Could use some help from the community on my plans and how to improve them
beatua1
Posts: 98 Member
Warning, this is quite long I hope some of you will stay with it, though it may also be therapeutic for me to be open and write my feelings for anyone to see.
I saw this graphic (thanks yarwell) in a thread about how most people gain the weight back. That along with many other tidbits I have read in many threads over the last few weeks have gotten me thinking and wanting to be totally open and honest with myself and with all of you to get some candid and perhaps harsh feedback on my plans. So I thought I would go back to the beginning and tell my story how I have gotten to where I am and what I want to do going forward.
I have always eaten too much for as long as I can remember, and have always been overweight. I’ve been 6’ 2” tall since I was about 14 years old, when I was in high school I was very active and participated in several sports, so I was only moderately overweight, something like 15-30 pounds overweight. Then in college I stopped most of my activity and my weight blew up from ~220 to ~300 lbs over about 3-4 years. After that I got married and continued to eat ridiculous amounts of food and engage in very little physical activity. I have a desk job and during those days I did very little other than sit at my desk at work, sit on my couch at home and my in my bed at night. It culminated in my being 330 lbs at age 26 and my wife was pregnant with our first child. For reference I am 6’2” and according to most calculations at 250 pounds my sedentary BMR is ~2600 calories.
Suddenly I decided I didn’t want to weigh this much when I had kids, so I decided to lose weight, and I did so, eating anywhere from 600-1000 calories daily. I tracked my calories fastidiously during “diet” times and not at all when not “dieting” Essentially I lost about 80 lbs over the course of 5 months in the most unhealthy and dangerous way possible, or nearly so anyway. I was about 250 lbs when my son was born and feeling really good about myself. I decided to go back to exercising and staying in shape to avoid losing the weight at that time and managed to gain only slowly (I began eating far too many calories again) and went back up to 270 or 280 and decided I was again too heavy and needed to diet. So I once again was very stupid and ate ~800 calories daily and dropped about 50lbs in about 4 months and was back down to a “good weight” at about 220 lbs and feeling really good about myself. Once again I started eating way too much and putting the weight back on until I was back at 280 again and cycle through that same stupidity 2 more times (back down to 220, back up to 280 and back down to 220 again, all while eating 800-1200 calories a day during my “diet” times). I was the classic example of the very simple graphic above!
About a month ago I got a fitbit charge HR (mostly because my wife wanted one and she wanted me to do the challenges with her and to be able to use them together). I really felt it would be mostly a waste of money, except as a way to demonstrate love to my wife by doing something she really wanted me to do. I really felt like I was getting it to show her love and that I would see nothing out of it. In a sentence, it changed my life in ways I could have never imagined, but more on that in a minute.
After getting the fitbit I started to really think about what I was doing and why. I knew what I was doing was stupid and not healthy and potentially damaging my body in significant ways, why could I not control myself and eat reasonable amounts. I mean it’s not like my TDEE is 1200 and I really get hardly any food. I had to consistently eat 4000+ calories to gain the weight I did. I thought about it a lot, and came up with a few contributing causes:
All of that is background to help you understand my mindset coming into this. I do not write it to excuse myself or say that I have a disease and so I am not to blame for my stupidity or some other thing. I am fully to blame for my idiocy and I do not deserve any sympathy for it. The sad part is I understood the science at least at a working level of nutrition all along. I understood CICO, that it doesn’t matter how the calories come (clean, dirty or otherwise) that if you eat more than you burn you gain and if you burn more than you eat you lose.
What I think has really turned it around for me is this fitbit, believe it or not (I frankly still cannot believe it). I gained no new knowledge when I got the fitbit, I already knew my TDEE, I knew how to measure and weight food and as well as possible accurately count calories, I knew the science of losing weight at at least a working knowledge level. None the less I could never eat in a reasonable way. Then I got the fitbit, connected it to mfp, started reading all kinds of wonderful threads here (I think I have read every stickied thread in every forum on the main forums page) and started to think about why I am where I am.
The fitbit helped me quantify how many calories I was burning and showed me how many I was eating and made it really easy for me to track my calories and stay below my target. Somehow that has made all of the difference for me. I have in the last month and a half completely changed my mindset about eating and exercise. And suddenly I feel like I have a sustainable lifestyle that will work for me to be at a healthy weight for the rest of my life, and I am incredibly excited about that. Thought I am also wondering if this is just a phase and if I will be able to sustain it long term, that is my biggest fear at this point.
Finally to why I decided to write all of this, I wanted to talk frankly about where I am now and what I plan to do so that I can get feedback from all of you on how I am being naïve or stupid or unsafe or something else. So here it is, my plan and some other factors to consider:
Questions:
I saw this graphic (thanks yarwell) in a thread about how most people gain the weight back. That along with many other tidbits I have read in many threads over the last few weeks have gotten me thinking and wanting to be totally open and honest with myself and with all of you to get some candid and perhaps harsh feedback on my plans. So I thought I would go back to the beginning and tell my story how I have gotten to where I am and what I want to do going forward.
I have always eaten too much for as long as I can remember, and have always been overweight. I’ve been 6’ 2” tall since I was about 14 years old, when I was in high school I was very active and participated in several sports, so I was only moderately overweight, something like 15-30 pounds overweight. Then in college I stopped most of my activity and my weight blew up from ~220 to ~300 lbs over about 3-4 years. After that I got married and continued to eat ridiculous amounts of food and engage in very little physical activity. I have a desk job and during those days I did very little other than sit at my desk at work, sit on my couch at home and my in my bed at night. It culminated in my being 330 lbs at age 26 and my wife was pregnant with our first child. For reference I am 6’2” and according to most calculations at 250 pounds my sedentary BMR is ~2600 calories.
Suddenly I decided I didn’t want to weigh this much when I had kids, so I decided to lose weight, and I did so, eating anywhere from 600-1000 calories daily. I tracked my calories fastidiously during “diet” times and not at all when not “dieting” Essentially I lost about 80 lbs over the course of 5 months in the most unhealthy and dangerous way possible, or nearly so anyway. I was about 250 lbs when my son was born and feeling really good about myself. I decided to go back to exercising and staying in shape to avoid losing the weight at that time and managed to gain only slowly (I began eating far too many calories again) and went back up to 270 or 280 and decided I was again too heavy and needed to diet. So I once again was very stupid and ate ~800 calories daily and dropped about 50lbs in about 4 months and was back down to a “good weight” at about 220 lbs and feeling really good about myself. Once again I started eating way too much and putting the weight back on until I was back at 280 again and cycle through that same stupidity 2 more times (back down to 220, back up to 280 and back down to 220 again, all while eating 800-1200 calories a day during my “diet” times). I was the classic example of the very simple graphic above!
About a month ago I got a fitbit charge HR (mostly because my wife wanted one and she wanted me to do the challenges with her and to be able to use them together). I really felt it would be mostly a waste of money, except as a way to demonstrate love to my wife by doing something she really wanted me to do. I really felt like I was getting it to show her love and that I would see nothing out of it. In a sentence, it changed my life in ways I could have never imagined, but more on that in a minute.
After getting the fitbit I started to really think about what I was doing and why. I knew what I was doing was stupid and not healthy and potentially damaging my body in significant ways, why could I not control myself and eat reasonable amounts. I mean it’s not like my TDEE is 1200 and I really get hardly any food. I had to consistently eat 4000+ calories to gain the weight I did. I thought about it a lot, and came up with a few contributing causes:
- I really love junk foods and want to eat them all of the time, sugary candy, chips, bakery goods, …
- I really like to eat
- When I would “lose weight” in the past I would simply restrict virtually all food for a short time and the reason I was doing so was so as quickly as possible I could go back to eating what I liked
- When I would try to maintain, I hadn’t changed any habits or my lifestyle in any real way and so I simply went right back to eating the way I used to
- Exercise would come and go, and when I saw I was still gaining weight even though I was exercising I would get frustrated or discouraged or both and then the weight would shoot up
All of that is background to help you understand my mindset coming into this. I do not write it to excuse myself or say that I have a disease and so I am not to blame for my stupidity or some other thing. I am fully to blame for my idiocy and I do not deserve any sympathy for it. The sad part is I understood the science at least at a working level of nutrition all along. I understood CICO, that it doesn’t matter how the calories come (clean, dirty or otherwise) that if you eat more than you burn you gain and if you burn more than you eat you lose.
What I think has really turned it around for me is this fitbit, believe it or not (I frankly still cannot believe it). I gained no new knowledge when I got the fitbit, I already knew my TDEE, I knew how to measure and weight food and as well as possible accurately count calories, I knew the science of losing weight at at least a working knowledge level. None the less I could never eat in a reasonable way. Then I got the fitbit, connected it to mfp, started reading all kinds of wonderful threads here (I think I have read every stickied thread in every forum on the main forums page) and started to think about why I am where I am.
The fitbit helped me quantify how many calories I was burning and showed me how many I was eating and made it really easy for me to track my calories and stay below my target. Somehow that has made all of the difference for me. I have in the last month and a half completely changed my mindset about eating and exercise. And suddenly I feel like I have a sustainable lifestyle that will work for me to be at a healthy weight for the rest of my life, and I am incredibly excited about that. Thought I am also wondering if this is just a phase and if I will be able to sustain it long term, that is my biggest fear at this point.
Finally to why I decided to write all of this, I wanted to talk frankly about where I am now and what I plan to do so that I can get feedback from all of you on how I am being naïve or stupid or unsafe or something else. So here it is, my plan and some other factors to consider:
- I started at about 250 lbs about a month and a half ago at that time I got a 3 point ultrasound body fat test which said I was about 24% body fat, which seemed low to me.
- I’m in my late 30s.
- I am at about 240 now, have lost about 10 pounds in about 6 weeks.
- I plan to eat at a 1000 calorie deficit until about 235 lbs, 750 calorie deficit until about 225, a 500 calorie deficit until about 210 and about 250 deficit until I hit my goals.
- My primary goal is to be healthy and be able to stay strong and vibrant into my older years.
- My average eating right now at a 1000 cal deficit is is 2200-2500 calories once exercise is added in.
- I still sometimes do extra exercise because I know there is some food I want to eat on a certain day and I want to have enough calories for it.
- The truth is part of why I could never sustain this in the past is I would cut out everything I liked to eat, and then would get to the point where “dieting” became only about losing weight so I could eat what I like again instead of changing my lifestyle to be healthier.
- As a result of that truth, I have changed my dieting philosophy, and eat between 100-400 “empty” calories almost every day of thinks I really like to eat, things like candy or chips or some dessert pastry.
- Meanwhile I usually get about 4 servings of fruit and 1 serving of vegetable daily, in general I do not think much about micros and instead try to eat nutrient dense foods aside from the already mentioned 100-400 daily “empty” calories, but still have less dense foods like Pizza occasionally (I love pizza
) - My Lean Body Mass (LBM) is in the neighborhood of 180lbs, and my protein goal is to get a minimum of 180g / day
- I have no further macro goals beyond protein and do not care if the rest of my food comes from carbs or fat, I find I typically end up eating a similar number of calories from carbs and fat most days. Note, I pretty much never have trouble getting “enough” fat.
- My secondary goals:
* Set a good example of eating and exercise habits for my kids
* Have visible abs regardless of the weight that occurs at, though I am guessing it will be somewhere between 195-200
* Have good cardiovascular endurance for new potential job requirements
* Lift 1000 pounds combined dead, squat, bench - I would like as much as possible of my weight loss to be fat loss, as a result I am getting 1g/lb of LBM in protein and I have started a heavy lifting program
* I am doing Stronglifts 5x5 and am presently at 180-squat, 185-dead, 165-bench, 115-press, 120-row - I just started a HIIT cardio program 3 times a week that consists of the following, 3 min warm up, stretch, 1 minute warm again, 4 cycles of 30 sec full out sprint followed by 30 seconds walk/slow jog, 3 minute cool down, stretch – the whole thing takes ~20 minutes
- When I get to maintenance, after some time to stabilize my weight at maintenance, I plan to go through standard bulk/cut cycles to drive toward my goal of 1000 pound combined lifts
Questions:
- Is it healthy to eat 100-400 “empty” calories on a 2200-2500 calorie diet at 1000 cal deficit? This I think has been crucial to my ability to change around my mindset on eating and health.
- I am doing very intense HIIT cardio T,TH,SA and lifting M,W,F and mostly resting Su. Does that seem reasonable?
- Do my deficit goals seem reasonable?
- What do you think of my plan, any thoughts on how to improve it and/or make it more likely I can sustain it for a lifetime?
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Replies
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IMO, the act of including daily treat calories is what's helping me the most with weight loss and I really think that it's going to allow me to maintain this time around.Is it healthy to eat 100-400 “empty” calories on a 2200-2500 calorie diet at 1000 cal deficit? This I think has been crucial to my ability to change around my mindset on eating and health.
I'm not depriving myself. I'm not avoiding things now with the plan to eat them after my diet is over. I'm eating what I want to eat, just in smaller portions.
You can do this!0 -
1. As long as your "non-empty" calories give you sufficient protein and fat, that should be fine.
2. That seems like a lot on a 1000 calorie deficit, progressively not so harsh as you crank down your deficit. Really, only you will be able to know whether you can accomplish those goals with sufficient recovery time and without its causing you to eat too much into your deficit.
3. Standing alone, you probably have the fat stores to manage those deficits, pending how well #2 works out.
4. I don't know that three days of HIIT and three days of lifting is sustainable forever. It seems like you've already put more thought into it than anyone else here will, though. It's really just a question of whether you're biting off more than you can chew, which no one here can really answer.
I'm probably planning on more cardio than I can actually manage long term, so I can empathize with your plan, but I'll probably end up cutting back some on cardio.0 -
IMO, the act of including daily treat calories is what's helping me the most with weight loss and I really think that it's going to allow me to maintain this time around.Is it healthy to eat 100-400 “empty” calories on a 2200-2500 calorie diet at 1000 cal deficit? This I think has been crucial to my ability to change around my mindset on eating and health.
I'm not depriving myself. I'm not avoiding things now with the plan to eat them after my diet is over. I'm eating what I want to eat, just in smaller portions.
You can do this!
This.0 -
DeguelloTex wrote: »2. That seems like a lot on a 1000 calorie deficit, progressively not so harsh as you crank down your deficit. Really, only you will be able to know whether you can accomplish those goals with sufficient recovery time and without its causing you to eat too much into your deficit.
....
4. I don't know that three days of HIIT and three days of lifting is sustainable forever. It seems like you've already put more thought into it than anyone else here will, though. It's really just a question of whether you're biting off more than you can chew, which no one here can really answer.
^This. If you can handle it, all power to you. As the weight got heavier, I struggled with just lifting 3x/week on a 500 calorie deficit. Maybe ease into the HIIT.
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Questions:- Is it healthy to eat 100-400 “empty” calories on a 2200-2500 calorie diet at 1000 cal deficit? This I think has been crucial to my ability to change around my mindset on eating and health.
- I am doing very intense HIIT cardio T,TH,SA and lifting M,W,F and mostly resting Su. Does that seem reasonable?
- Do my deficit goals seem reasonable?
- What do you think of my plan, any thoughts on how to improve it and/or make it more likely I can sustain it for a lifetime?
Since in the past you have overdone it with aggressive calorie restriction, I am a bit concerned that you are now planning to overdo it with aggressive exercise. But if you enjoy this exercise routine and it fits well into your life, go for it! Only you will be able to determine if it is sustainable.
How old are your kids? What kind of family exercise are you doing now?0 -
The daily treats are making all of the difference for me, I do not feel like I just want to finish so I can eat what I really want this time. Thanks for the encouragement!IMO, the act of including daily treat calories is what's helping me the most with weight loss and I really think that it's going to allow me to maintain this time around.
I'm not depriving myself. I'm not avoiding things now with the plan to eat them after my diet is over. I'm eating what I want to eat, just in smaller portions.
You can do this!
Thanks for your detailed feedback. So far I have seemed to have plenty of energy and have not been hungry much at all. I did an informal calculation on IFCalc and it seems to think I can produce 1584 fat calories from stores if I am 22% body fat (I am probably higher than that I think). Good point on the HIIT, I will back that off first if it seems I an having trouble recovering, then add calories if I can not recover with no cardio I will decrease my deficit to 750 and then probably even tone back the lifting if necessary, but I hope it doesn't come to that.DeguelloTex wrote: »1. As long as your "non-empty" calories give you sufficient protein and fat, that should be fine.
2. That seems like a lot on a 1000 calorie deficit, progressively not so harsh as you crank down your deficit. Really, only you will be able to know whether you can accomplish those goals with sufficient recovery time and without its causing you to eat too much into your deficit.
3. Standing alone, you probably have the fat stores to manage those deficits, pending how well #2 works out.
4. I don't know that three days of HIIT and three days of lifting is sustainable forever. It seems like you've already put more thought into it than anyone else here will, though. It's really just a question of whether you're biting off more than you can chew, which no one here can really answer.
I'm probably planning on more cardio than I can actually manage long term, so I can empathize with your plan, but I'll probably end up cutting back some on cardio.
Thanks!This.
Thanks, this is good advice!^This. If you can handle it, all power to you. As the weight got heavier, I struggled with just lifting 3x/week on a 500 calorie deficit. Maybe ease into the HIIT.
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kshama2001 wrote: »
Since in the past you have overdone it with aggressive calorie restriction, I am a bit concerned that you are now planning to overdo it with aggressive exercise. But if you enjoy this exercise routine and it fits well into your life, go for it! Only you will be able to determine if it is sustainable.
How old are your kids? What kind of family exercise are you doing now?
Good point with the overdoing exercise, I will have to watch that. My kids are still young, so our family exercise consists mostly of going on walks and tag and playing sports and that sort of thing. I am planning on introducing them to lifting when they are old enough, but to be honest I haven't done any research at all about what kinds of weight training is appropriate for kids at what ages, so I should probably get on that 0 -
I am at about 240 now, have lost about 10 pounds in about 6 weeks.
I plan to eat at a 1000 calorie deficit until about 235 lbs, 750 calorie deficit until about 225, a 500 calorie deficit until about 210 and about 250 deficit until I hit my goals.
I would like as much as possible of my weight loss to be fat loss.
That deficit is far too aggressive for your size, and you will lose lean body mass. Your Fitbit burn is TDEE. If you eat at a reasonable deficit from that, you will lose weight.
Set your goal to .5 lb. for every 25 lbs. you're overweight: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/change_goals_guided
Enable negative calorie adjustments: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings
Ignore your Fitbit calorie goal and follow MFP's, eating back your adjustments.
You can learn more in the Fitbit Users group: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/1290-fitbit-users0 -
Thanks for the info editorgrrl!editorgrrl wrote: »That deficit is far too aggressive for your size, and you will lose lean body mass. Your Fitbit burn is TDEE. If you eat at a reasonable deficit from that, you will lose weight.
Set your goal to .5 lb. for every 25 lbs. you're overweight: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/change_goals_guided
Enable negative calorie adjustments: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/diary_settings
Ignore your Fitbit calorie goal and follow MFP's, eating back your adjustments.
You can learn more in the Fitbit Users group: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/1290-fitbit-users0
This discussion has been closed.
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