Love the idea of my new diet being "eat more"

kcmsmith0405

I haven't been checking in for a while - because I was mostly at TDEE fro about 9 months. Now I am finally able to cut. I have a question though - how do you know when its time to take a break from the cut and move back up to TDEE for a bit? I am about 45 lbs overweight and losing about 0.5 lb a week or a little over that. It feels relatively easy and I find myself just wanting to stay here and coast down, losing the pounds does tend to get a bit addicting. I'm at about week 6 of my cut. I was thinking maybe get to week 12 and then go up for 2 weeks?

Kelly

heybales

Some scientific research studies bearing on the matter.

First 2-3 pages, scan for the synopsis and application. After that just repeated info and a bunch of other off-topic stuff.
For your level of deficit which isn't near extreme, can probably go longer, but the 2 days in a row would still be minimum, for a refeed.
May not need a diet break if you keep that up combined with minor deficit.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1


Does that mean the business has gotten easier, more of a keep it rolling situation?

kcmsmith0405

Actually we are now moving to a new and bigger established location - probably why its so easy to stay at a cut - I am too busy to eat LOL. But I am quitting my full time job at the end of the month so it will be smoother then when I have more time.

Thanks you for the link - I will read it now!

kcmsmith0405

Just can't get used to using Facebook for EM2WL I feel like I miss so much they way they do their posts (well that and I probably only check once a week or so) and I feel like I don't know anyone there so I will keep checking in here.

Update on myself. Finally getting into a routine since I quit my job to run my Karate School. Things are going well, I am happy. Doing Yoga 3 days a week, training in Karate 3 days a week and teaching 5 nights a week.

I doubled my step per day just quitting my job. And I move a lot more. My calf is finally mostly healed from the tear so I am back to full leg movement. I now have some tendinitis in my right elbow so that is slowing some things down, but not by much.

I am finally cutting again, but I had some issues with 30% protein messing with my digestion, so I am doing 20-25% protein, 50% Carbs and 25-30% fat. Making meals is hard because I am at my school from 9:30 am -9:30 pm 3 days a week and 11 to 9 pm the other 2 days. I have been making stuff I can bring to work, but I usually run out mid week. Greek yogurt has been a good go-to, I discovered that I have celiac so i don't eat wheat either, this is improving my health and my C-Reactive protein numbers. Plus I stay away from donuts and bagels LOL.

I am using the fitbit method because some times my days vary in activity. I am not sure how to add in my teaching hours, I am walking around but also doing a lot of show and tell with karate. I usually sweat but don't get too out of breath. Because it just gets counted as steps I think I may be underestimating my TDEE (my fitbit doesn't do heart rate). So how do I figure out what the burn is for teaching Karate? I'm doing a 15% cut but not losing much and I am starving at night, so chances are I am underestimating. Whats the level in between walking and training in martial arts? Maybe I will make up a new exercise that is half of what fitbit says martial arts is.

heybales

Sounds like you need to stop cracking boards with elbow!

Glad to hear the calf is coming along, that's such a tough one, especially with increased steps.

So glad the school is enough income, or ability to work around it for now, to quit other job.

Probably true on underestimated on Fitbit for classes, but really by HR would likely be inflated.

Considering any workout you manually enter will replace the chunk of time Fitbit came up with for calorie burn - that is a tough one.

Can you find a block of time that was solid workout for 15 min.
Go log an Activity record which will show what Fitbit estimated for calorie burn with the movement.
Now log during same time span the database workout and let Fitbit decide calorie burn.

Take half the difference of those burn amounts for when it's teaching time.

Create your own Fitbit workout with that level of calorie burn, replace all teaching time with it.
For your own workouts, log as normal.

I think that would give a better approximation.

jvezzsb01

Nice to see you back. I am not on Facebook so this is all I have to look at for inspiration and advice. I am barely getting back into trying to eat and move after having twins last August. I hope that you check in frequently.

kcmsmith0405

@jvezzsb01 I will do my best

Update today:
I eat each day using my activity calories added to my base level of calories (15% cut from inactive for about 1 lb per week). I've also enabled negative calorie adjustments so I eat less on days I am not active. Up until yesterday I had never had a day with negative caloric burn. Yesterday was a busy day for me - I had training in the morning for 90 mins, then I went shopping, unloaded everything, came to work did a couple hours of paperwork then taught karate for 2.5 hours straight and did another 45 minute class for myself right after that. For some reason, when I put in my exercise, MFP was subtracting the exercise calories back out with the negative calorie adjustment. So at the end of the day MFP said I could eat 2100 ish calories (on a day where I did 10000+ steps and 2+ hours of training). I figured it must know something about exercising and FitBit and I ate less than 2100 cals as it said.

Out of curiosity, I checked back today and it somehow fixed itself and turns out I ate 800 under my goal of 15% cut. So since I have my starting calories in as a 500 per day cut - yesterday was a 1300 calorie deficit day. If that happens again I am turning off the negative calorie adjustment LOL.

Thankfully I was exhausted and just fell into bed without missing the extra calories. I am however extra weak and tired today so missing 800 calories was not a good thing.

I need to work on getting my protein back up higher, I can tell the difference.

Also a scale negative - the little rubber feet on my bathroom scale fell off a while ago and this week I glued them back on, stepped on the scale and gained 4 lbs... that was depressing LOL. So I have 4 lbs farther to go than I originally planned, but I'm still on track so not worrying about it

kcmsmith0405

@heybales thats a good idea if I can remember to do it LOL. I think I will go ahead and log a teaching session as about half the calories as a regular training session, which is about what it averages out to be in terms of activity. I was worried about over-inflating my calories but since it replaces the fitbit step for that amount of time it actually should work out well.

I think I have been under-eating a little bit which ends in me having binge days where I can't stop eating. So I am going to try and stabilize it with more accurate activity tracking (and upping my protein again since it has been sliding steadily down because I am having some protein digestive issues).

heybales

So it wasn't the Neg Cal adjustment that caused the issue.

Merely sync timing.

When you log a workout in MFP, it assumes it's already contained in the total calories burned it receives from Fitbit - which of course it should be, if not MFP is sending it to Fitbit anyway to replace that chunk of time.

But a lag time going out - or coming back in, or only 1 good syncing (big known Fitbit syncing issue right now) - means the math will be off.

You'd have to click on the "i" for more info to see time of last sync - if it is prior to the manual workout add - it's going to be off.

That being said - you can have negative calories on a big workout day, if you were less active in daily stuff because the workouts are replacing all that time.

But the way the eating math works - you are still getting the workout calories put back.

You may have to resort to looking at the Fitbit (or account), and see what total burn is so far - and just mentally removing 500 as the current eating goal - which gets more accurate later on.

kcmsmith0405

That's a good plan, I noticed my fitbit calorie goal was much higher.

kcmsmith0405

Update, not losing, not gaining. Struggling with digestive issues and fatigue. Hurting all over today probably because I accidentally ate some wheat yesterday (stupid soy sauce). Even off the wheat I still have have bad bloating gas and other issues on and off - lately more on than off. I tried going off dairy, Celiac can cause lactose intolerance - that didn't seem to do much either. There seems to be o pattern.

I have been struggling to get enough protein, so I have decided this week I am not worrying about cutting (since I haven't been able to maintain a cut anyway with all the stomach issues and cravings) and going to spend some time figuring out what is bothering my intestines so much. I went off all whey protein (that helped for a while), I have added a digestive supplement to see if that helps.

I am exhausted all the time - no energy to work out, though I force myself and work out anyway. I am not happy with that! I am hoping it has to do with the digestive issues - I know that good health starts in your gut - sop maybe once I get this figured out I will start having more energy.