Walking the weight off

BBee5064

Hi all, hope you are all fit & well?
I have been walking a lot this week. I downloaded an app called runkeeper & it has really motivated me to get moving. I have walked over 8 miles this week. Im feeling a little fitter.
How about you guys? what has motivated you to get moving?

Bruceapple

I have a dog, "Bubba", and we like to go for long walks. We usually go on the week ends, shorter walks during the week. I have tracked a lot of my walks with my Garmin, Forerunner 10. It will post the walk on "Garmin Connect" and it will carry the data over on to MFP also.
I am a swimmer and my pool has been down for maintenance; they started filling it up today. I am ready and miss the chlorine.

bm1409

Love the app run keeper. I haven't been to the gym in a few weeks. My car has been on the blitz and husband has to fix it himself instead of taking it some where and getting it done quick (aurgh). I have a elliptical and some workout tapes but Im not so motivated to use them. I think I need to start getting motivated and workout, even if its at home. I just miss the gym.

BBee5064

Bruceapple wrote: »

I have a dog, "Bubba", and we like to go for long walks. We usually go on the week ends, shorter walks during the week. I have tracked a lot of my walks with my Garmin, Forerunner 10. It will post the walk on "Garmin Connect" and it will carry the data over on to MFP also.
I am a swimmer and my pool has been down for maintenance; they started filling it up today. I am ready and miss the chlorine.

That's the beauty of having a dog . A constant walking companion.
Enjoy your swim

BBee5064

bm1409 wrote: »

Love the app run keeper. I haven't been to the gym in a few weeks. My car has been on the blitz and husband has to fix it himself instead of taking it some where and getting it done quick (aurgh). I have a elliptical and some workout tapes but Im not so motivated to use them. I think I need to start getting motivated and workout, even if its at home. I just miss the gym.

I have the jillians micheals 30 day shred DVD - it a killer but boy it does work.
could u find a friend who you could work out with at home? Maybe that might help.
Hope u get your car sorted x

bm1409

I think I am just in a funk because of my car and there is so much to do with Christmas being around the corner. Husband swears car will be fixed today. At least I am not stress eating. I am being very mindful of what I eat. I refuse to gain back everything I lost and have to start over again.

BBee5064

I hate it when my car is off the road. Totally get where u r coming from. Hope u get it fixed soon x

bm1409

Car fixed.......tomorrow I am going to the gym and then Christmas shopping.

BBee5064

Great news about your car. Enjoy the gym

bibliocephalus

That's awesome about the walking busybee! When the weather was better I walked a number of days a week, for a full hour when I could. I got in a habit of listening to podcasts and audiobooks on my phone on my walks and it really made the time fly by. Now that the wet season is here I have been walking on a treadmill, but I can't wait until the weather clears and I can be outside again. Hopefully it will be about the time I will be back on my feet after this leg surgery.

BBee5064

Thanks Bibliocephalus, my legs are feeling it today. But I feel energised afterwards, I do exactly as u do listen to podcast etc, I really enjoy it. when u having your leg surgery? U will be out of action fir a while?

BBee5064

I have walked 15 miles this month. I weighed myself this morning & I have lost a pound yippee!!!

eemmerson929

I am pretty much just a walker. I do a minimum of 3.6 miles every morning before work in my neighborhood. If I get out early enough I will stretch that out to 4.5 or 5.5 depending on the route and my motivation. I do longer on Saturday mornings did a personal best 8.9 miles last Saturday. I have been starting to run parts of my normal circuit and did 12 minute miles average yesterday.
My company is big into the wellness thing. We have a .5 mi. loop around our building and parking lot that I will do 2 laps on when I think I can take 20 minutes. Minimum of once a day. They also just gave everyone a FitBit and have built some competition into it with stack rankings for each department and location.
I also use Runkeeper on my morning walks but not at work. The average pace announcement every 5 minutes is my pusher. I try to keep it around 15:30 per mile.
Since I started tracking food and steps on November 10th, 2015 I have lost 9.2 pounds which pretty much on target for the 2 pounds per week goal that I set. I had lost 21.2 pounds since January 1st just through changes to my diet and occasionally walking with no plan and no tracking of diet or steps.
You can do it through just walking for sure. What I have above may seem pretty formulaic but in the end it is still just walking. I would encourage anyone who is wondering if they can lose weight through just walking. If you have the time (90 mins.), you can lose a pound a week just walking and another pound by cutting 500 cals a day from your diet. At least that has worked in my case.

BBee5064

I definately agree with u eemmerson929, u have got it sorted. Walking every morning before work. Sets u up for the day. I go at a good pace. My best is 16.30 per mile on run-keeper. I have a fitbit & I have done 15000 steps so far today.
Thanks for sharing your walking weightloss success.
It's great to have u on board

BBee5064

I meant to say u go at a good pace

bibliocephalus

These are great, and inspiring. My surgery was Tuesday, you guys have me chomping at the bit to hurry up and recover so I can get back out there!

I'm curious about the FitBit. Do you use separately from MFP, and log the information that you get from it into MFP? I looked on a FitBit forum here, and it seemed that the people that linked it up with MFP had a lot of problems with it. I'd prefer to just use it for exercise, and keep tracking my food on here, is that something you can do?

eemmerson929

bibliocephalus wrote: »

These are great, and inspiring. My surgery was Tuesday, you guys have me chomping at the bit to hurry up and recover so I can get back out there!

I'm curious about the FitBit. Do you use separately from MFP, and log the information that you get from it into MFP? I looked on a FitBit forum here, and it seemed that the people that linked it up with MFP had a lot of problems with it. I'd prefer to just use it for exercise, and keep tracking my food on here, is that something you can do?

Fitbit and MFP work fine together. You can track your food on MFP and it will transfer the calories over to your FitBit dashboard and app. The mealtime calories will be shown on FitBit (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, etc.) but the food breakdown will not. The calories that you burn on FitBit in terms of steps will transfer over to MFP.

If you use another app to track exercise like running or walking (MapMyRun, Runkeeper, etc.), link them to MFP and do not link them to FitBit or it will double count the burn. I would also enable "negative calorie adjustment" in your diary settings if you wear the FitBit all of the time. It will give you a much more accurate reading on where you are for the day on your burned calories.

I use a very simple formula of netting 1000 less calories a day than I used to. That is 2 pounds per week. I break that up into 2 halves. 500 less calories eaten and 500 more calories burned. You can use that as a lever and if you want to eat 700 less calories, you only have to burn 300 or vice versa. You can also drop it to 1 pound a week and do 250/250 or just burn 500 and eat your sedentary burn (2200 cal./day in my case).

I am doing strictly weight loss right now so this is pretty simple. I am not getting overly crazy about the carb/fat/protein breakdown. I have cut out added sugars so I do keep the carbs in my periphery. I will start getting a little more granular as I hit goal weight and go into muscle building and changing my body composition. Right now, what I am doing works for me. I only joined MFP a couple of weeks ago so it does not show but I have lost 35 pounds since 1/1/14 and 24 pounds since 9/28/14 which was my last checkup.

BBee5064

I do use fitbit to count my steps, but it really doesn't work well with mfp. I have tried everything to sort it, No Joy. But runkeeper is brilliant at logging my walks. I do exactly the same use mfp just for food & use the others for exercise.
I hope you are doing ok & the surgery went well. Get plenty of rest & then in the new year you will be right their with us on our walking quest
Lots of love x BB

bibliocephalus

This is all so helpful, thank you guys!

Busybee, so do you just enter the activity numbers from your fitbit manually into MFP under excercise? And Eeemerson, which fitbit model are you using?

Alas, I have really felt my mood and overall well being plummet which each day of inactivity- I am toying with the idea of going to the gym to use the arm bike today. I still have stitches in, but the aircast would be protecting everything. . .still undecided on that.

Happy holidays to all who celebrate, happy winter to those who don't!

BBee5064

I do manually log my numbers. The great thing I find with the fitbit is that I can see how many steps I do every day. & it motivates me to so more.
I hope you are doing ok? I know its easy for me to say but I would honestly be fully recovered before any form of exercise. I had a really bad head injury last year & I tried to do too much too soon, I honestly paid the price.
but as you say the aircast is protecting everything
Take good care & don't over do it

beachgod

I'm getting a Fitbit Flex as a belated Christmas present. I walk and/or jog on the beach and I do a lot of walking at work so I'm curious as to how many steps I take in a typical day and how many more I may need to hit 10,000 a day.