Of refeeds and diet breaks
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Because it's come up as a way to estimate TDEE on refeed days/weeks - I'll comment on the activity trackers - specifically the HR-based calorie burns.
There is actually no direct correlation between HR and calorie burn - under best conditions there is a loose affiliation that can be a good estimate for steady-state (same HR for 2-4 min) aerobic exercise.
That's it.
Straight line function from a little above where exercise starts, to a little below where anaerobic starts. The ends of the range have less accuracy for calculations.
Anything with HR bouncing around - lifting, intervals - will be inflated.
Anything in the anaerobic zone - sprinting (which usually becomes intervals), lifting (during the lifts) - will be inflated.
Anything below the exercise zone - daily life - will be inflated.
And anything along the edges, very low key aerobic or very intense almost anaerobic - will be inflated.
And any number of reasons your HR can be inflated that has nothing to do with your level of intensity and needing to supply oxygen to muscles - increased blood flow for cooling, thick blood from dehydrated, stressed body from underrecovered, already did a workout, or doing a long one, some meds or food, ect.
So that's why EKG HR accuracy like with chest strap during daily life isn't useful unless you have a heart problem being monitored.
Invalid as a calorie burn method.
And the OHR is just fine in that case - since it's not used for estimating calories anyway.
Steps to estimate distance to calculate calories is more accurate (and is actually more accurate than HR for walking and running too except with inclines/declines not getting credit) for daily life.
Now Fitbit newer models seemed to have changed (and could easily change again) their on-device selection of Weight Training. It goes by neither steps nor HR, but rather more accurate database entry for calories.
Garmin may have done the same, no one to test with yet like @GottaBurnEmAll did with Fitbit.
I'd love to have someone test the Vivosmart 3rd release.
So with the above, you can get an idea of the accuracy of them based on what you do.
If you have tons of daily steps and exercise is lifting 3-4 x weekly for 40 min - your stride length better be right as that is biggest part of your calorie burn.
The slight inflation during the invalid times is minor in comparison.
If you are sedentary (daily life, not just desk job which is different), and your exercise is lots of time with interval/lifting type stuff - HR-based is going to inflate your calories probably bad enough.
The activity trackers are also using better HR-based calculations.
The HRM only devices had great variance - cheaper Polars used BMI (height/weight) as indicator of fitness level for your age/gender, and estimated a VO2max and HRmax on that, to build that straight line function I mentioned.
You can imagine there are many high BMI people that are very fit with high VO2max - which means inflated calorie burn. Vice versa too, good range BMI people very unfit - getting underreported calorie burn.
Garmin at least includes a function of frequency/duration of workouts to aid in coming up with VO2max.
And estimates the breathing rate to better that estimate, and discern when HR is NOT high because of exercise but for other reasons, and therefore not a high calorie burn. And resting HR.
Fitbit and Garmin both use that method for activity trackers, they get your resting HR of course, they know your workout frequency/duration, they try to estimate where your exercise level starts to only use HR-based calorie burn then.
Both of them have the issue though of estimating HRmax to decide the upper end of that straight-line function.
HRmax estimates based on still traditional 220-age is a huge bell curve - more chance of being more than 10 bpm outside of estimate than inside.
As you can imagine doing 150 HR for a workout and it thinks your HRmax is only 160, it will think very high calorie burn. But if real HRmax is 190, totally difference story.
Now the VO2max comes into play too.
Anyway - great job for those that have looked at accurate eating data and non-water weight lost data to discern a best estimate TDEE. And compared to activity tracker.
Takes some good tracking too, and time.
Just wanted to throw out there for consideration why some may do a better job than others between people, and why their routines can easily make that difference.12 -
@heybales, thanks for the awesome post and detailed explanation.
I think mine's accurate because most of my burn is from steady state cardio. My Garmin does not attribute any burns for weight lifting and hardly anything for steps outside of purposeful exercise.
It also adjusts my burn downward for cardio (which I always assumed it was from my HR and vo2 max number). E.g. I did a 14 mile run today (very hilly, very technical trail) and the activity recorded just over a 1k burn, similar to the standard 0.63 x distance x weight, but I was attributed only 941 for it. So what you're saying is true in my case anyway.
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@haybales you may mean the Vivoactive 3 for the native lifting app? Though it may be on the Vivosmart too, I didn't look at that device.
There's now cardio (which is primarily what I use as I don't really steady state unless walking), yoga, rowing, swimming, cycling and some kind of random ones like paddleboarding that are all native (as in no need to download an additional app). I think they use tweaked algorithms for the burns. On my previous device that I used with a chest strap (first gen Vivoactive with downloaded app for cardio) my burns were pretty accurate, I always ate back those calories and the burns on the new device align with what those were.
The general activity outside of exercise though may be a bit inflated for me but as we always say, track results and adjust as necessary.1 -
Apparently I suck at maintenance, because I'm now 300g below start of diet break weight (aka 800g off ultimate goal). I guess I will up cals by 100 per day? Thoughts @anubis609 and @heybales? Carbs have been mostly above 150g all week, so really doubting it's water weight (and also doubt I could have accumulated any cortisol-related water weight between last diet break and this one, losses have been way too stellar). I would need to go back and dig out numbers for CI, but even pre-diet break I thought I was dropping faster than I should have, just hard to work out sometimes with water weight fluctuations, starting a new strength programme, yada, yada...1
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We're traveling back home post holidays. My husband and I are getting ready to head to the gym so we can maintain that we've been "active" during this break. Tomorrow will be another travel day and then I'll be able to weigh in on Monday. I had originally planned to continue the diet break another week, then deficit for two weeks, then another diet break over Christmas. I'm debating returning to the deficit next week. That would be a one week diet break, three week deficit, then two week break. I know it won't make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things. I think I'm just sorta feeling that post-holiday gotta-work-the-turkey-off surge. Too many decisions.0
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eponine1984 wrote: »We're traveling back home post holidays. My husband and I are getting ready to head to the gym so we can maintain that we've been "active" during this break. Tomorrow will be another travel day and then I'll be able to weigh in on Monday. I had originally planned to continue the diet break another week, then deficit for two weeks, then another diet break over Christmas. I'm debating returning to the deficit next week. That would be a one week diet break, three week deficit, then two week break. I know it won't make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things. I think I'm just sorta feeling that post-holiday gotta-work-the-turkey-off surge. Too many decisions.
If it helps the decision, one week diet break is not enough to do what you want in terms of restoring hormone levels, needs to be 10-14 days, and if you've been at a deficit for a while, 14 is preferable to 10.3 -
Enjoy the extra Cals!
It is also hard to get your activity level fully dialed in when you're comparing burns while hiking with elevation to burns you regularly get at work.
I am sure that my Fitbit was partially more accurate (by about 3%) when I first got it because pretty much all my activity was steady state and within the sweet spot that heybales described.
Unless I load a backpack now the same would not apply...2 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »eponine1984 wrote: »We're traveling back home post holidays. My husband and I are getting ready to head to the gym so we can maintain that we've been "active" during this break. Tomorrow will be another travel day and then I'll be able to weigh in on Monday. I had originally planned to continue the diet break another week, then deficit for two weeks, then another diet break over Christmas. I'm debating returning to the deficit next week. That would be a one week diet break, three week deficit, then two week break. I know it won't make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things. I think I'm just sorta feeling that post-holiday gotta-work-the-turkey-off surge. Too many decisions.
If it helps the decision, one week diet break is not enough to do what you want in terms of restoring hormone levels, needs to be 10-14 days, and if you've been at a deficit for a while, 14 is preferable to 10.
I knew there was a reason I originally planned on two weeks. I'm just panicking because part of my brain is screaming "this is not how you lose weight!" And that's true, I'm not trying to lose right now - I'm trying to reset hormones.6 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »If it helps the decision, one week diet break is not enough to do what you want in terms of restoring hormone levels, needs to be 10-14 days, and if you've been at a deficit for a while, 14 is preferable to 10.
I am planning a break for January. Any advantage to an even longer break - say 4 weeks or so?
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Oh hai! I have cell reception!! Wait, I can't post a pic from mobile? Ok, you'll have wait a couple more hours...
Back to it!1 -
I can! Are you on an iPhone? If not then maybe you can’t but I definitely can.
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eponine1984 wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »eponine1984 wrote: »We're traveling back home post holidays. My husband and I are getting ready to head to the gym so we can maintain that we've been "active" during this break. Tomorrow will be another travel day and then I'll be able to weigh in on Monday. I had originally planned to continue the diet break another week, then deficit for two weeks, then another diet break over Christmas. I'm debating returning to the deficit next week. That would be a one week diet break, three week deficit, then two week break. I know it won't make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things. I think I'm just sorta feeling that post-holiday gotta-work-the-turkey-off surge. Too many decisions.
If it helps the decision, one week diet break is not enough to do what you want in terms of restoring hormone levels, needs to be 10-14 days, and if you've been at a deficit for a while, 14 is preferable to 10.
I knew there was a reason I originally planned on two weeks. I'm just panicking because part of my brain is screaming "this is not how you lose weight!" And that's true, I'm not trying to lose right now - I'm trying to reset hormones.
This is definitely a difficult hill to get over. Don't let the panicking win! I'm back to deficit Monday, and I hope my next diet break is less nervewracking. Hang in there!3 -
Thanks guys for the responses.
I asked because I'm usually very low in sat fats most days (around 15-20g or so) and wondered whether it caused hormonal issues.
I've had and continue to have hair loss issues (because of hereditary reasons and made worse when I stopped BC). I've tried the supplements (biotin, kelp, Omega 3 and so on) but they didn't really help. TBH though, I never stuck to them for long anyway.
@anubis609, thanks for the links. I'll have a read through the articles.
@psuLemon, lol, I had to google to see what SFA meant and found the first result being Sweet Furry Animals!!! I finally scrolled down the results to saturated fatty acids.
ETA: I read through my last post and clearly did not say what I wanted to say! My sat fat is usually low and fat meets RDI%.
@maybyn I am really slow on the ball here and catching up on my reading.
For the hair loss, my issues are due to hypothyroidism. I use rogaine foam (max strength) every morning and at night, I use liquid biotin. It does not make my fine, thin hair greasy. Massage both into scalp.
In the shower I use Christophe Robin shampoo salt scrub. It’s amazing and whether it’s a placebo effect or not, I feel like getting getting my scalp clean makes a difference. There are several conditioning treatments I use because my other battle is dry hair. Message me and I can send you brands/types. At the gym right now and can’t remember specifics1 -
Home, 21.5km, just over 5 hours, ran the last 700m just because (I haven't run in months really, other than a few times doing weeks 1 or 2 of C25K), and totally could have run further.
Ended up with a last minute re-route, because the road I was going to drive up to where I'd planned to start from was closed, so I went a different way, which added several km total (about 6 I think), and an unintended uphill, but just as well because I did the rest way quicker than I'd anticipated. That road was not anywhere near as steep as the track description led me to believe. Photos pending once I've showered and eaten. Can't decide between pizza or gnocchi with blue cheese and mushroom sauce. Pizza is logged, and cals work perfectly for that, need to crunch numbers on the gnocchi if I'm going to have that.6 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »Home, 21.5km, just over 5 hours, ran the last 700m just because (I haven't run in months really, other than a few times doing weeks 1 or 2 of C25K), and totally could have run further.
Ended up with a last minute re-route, because the road I was going to drive up to where I'd planned to start from was closed, so I went a different way, which added several km total (about 6 I think), and an unintended uphill, but just as well because I did the rest way quicker than I'd anticipated. That road was not anywhere near as steep as the track description led me to believe. Photos pending once I've showered and eaten. Can't decide between pizza or gnocchi with blue cheese and mushroom sauce. Pizza is logged, and cals work perfectly for that, need to crunch numbers on the gnocchi if I'm going to have that.
5 hours of hiking @ maintenance = large pizza with gnocchi for topping!!!! I mean, come on. How else are you going to hit 4 or 5K calories unless you break out the ice-cream
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Nony_Mouse wrote: »Home, 21.5km, just over 5 hours, ran the last 700m just because (I haven't run in months really, other than a few times doing weeks 1 or 2 of C25K), and totally could have run further.
Ended up with a last minute re-route, because the road I was going to drive up to where I'd planned to start from was closed, so I went a different way, which added several km total (about 6 I think), and an unintended uphill, but just as well because I did the rest way quicker than I'd anticipated. That road was not anywhere near as steep as the track description led me to believe. Photos pending once I've showered and eaten. Can't decide between pizza or gnocchi with blue cheese and mushroom sauce. Pizza is logged, and cals work perfectly for that, need to crunch numbers on the gnocchi if I'm going to have that.
5 hours of hiking @ maintenance = large pizza with gnocchi for topping!!!! I mean, come on. How else are you going to hit 4 or 5K calories unless you break out the ice-cream
Somehow TDEE is only looking to be around 3000 cals. I'm a little perplexed by that, but that's what Fitbit says...maybe this is the problem, Fitbit is severely underestimating my hikes.
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Went with gnocchi, it's getting the better of me at the moment. Really simple sauce - spanish onion and baby portabella mushrooms sautéd in butter, Greek yoghurt, absurd amount of blue cheese, fresh black pepper. At this point, if I don't move for the rest of the evening (which is possible!), I will be 200 cals over Fitbit TDEE.
This is where I was when I checked in earlier on the road:
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Okay, photo time
A wide variety of scenery today, including farmland
This little bridge was screaming out to have yoga done on it, but if you do yoga on a bridge and no one takes a photo, did you really do it? Also safety, blah, blah (I totally would have gotten up there if someone had been with me, and yes, I will be dragging a friend up that hill sometime so I can do just that)
It's important to know the names of the roads in a forest
Random abandoned thing (and foxgloves)
The island, of course
And top of the South Island in the distance looking all misty and ethereal
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Also, I just had a lightbulb moment looking at my deficit and weight loss over the past seven weeks - the two weeks that I had bigger than expected losses were post TOM, so maybe increased BMR during second week of luteal phase explains it. Or some of it.
But anyway, according to my calculations, I've had a ~17000 cal deficit for that seven week period, which should be a 4.85 lb loss according to the 3500 'rule'. I've lost 6.4.
I don't really care if I'm losing slightly faster when I'm at a deficit, but diet break is meant to be at maintenance, so...3 -
I am beginning to be envious of women with a cycle now. I am cycle-less. Hormone-less almost. No menses for four years this year. I am only 43...funny I wished it away when I was younger, but now I kinda miss the womanly thing it is...my resting HR only goes up post heavy lifting or very stressful incidents. I used to get hotter at that time of the month and I guess the HR would go up then too...my resting HR is lower now and my temperature runs almost a degree cooler than it used to (which is ironic cos hot flushes, which are minimal now)....am looking into supplementing with DHEA. I do use black cohosh and tribulus at the moment and they seem to be minimising the hot flushes, etc...wow, wimmins shizz. Ha!
On activity trackers: I used to use a fitbit and it was accurate, used to eat back all the cals and weight was stable for 6 months. TDEE on active days was 3000 training for sprint tri back in 2013. I was in the same weight range as I am now...
Just checking in with four more days until caloric surplus. Maintenance has been relaxing. I feel calm, healthy, measurement has gone down under bust, so back fat on the wane, really comfortable in my own skin. With a view to heading towards goal next year still. I am glad I am doing this as it really is teaching my mind the reverse of old, ingrained and dangerous habits. I am living and breathing the "wow I have to eat quite some amount of calories to actually store fat" thing. Weight bobbing up and down 2 lbs and looking at the graph for the last 180 days, it is trending downwards slightly even. Bumping up to 2740 cals Thursday. Will check in with weight trends and weigh in pre surplus then.
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nexangelus wrote: »I am beginning to be envious of women with a cycle now. I am cycle-less. Hormone-less almost. No menses for four years this year. I am only 43...funny I wished it away when I was younger, but now I kinda miss the womanly thing it is...my resting HR only goes up post heavy lifting or very stressful incidents. I used to get hotter at that time of the month and I guess the HR would go up then too...my resting HR is lower now and my temperature runs almost a degree cooler than it used to (which is ironic cos hot flushes, which are minimal now)....am looking into supplementing with DHEA. I do use black cohosh and tribulus at the moment and they seem to be minimising the hot flushes, etc...wow, wimmins shizz. Ha!
7 years for me... And I'm only 35. I often joke that'd I'd like to return my body and exchange it for a new one.. You can imagine my frustration at Dr's (more than one) who don't think there's anything wrong with me.1 -
Nony_Mouse wrote: »Okay, photo time
A wide variety of scenery today, including farmland
This little bridge was screaming out to have yoga done on it, but if you do yoga on a bridge and no one takes a photo, did you really do it? Also safety, blah, blah (I totally would have gotten up there if someone had been with me, and yes, I will be dragging a friend up that hill sometime so I can do just that)
It's important to know the names of the roads in a forest
Random abandoned thing (and foxgloves)
The island, of course
And top of the South Island in the distance looking all misty and ethereal
I do believe random thing is a plough.0 -
VintageFeline wrote: »
I do believe random thing is a plough.
Here it would be called a disc. (US farmer's daughter) 2 -
Random thing is a disc plough, yes. Still random!3
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Oh, post-hike update - legs don't hate me, actually feel pretty good. Weight essentially the same (up 100g), which is a little unusual after a big walk and 3100 cals of food (355g of carbs), I'd normally expect some fluid retention from the hike at least, but not unheard of I guess. Only managed to achieve 81 cals over Fitbit TDEE.5
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Nony_Mouse wrote: »Oh, post-hike update - legs don't hate me, actually feel pretty good. Weight essentially the same (up 100g), which is a little unusual after a big walk and 3100 cals of food (355g of carbs), I'd normally expect some fluid retention from the hike at least, but not unheard of I guess. Only managed to achieve 81 cals over Fitbit TDEE.
I've noticed that I seem to have a delayed reaction to eating refeeds/eating more. My weight goes up more on the second day after my weekend refeeds than the first.
I have the same thing happen in response to lifting and the same thing in response to higher carb intake.0 -
GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »Oh, post-hike update - legs don't hate me, actually feel pretty good. Weight essentially the same (up 100g), which is a little unusual after a big walk and 3100 cals of food (355g of carbs), I'd normally expect some fluid retention from the hike at least, but not unheard of I guess. Only managed to achieve 81 cals over Fitbit TDEE.
I've noticed that I seem to have a delayed reaction to eating refeeds/eating more. My weight goes up more on the second day after my weekend refeeds than the first.
I have the same thing happen in response to lifting and the same thing in response to higher carb intake.
Huh, I wrote a reply to this. Obviously forgot to hit post!
Anyhoo, I go up a bit after day one of refeed, then a bit more after day two (ie Monday morning will usually be my highest weight for the week, unless there's other fluid retention things happening other days), and I'm dropping again by Tuesday. Exercise water weight I think is much the same, ie next day, though if I have DDOMS (delayed delayed onset muscle soreness) it can be a day later.
I guess we'll see what happens tomorrow!1 -
GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »Oh, post-hike update - legs don't hate me, actually feel pretty good. Weight essentially the same (up 100g), which is a little unusual after a big walk and 3100 cals of food (355g of carbs), I'd normally expect some fluid retention from the hike at least, but not unheard of I guess. Only managed to achieve 81 cals over Fitbit TDEE.
I've noticed that I seem to have a delayed reaction to eating refeeds/eating more. My weight goes up more on the second day after my weekend refeeds than the first.
I have the same thing happen in response to lifting and the same thing in response to higher carb intake.
This is mostly my pattern too. Ish. As much of a pattern as I have outside of my monthly whoosh (when it deigns to make an appearance).0 -
And I'm eating out tomorrow plus ice skating which I haven't done in about 15 years. The ice skating that is. I eat out/take out a lot. I'm looking forward to seeing what being fit does for me and how sore my legs are on Tuesday!0
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So I'm home now after lots of travel and some sodium-filled fast food. Even though I always weigh myself in the morning, naked after using he bathroom, I almost immediately jumped on the scale. In the evening. Fully clothed. Amazingly only "up" 4 lbs from my last proper scale reading. I'll weigh in properly tomorrow morning to see where I'm at after a week of refeeding. TOM is due at the end of this week so it'll be interesting to see how that impacts things (yay for another week of refeeding, especially when I want to eat all the things!) or I'm pregnant (my husband and I are not TRYING-trying but more like "if it happens, great!" And there were a few nights with a bit of wine and ya know (sorry TMI)).
Other ramblings that you didn't ask for - my mood feels amazing after maintenance for a week. Even with all the travel and people and other triggers for my little anxiety riddled introverted self, I feel great. I also feel smaller, though I haven't taken any measurements to be sure, but I feel like my clothing is fitting me better.6
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