardio again because before I was really scared, and anxiety caused me to have heart flutters sometimes during a workout and that freaked me out and I couldn't concentrate so I'd just quit the workout. I am nowhere near the endurance level I was before this whole mess started though.

Currently, I'm about 153-154 at my absolute lightest (after pooping in the morning before eating anything). After I eat almost anything, I usually shoot up to 158-ish and feel pretty bloated no matter how much I eat. But the problem is that I look like a stick figure with clothes on, and without clothes if I don't contract my abs I have so much flab on my midsection all around me, my legs are flabby...Everything is flabby. No definition. And the worst part is that my face looks much worse now than it ever did. It looks skinny but...strangely bloated at the same time. I'd say that my face has followed the rest of my body pretty consistently throughout this ordeal.

Now I'm just confused about what to do and extremely frustrated and depressed; I still look fat with this flab all over my body, but I'm just not sure. I'm past skinny-fat, this is like anorexic-fat. I'm not sure when I'm even hungry anymore because I wonder if the stress is ruining my appetite. One option I guess is to go on keto again, because I would automatically end up eating way more calories on that than I do now out of necessity (and good calories too, when I did keto the first time, my food had to be paleo and keto, so fish, lots of vegetables, olive/coconut oil, meat, etc.).

All these negative changes in my body and face happened together with me getting really unhealthy, so unless it's a MASSIVE coincidence, there's no way this is age-related.

The strange part is that my face got worse almost perfectly in sync with me getting skinnier.

Any thoughts? Sorry for the wall of text but I thought it was important.

Thanks everyone

 

[StuffedFrog]

workout and fast intermittently

 

[6'4 looksmaxxxer]

How tall are you ?

 

[StuffedFrog]

workout and fast intermittently

btw steal tom hollands workout routine

 

[2peasinapod]

sounds like you are flacid mate, long road ahead my man

 

[sinister66]

no way ur 5’11 and looked good at 140 pounds
ur ideal weight should be 160-170
There’s a lot of factors to consider here and you jumped back and forth in this post between a lot of different shit but ima tell u this. If u liked being super lean and skinny with abs, then clean up ur diet and start doing cardio again. But if u want to put on some muscle ur gonna have to lift weights and eat at least to a maintenance (calories)

look dude start weight training and clean up ur diet. Ur skinny fat rn which is the worst body to have, no muscle and lots of fat
Put some mass on or at least try and tone ur body up. Keto is pointless unless u have a condition in which u need to be on that diet.
just keep ur protein high, lift weights to build muscle , and watch ur fats and calories. At least start somewhere again and see how ur body responds but the reason u gained all that fat is because u were just binge eating and not working out. If u had worked out and lifted weights when u ate all those calories u would at least have some muscle to show.

 

[theanonymousone]

sounds like you are flacid mate, long road ahead my man

Is that a code for something or does it literally mean flacid? Because my sex drive is actually pretty high. I'm trying to do NoFap but quitting porn is the hard part.

 

[IWantToMax]

Hey everyone

I'll try to keep this as short as possible; I am 28 now. EDIT: 5-11 tall.

I lost a lot of weight when I was like 21 or so, I was like 190-200 and I went to 147-ish at my lowest (at maybe age 25-26), but I was really happy with everything, I had a great lean face, etc. I did lots of cardio, cycling, jump-rope, Insanity, running, etc.

So all this started when I went from my paleo diet to a keto diet. I was mostly doing this to try and improve my anxiety but that's irrelevant, so I was doing as good or even better on keto, felt and looked great (both face and body, even though I was basically just skinny AF), etc., then maybe after a year or so (maybe less, not sure) on keto, I started adding a cheat meal every day because I wanted to reward myself and I'm an idiot. So this obviously spiraled out of control and over a period of maybe 6 months to a year I gained probably almost 20 pounds, and I'm pretty sure NONE of that was muscle. At my heaviest I was like 157, and I looked like a hot air balloon, but still more or less thin with my clothes on. My face was understandably not as good as before I gained this weight, but it was still ok, considering my health. But I was bloated beyond belief, with gas, all that stuff. It even started causing heart palpitations, so I went to a cardiologist who gave me a holter monitor for 30 days and he said I was doing fine so whatever.

So after the cardiologist said I'm fine to exercise with as much intensity as I want I started cardio again because before I was really scared, and anxiety caused me to have heart flutters sometimes during a workout and that freaked me out and I couldn't concentrate so I'd just quit the workout. I am nowhere near the endurance level I was before this whole mess started though.

Currently, I'm about 153-154 at my absolute lightest (after pooping in the morning before eating anything). After I eat almost anything, I usually shoot up to 158-ish and feel pretty bloated no matter how much I eat. But the problem is that I look like a stick figure with clothes on, and without clothes if I don't contract my abs I have so much flab on my midsection all around me, my legs are flabby...Everything is flabby. No definition. And the worst part is that my face looks much worse now than it ever did. It looks skinny but...strangely bloated at the same time. I'd say that my face has followed the rest of my body pretty consistently throughout this ordeal.

Now I'm just confused about what to do and extremely frustrated and depressed; I still look fat with this flab all over my body, but I'm just not sure. I'm past skinny-fat, this is like anorexic-fat. I'm not sure when I'm even hungry anymore because I wonder if the stress is ruining my appetite. One option I guess is to go on keto again, because I would automatically end up eating way more calories on that than I do now out of necessity (and good calories too, when I did keto the first time, my food had to be paleo and keto, so fish, lots of vegetables, olive/coconut oil, meat, etc.).

All these negative changes in my body and face happened together with me getting really unhealthy, so unless it's a MASSIVE coincidence, there's no way this is age-related.

The strange part is that my face got worse almost perfectly in sync with me getting skinnier.

Any thoughts? Sorry for the wall of text but I thought it was important.

Thanks everyone

Stopped reading after 1st line. Being skinny doesn't mean anything. Bodyfat % is what matters. You should hit the gym and get to 12%.
If you look bad at 12% it's over

 

[theanonymousone]

no way ur 5’11 and looked good at 140 pounds
ur ideal weight should be 160-170
There’s a lot of factors to consider here and you jumped back and forth in this post between a lot of different shit but ima tell u this. If u liked being super lean and skinny with abs, then clean up ur diet and start doing cardio again. But if u want to put on some muscle ur gonna have to lift weights and eat at least to a maintenance (calories)

look dude start weight training and clean up ur diet. Ur skinny fat rn which is the worst body to have, no muscle and lots of fat
Put some mass on or at least try and tone ur body up. Keto is pointless unless u have a condition in which u need to be on that diet.
just keep ur protein high, lift weights to build muscle , and watch ur fats and calories. At least start somewhere again and see how ur body responds but the reason u gained all that fat is because u were just binge eating and not working out. If u had worked out and lifted weights when u ate all those calories u would at least have some muscle to show.

Thanks

I actually didn't really have abs at 140, but I looked lean at least. And by looked good I mean I was really happy with myself. Sure I could have looked better but meh.

So should I do something like Insanity then, which is high intensity cardio? And my diet before this mess started was paleo (still ate beans and some dairy though though), so would you say paleo with higher protein would be a good choice? What should my macros be?

 

[IWantToMax]

Thanks

I actually didn't really have abs at 140, but I looked lean at least. And by looked good I mean I was really happy with myself. Sure I could have looked better but meh.

So should I do something like Insanity then, which is high intensity cardio? And my diet before this mess started was paleo, so would you say paleo with higher protein would be a good choice? What should my macros be?

If you couldn't see abs you were probably over 16%,unless you got some weird fat distribution.
It's a good thing, it means you can lean ax quite a lot.

Thanks

I actually didn't really have abs at 140, but I looked lean at least. And by looked good I mean I was really happy with myself. Sure I could have looked better but meh.

So should I do something like Insanity then, which is high intensity cardio? And my diet before this mess started was paleo (still ate beans and some dairy though though), so would you say paleo with higher protein would be a good choice? What should my macros be?

You should be WEIGHTTRAINING, cardio is not needed. You want to build a nice physique while lowering bf

 

[sinister66]

if u want to go back to the way u were and what made u happy then I’d say start doing cardio and go back to ur old diet since it seemed to work
But keep in mind ur always gonna look “skinny in a shirt” like u said if u don’t have any mass or muscle on u
I would go on a lean bulk and put on muscle while doing cardio at the same time but that’s just me everyone is different and has different goals

 

[theanonymousone]

if u want to go back to the way u were and what made u happy then I’d say start doing cardio and go back to ur old diet since it seemed to work
But keep in mind ur always gonna look “skinny in a shirt” like u said if u don’t have any mass or muscle on u
I would go on a lean bulk and put on muscle while doing cardio at the same time but that’s just me everyone is different and has different goals

So maybe a lifting + insanity routine? Lift one day then insanity then lift? I really don't want to neglect cardio, I want to keep my endurance up.

 

[sinister66]

So maybe a lifting + insanity routine? Lift one day then insanity then lift? I really don't want to neglect cardio, I want to keep my endurance up.

yeah u can throw in cardio 2-3 days a week but if ur trying to gain weight and muscle u don’t really wanna be burning that many calories especially considering the fact u said u don’t have an appetite

but yeah just get going again and be consistent you’ll definitely look better in a couple months just give it time

 

[theanonymousone]

yeah u can throw in cardio 2-3 days a week but if ur trying to gain weight and muscle u don’t really wanna be burning that many calories especially considering the fact u said u don’t have an appetite

but yeah just get going again and be consistent you’ll definitely look better in a couple months just give it time

Thanks

The part that really confuses me is how I somehow look worse and almost MAINTAINED my weight after becoming so much thinner.

 

[MadMong]

First off, as we age our unhealthy habits start to directly show on our bodies. You're only 28 now so you can imagine why so many people look like utter dog shit in their 30s. Exercise and proper diet only become more important and past 25 it's exponentially harder to stay good looking.

You trashed your body. Lose that flab, start working out, stop eating junk and you should rebound but don't let it happen again.

You can gain muscle and lose weight at the same time but it's not for the undisciplined. Skinny fats are the best candidates for this though.

In my opinion you are better off losing that flab first and then doing a sensible beginner's bulk. Once you're lean the muscle is just gravy on top. Finding someone who is low bodyfat in late 20's or in their 30's is nearly impossible so you'll be way ahead of the pack just doing that.

You're going to have to make a radical shift in mindset if you want to enjoy the rest of your 20's.

If deep down you think food is great then dieting is an uphill battle and maintaining low BF long term is nearly impossible.

I really like water fasting because it forces you to confront your attachment to food, and it's the quickest way to lose weight.

When you give yourself a rule of no food until your abs are showing then things become really simple. Don't eat. If you eat then you just placed food over your goals and need to go back to your mindset.

Studies show it's much easier to lose weight by not eating at all than to eat at a deficit. It's not hard at all I can confirm.. I've done 3+ month long cuts on severe caloric restrictions and it was absolute hell compared to just not eating for 2-3 weeks. The hunger goes away by day 2 or 3 and the rest comes down to how attached to food you are for emotional comfort. 20-30lb weight loss in a month is entirely possible with fasting. If you're really fat you can lose 60+ a month.

See sig.

 

[theanonymousone]

First off, as we age our unhealthy habits start to directly show on our bodies. You're only 28 now so you can imagine why so many people look like utter dog shit in their 30s. Exercise and proper diet only become more important and past 25 it's exponentially harder to stay good looking.

You trashed your body. Lose that flab, start working out, stop eating junk and you should rebound but don't let it happen again.

You can gain muscle and lose weight at the same time but it's not for the undisciplined. Skinny fats are the best candidates for this though.

In my opinion you are better off losing that flab first and then doing a sensible beginner's bulk. Once you're lean the muscle is just gravy on top. Finding someone who is low bodyfat in late 20's or in their 30's is nearly impossible so you'll be way ahead of the pack just doing that.

You're going to have to make a radical shift in mindset if you want to enjoy the rest of your 20's.

If deep down you think food is great then dieting is an uphill battle and maintaining low BF long term is nearly impossible.

I really like water fasting because it forces you to confront your attachment to food, and it's the quickest way to lose weight.

When you give yourself a rule of no food until your abs are showing then things become really simple. Don't eat. If you eat then you just placed food over your goals and need to go back to your mindset.

Studies show it's much easier to lose weight by not eating at all than to eat at a deficit. It's not hard at all I can confirm.. I've done 3+ month long cuts on severe caloric restrictions and it was absolute hell compared to just not eating for 2-3 weeks. The hunger goes away by day 2 or 3 and the rest comes down to how attached to food you are for emotional comfort. 20-30lb weight loss in a month is entirely possible with fasting. If you're really fat you can lose 60+ a month.

See sig.

Thanks for the advice!

I was really disciplined in the past though, I worked out (cardio) a lot, and then later on I cut out all grains, gluten, and sugar, and did really well. I made lots of green and tomato smoothies (just vegetables, no sugar), and my diet was really great. I walked a LOT every day too, not even counting that as exercise.

My problem is that I go back and forth thinking "I should lose weight because of all this flab" and then I think "I don't think I ate enough today, that's not healthy either". So now I'm wondering if I should do keto (paleo keto) until I lose this fat, then I can probably bulk up easier? I don't want to starve myself. When I was on keto the first time I actually found it hard to eat enough, so it shouldn't be a problem. Discipline isn't really a problem for me, my issue is that I panic and think I'm doing something wrong. I just lost track of my goals when I started cheating on keto.

EDIT: I should mention that I had nice cheek hollows before this disaster happened that's what I really want back.