Food, Exercise, or other Reports
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I awlays thought I'd like to sew but always stop short of buying a machine. lol.1
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I'm a horrible procrastinator; its something I've fought all my life that I can remember. I'll put things off for months and sometimes years, and yet, once I get started, I'll stick with it until its done - you know, like that law in physics - a body in motion stays in motion; a body at rest stays at rest until acted upon by an outside force. Sometimes it takes a while to get over my inertia and get me rolling
It's not that I don't like to sew; I just find other things I like doing better! I"m also horrible for buying supplies for a project and then never getting it done. It would help if I'd actually like watching TV or movies; way back when I had TV, I could sit and sew or cross stitch or something while watching tv; nowadays, TV irritates me and there are hardly any movies I'm interested in watching. I spend my time elsewhere, though lately, its been walking outside, because by the time I get done with work, get my 1 1/2 walk in, get dinner done and the kitchen cleaned up I'm a) tired and b) its almost bedtime, so I tend to read or mess around here and then go to bed.
Speaking of walks: I got 6 miles in today! That's the most at one time I've done yet and I did it in 1 hour 47 minutes. My walking speed seems to be 3.3 mph; I can't get any faster than that, it seems.
And between vacuuming the house and cleaning the bathroom, the 40 minutes elliptical and 30 minute cardio, and then pacing my house while talking on the phone, then that nice walk, I've got over 23,000 steps in today, too.
I think I earned my ice cream tonight! lol Though I need the extra calories because I couldn't stay out of the cobbler last night and ended up over goal by about 250 calories......thankfully, the cobbler is now gone and I'll know not to make another, and I sent the bread pudding home with the parents, as its was 309 calories per serving and I know I wouldn't stay out of it. I suppose I could cover those calories from yesterday today, but I doubt it; all that walking has made me hungry!2 -
@bmeadows380
I don't really feel ready for the losing part to be over which is a weird thing to say since most of my weight loss fails were all about going fast as possible.
I try to share what is going on so even if people don't learn from what I do right they can at least learn what not to do.
I wish I had a criteria for my initial entrance into long term maintenance. I wouldn't mind getting to a truly healthy weight and at one point I considered that to be a possible goal but BMIs, BF percentages, and weight charts are really not that important to me. Being a "healthy" weight has insurance perks but that is the only reason I set a course for the top of my weight chart. Well, that, and it made for an even 300 pound loss.
The problem is I never really considered secondary goals. My primary goals were about health and what I consider "chainsaw fat loss". Those are done. Now I am on to things like appearance and I really don't know what I should be trying to do. I hope it won't take too much more losing to shrink my sides and back because they do bother me a little. Beyond that if I worry about the process I assume the goal will eventually present itself.
What makes the most sense is not to worry about a goal weight too much because I will never be able to figure it out anyway in the shape I am in. I need to get somewhere I feel comfortable stopping and then plan to fine tune things down the road with some additional loss as needed.
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I can understand that. I'm not anywhere close to maintenance weight yet - ultimate goal is somewhere decently below 200 lbs, though I doubt I'll ever get to 160 and within "normal" BMI and I'm okay with that (well, most of me is okay with that; and I'm trying to ignore the critical side). So maintenance feels like its so far down the road its unimaginable, but I hope in time to actually get there. Meanwhile, my "practice" run diet break is coming up, and that scares me silly!
Even upping the exercise to get "healthier" is a very vague goal for me because all my numbers were okay to begin with. AT 375 lbs, I did not have high sugar, blood pressure, or cholesterol, so while I'm sure those numbers are improving better than they were, there really isn't a milestone there to achieve. Much lower clothing sizes are always nice, but at the same time, with how the brands are these days being all over the place, I can't truly say I'm in any one particular size over another, either, and with all this skin I have everywhere, I know I'm not in the lowest size I could be. I really can't say my energy levels have changed, either - yeah, I'm doing more exercise than I was before, but that wasn't really because I couldn't do it before, because I had when the notion took me. I can go farther now and longer than I did however, so that is an improvement, but its an improvement that's hard to quantify for me because its so gradual. So coming up with maintenance goals is hard. I'm not into all the technical side of fitness - bench presses, body fat percentage, etc - and besides, with the excess skin its hard to find the proper BF anyway. I'm not trying to get toned or lean or ripped or anything like that. I'm 40 years old; I'm not going to get to the body of a peak performer at this point, even if I wanted to!
I suppose my biggest maintenance goal is just to maintain because I never, never want to get back to being as heavy as I was, but I also know statistically, its a very strong possibility, no matter how much I lose. I do hope that doing it as I have - slow and gradual, that I have truly managed to revamp my lifestyle enough to prevent total regain, but then again, I did regain 30 lbs before.
Meanwhile, I did decide to leave 200 calories yesterday which covered most of the excess cobbler the day before, and since water weight stabilized a little yesterday, I had a new low this morning: 244.6 lbs!1 -
all time best today! 7.39 miles in 2 hours and 13 minutes. Still can't get my speed any faster than 3.33 miles an hour, though lol
I made it to the 2nd creek today outside of town - the further out I've gone so far, but on the way back, I decided to detour up to the elementary school and walked around the block at the top of the hill which extended the walk even further. I figured it would be 6 1/2 miles, so I was surprised to see the actual distance by the time I got home.
No wonder my knees are a little sore!2 -
Good job!...I think about you zipping around!0
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@bmeadows380 At your age I had great health numbers too (other than weight). Instead of thinking of it as an improvement you might think of it as an investment in prevention. Whether you are in the exercise to eat or the eat to exercise camp the end result is more food and it is kind of nice to relax a little with the calorie budget. I still feel ill-at-ease if I go too long without catching up my logging but now it is mostly about forgetting something not going over.
Maintenance seemed like forever away then suddenly it was a few miles away calling me for directions. I saw the scenarios in my spreadsheet so I was studying habit change and other things to shore up my knowledge but no one can really tell me where to stop initially.
7.39 miles! NICE JOB!! You are killing it! I am in awe of you.
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*sigh* This morning I got on the elliptical for 30 minutes only and then I got back in bed. The only walking I did today was the dog and to deliver some food to the neighbors. Walking to the neighbors was about half a mile and the dog walks totaled about 2.5 miles. Somehow I am still sitting at 19k steps for the day. I did work on rearranging the garage and some other small projects but I didn't think I was moving that much.
Screw it. I will rest when I am dead. I got stuff to do this week. It will be in the mid 80's in just a few days and by next week it will be knocking on 90. I am going to take off some time tomorrow and Tues to see what I can get done.
Maybe the heat will not bother me as much as it always has but I am not counting on that.1 -
@Novusdies you aren't playing the piano for an hour during the day, are you? lol I have to remember to take my fitness tracker off when I sit down at the piano, or I'll end up with over 5,000 steps logged in one playing session
might as well get done what you can now while you can; I'm with you - I can't take the heat, especially coupled with humidity. I'm expecting that I"ll follow suit with the way most of my bursts of activity have gone: I usually start up a walking regimen in the spring, but when the heat of summer hits, it gets really hard to keep it going.
I admit I'm exercising to eat mostly: I enjoy those extra 500 or so calories a day! though it does surprise me as I keep seeing suggested in the forums quite often that exercise doesn't really help in terms of weight loss, you can't out eat your diet, etc, etc. I had bought into that until I started exercising, and now I can see that as long as I keep counting, those extra calories can make all the difference!
At the same time, I do have health in mind; I'm completely aware that just because my numbers were good, the likelihood of them staying so the older I got was pretty low, and seeing the heart disease, diabetes, and other issues in my family make that likelihood even less. And I really, really, really don't want to become diabetic if I can help it, or at least put it off as long as I can!
I was a little shocked when I looked at my counter on that one It won't be a regular occurrence, but it was nice to see I could do it without killing myself! And the knees, while still feeling swelled, are better than they've been this week, though I still can't do the hamstring "butt kicks" and get my foot anywhere close to my butt.....the left knee is definitely bending better, but I still can't get it all the way pulled in, indicating there still is some swelling. Definitely need to keep it down to low impact stuff!
But over all, I'm not too bad with all the activity; at least, I haven't pulled anything or tore anything yet. It just takes a bit to get me moving in the mornings, but hey, I hear that's part of being over 40, right?1 -
I am enjoying moving so much and getting things done I am in the eat to exercise camp. If it had been easier for me to move last year though I would have probably been exercising to eat. Especially over the summer months when I was trying to get to an acceptable BMI for surgery and I was stuck eating 1500 calories a day for 3 months. That was a tough period.
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I might have went a little too deep in the squats today; we'll see how my knee feels this evening. The new knee brace, though not feeling really all that different than the other, seems to be making a big difference on the left knee that is giving me trouble. Either that, or the knee is slowly healing up. It's still pulling on me on the front-inside near the bottom of the patella (and I have no idea which tendon that is and I can't find any knee injury list that matches what I'm experiencing). Its nice to be able to mostly bend it now; before it had so much fluid on it, I couldn't do that - quad stretches were not easy! I could walk just fine as it doesn't hurt; it was just swelled. I'm not sure what that was indicating to me; not a tear, obviously since there wasn't any pain, but some kind of inflammation I'd suppose to account for the swelling up; probably a sign of over use.
When I first get up, my knees are sore and swelled, but I have noticed that once I get to moving, they loosen up; may just be a sign I'm getting old lol Course that's proving true of exercise period. My mind doesn't want to do it, groans its tired, procrastinates, but then when I finally get going, I don't mind it much and I do feel better.
I also find it amusing how I sit at my computer freezing with a sweater on and contemplating getting me a blanket even though I have the baseboard heater in here sitting on 70 (its a stinking 40 degrees outside right now......), but once I made myself get up and start my cardio , within about 3 minutes, I wasn't cold anymore, and right now, I'm sitting in the same chair that I was freezing in 40 minutes ago in what amounts to a tank top. Course in about an hour, I'll be freezing again......
Once my deficit starting dipping below 1500 with no activity and sedentary, I was starting to have a lot of trouble sticking with it, which is where the exercise really helps a lot. I think I have a lot of trouble seeing progress when its gradual; its hard for me to evaluate where I was in fitness levels this time last year. Though one way that I can think of is take that 5 1/4 mile walk I did way back at the end of March and see if its easier now - I'm betting it will be, which is a sign that my stamina is improving. But its hard for me to quantify it to last year, because I wasn't walking regularly. I still weed-whacked my yard and push mowed last year, so I can't use that a gauge. I never had trouble doing what I wanted; its just that the things I'm doing now, I never really wanted to then, so its hard to compare. I suppose I can use the fact that I WANT to now as my gauge
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I am feeling pretty run down today which is not good since it is still early and I have a million things to do. My weight was down enough today to finally start confirming that my TDEE has increased with my steps. I may eat maintenance today - at least my old maintenance number - and see if that perks me up. If the new number is right that would still leave me with almost a 200 calorie deficit. I took it a little easier on the exercise this morning too.1
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I'm feeling run down as well today, but my problem is lack of sleep. The best friend called last night and we got to talking, and the next thing I know, its 3 AM......I set my alarm for 7, but those 4 hours wasn't very good sleep, either. I'm taking a 1/2 day to mow my grass before it starts raining; a nap may be in my future too.1
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bmeadows380 wrote: »I'm feeling run down as well today, but my problem is lack of sleep. The best friend called last night and we got to talking, and the next thing I know, its 3 AM......I set my alarm for 7, but those 4 hours wasn't very good sleep, either. I'm taking a 1/2 day to mow my grass before it starts raining; a nap may be in my future too.
Take a nap for me too. I also have to mow today if the rain cooperates. I will do the rider portion today (backyard). The front and sides I like to cut with the push because I can bag it but I prefer to do it closer to the weekend. Not sure why that matters right now with so many people at home and outside (which is weird) but it seems like a good plan on paper. I am hoping the rider is up to full strength now. It sounded much better after I did the basic tune-up and maintenance but until I actually mow I won't really know if it needs more work or not.1 -
The rider ran great. Chalk one up for the guy that hasn't fixed a mower in a million years remembering how to get it done.
I have eaten up to a negative 480 so that should mean I am at least at what MFP thinks my maintenance is. Tomorrow will be demanding, Friday should be lighter, then Saturday I have a charity event plus stuff around the house so that day will murder my energy. I am hoping maintenance today will get me back in the green tomorrow because I was miserable all day today. I got loads done but felt "draggy" doing it. I am ending the day with 25k steps.
@bmeadows380 was obviously stingy and kept all the napping to herself so I am off to bed.1 -
it wasn't me - I didn't get a nap after all. but I did get my grass mowed, then weed eated the yard, then push mowed the neighbor's yard, then went on a 4 1/2 mile + walk.
Wasn't sure how to count all that activity, other than the walk. I finally just counted 10 minutes for riding mowing and 30 minutes for both the push mowing and weed eating, though the time was more than that.
Still, earned me some ice cream and an extra brownie for dessert 1 -
I feel much better today. I went on a 4.5 mile walk this morning and I could have gone longer but I do not need to push it since I have a pretty physical day ahead of me.
My weight was even lower than yesterday so it seems I need to adjust my SS's TDEE again. Looks like my multiplier is up to 2.25. A quick glance at my summary section:
If you look at yesterday's weight compared to MFP it was close enough to call it a match. When today's calories are entered I may be ahead of it a little. Unless my body plans to do a lot more whooshing I won't be catching Apple's numbers. If I did it would mean I was losing way too fast so I am happy to be in the vicinity of MFP.
I probably need to lose the active and very active sections. They were meaningful when I thought I was moderately active and I was comparing but that ship has sailed around the world now. I may just replace them with different multipliers. That is not a concern for today. They aren't doing anything but running weight scenarios so they can stay for another month if need be.
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Update time and here are the 4th week stats since I changed things up:
4/16-4/22 total net calorie intake: 11,658
exercise calorie intake: 3,356
total week calories: 15,014
total step count: 93,923 (an average of 13,417 per day).
daily calorie limit before exercise: 1600
weight loss for the week: 0.3 lbs
4/23 weight: 249.9 lbs
4/23-4/29 total net calorie intake: 10,945
exercise calorie intake: 3,162
total week calories: 14,657
total step count: 96,534 (an average of 13,791 per day)
daily calorie limit before exercise: 1600
weight loss for the week: 3.7 lbs
4/30 weight: 246.2 lbs
4/30-5/6 total net calorie intake: 11,538
exercise calorie intake: 4,095
total week calories: 15,633
total step count: 106930 (an average of 15,276 per day)
daily calorie limit before exercise: 1600
weight loss for the week: +1.5 lbs
4/30 weight: 247.7 lbs
4/30-5/6 total net calorie intake: 11,122
exercise calorie intake: 3801
total week calories: 14,923
total step count: 128,557 (an average of 18,365 per day)
daily calorie limit before exercise: 1600
weight loss for the week: -3.8 lbs
4/30 weight: 243.9 lbs
total weight loss in 4 weeks: 6 lbs
rate: 1.5 lbs/wk
well, my step count definitely increased in that 4 week period, but I seem to have overshot on my rate, slowing down to 1.5 lbs/wk from the 3 lb/wk from before.
If I follow method 3 from this post: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10638211/how-to-find-your-maintenance-calorie-level#latestMethod 3: Estimate from History:
A. Look at your last 4 weeks (or around that) of loss.
B. Average those weeks to get average weekly calories eaten, and average weekly pounds lost.
C. Multiply average weekly pounds lost by 3500 (roughly 3500 calories in a pound) to get average weekly calorie deficit
D. Add average weekly calories eaten to average weekly calorie deficit to get average weekly calories needed to maintain.
E. Divide average weekly calories needed to maintain by 7 (days per week) to get estimated daily calories needed to maintain.
My average weekly loss rate was 1.5 lb/wk or a deficit of 5,250 calories per week and my average weekly calories was 15,057. Added together, I get 20,307 calories per week, or 2,901 calories per day as my maintenance calorie intake.
Though I'm not sure how to make sense of this, because if my maintenance level is 2,901 calories, that means to lose 2 lbs/wk, I should have been eating 1,901 calories per day.
Ah wait - this is the TDEE method, isn't it? So that means that 1,901 INCLUDES exercise calories - ok, that makes more sense. Over that 4 week period, my average daily intake was actually 2,155 per day, meaning I was over by 254 calories per day - which is the 1.5 lb loss rate. Okay, that makes sense!
Okay, so based on the BMR formula
BMR = 447.593+ (9.247*(actual weight/2.2046)+(3.098*(2.54* height))-(4.33* age)),
My BMR with my current weight of 243.9, my height of 68 inches, and my age of 40 years, is 1832, which compared to the 2901 gives me an activity factor of around 1.6, which is roughly the Active range.
Anyway, so if I'm doing it right and using the right mathematical formulas, I was eating 250 calories too much per day for the loss rate I wanted and I need to be averaging 1900 calories a day. In that time period, I was averaging 15,000 steps a day, so I'm going to assume that the 1,900 calorie limit is based upon getting at least that many steps in a day.
I was afraid that raising my limit like I did plus eating back 50% calories from exercise was double dipping because most of those steps were coming from intentional activity, and I think this is showing me that the double dipping was partially happening, though it was mild, thank goodness.
When I go through the MFP guided set up for my current weight and height, it gives me 1,280 calories for sedentary and 1,550 for lightly active, so I suppose I have 2 options: 1) up my calories to 1900 a day and don't eat back any exercise at all, or 2) reduce my daily calories down closer to sedentary and eat back my exercise calories to get to the 1,900 daily need.
I'm not willing to drop all the way down to 1,280 which is the sedentary level MFP gives me, and I think that's probably too low - this would require I up my exercise calories to 75% to compensate, and while that's possible, I'm pretty sure my brain would balk at that low a deficit, and besides, though I am getting most of my steps through purposeful exercise, I do seem to have my daily non-exercise NEAT up to the lightly active range and not sedentary anyway.
What I think I'm going to do is decrease down to 1,400 calories as my daily limit, which is between sedentary and lightly active and leaning closer to lightly active, then adjust the exercise calorie intake to make up the remaining 500 calories - maybe assume that I need 100 calories added in for every 3,000 steps I'm taking? So on days where I average around 15,000 steps, make sure my exercise calories are 500; if those steps increase to 18,000 on a particular day, add another 100 calories or they decrease to 12,000 just get 400 extra calories?
What's a little confusing to me is that my counting 50% exercise has been giving me an average of 500 calories which added to my old deficit of 1600 is where the 200 calories too much is coming into play and so I need to drop 200 calories somewhere which is why I think I'm going back down to the 1400 calorie deficit - which was my deficit 4 weeks ago that I changed because I seemed to be 250 calories too low to get the 3 lb/wk loss rate I was experiencing in March! This all seems to be telling me I need to go back to what I was doing in March, which is 1400 calorie deficit and 50% exercise calories!
*face palm*
Could it be that the 3 lbs/wk loss rate was showing up as being that fast in March because the increased activity was still new for meat that time, and what I'm seeing now 4 weeks later is that my body has adjusted to the exercise and settled into routine now?1 -
@bmeadows380 I would change nothing for 2 more weeks. For even 15k steps you have to be earning 800ish calories per day. Your dates are a little confusing but it looks like this week you have dropped 3.8 pounds which means you are on your way down from a high. Until it settles wherever it will settle this is not a good time to be taking a snapshot.
I have known something is up with my TDEE for 2 months but my weight only kept confirming my old TDEE. For whatever reason 2 days ago I finally whooshed enough to suggest that it is almost 500 calories higher. Luckily I have not been eating based on my old TDEE or I would have been losing too fast.
If you are going to do these type of evaluations you will need to expand your search for data beyond just Thursday. Weight fluctuates too much and it will take even longer to have enough data to see the trend.
MFP gives really good information but it sometimes assumes static situations. What you are doing right now is ramping up activity and that is not going to be a smooth ride on the bathroom scale. Each time one or both of your knees hurt it can be causing water retention.
You are losing at a good rate even if it turns out not to be full rate in 2 more weeks. I have a feeling you are probably losing closing to 2.5 pounds per week than 1.5. You do you though. I am not an expert and I could be wrong. I can't actually see what you are doing.
I have found this to be pretty close to accurate for me:
https://www.verywellfit.com/pedometer-steps-to-calories-converter-38825951 -
I got the 4 week 1 whole monthly cycle comparison from the physiqonomics article and am using the week following TOM as my anchor week, hence the comparison of the week of 4/16 through 4/23 to this week.
The numbers above are actually weekly values, not just Thursday values, so I'm looking at averages over a 28 day period - I have my daily step and calories intake numbers in my spreadsheet, and I'm using Excel to give me totals and averages. I just happen to be running my 4 week periods from Thursday to Thursday instead of Sunday to Sunday.
And I know that a large part of the 3.8 lbs loss this week is water weight - 1.5 lbs of that at the minimum was the weight gain that showed up last week. Gotta love female hormones........
I've got 2 full months worth of daily weight records in happy scale; the moving average for today is 243.5 which is only 0.4 lb under my weight record for today, so it looks likes today's weight, based on that moving average, is fairly close to reality based on 2 full months of data. The moving average on April 16th was 251.6; the moving average today is that 243.5, so if I go by the HappyScale trend moving averages, then I am at the 2 lbs/wk. According to HappyScale's trend, I was losing at 2.9 lbs/wk in March, 2.1 lbs/wk in April, and am near that currently in May.
HappyScale is predicting an overall loss rate at 2.41 lbs/wk, but I don't know how they are getting to that rate. I find it interesting, though, that it's predicting close to what you are thinking is going on with me.
One big reason I want to change up my method is that I really do fear that upping my base calorie deficit is causing me to double dip on some of the exercise calories because my step count is mostly made up of purposeful exercise, and since it its purposeful and that can change based on time factors for me, I thought that instead of going by a TDEE method, I really should cut back to the NEAT method and see how that works, which leads to dropping down to lightly active and adding back more exercise calories. I think I'd rather adjust daily intake with the calories from exercise rather than adjusting the main deficit level. It seems easier for me to just increase the % of my exercise calories I"m eating back if it seems I"m losing too fast, or to adjust back on days where I'm being less active (like today looks like is going to turn out to be....)
And looking at the last 4 week period compared to the 4 week period before that, I just seemed to psychologically have less trouble with the snacky needs at 1400 calories instead of the 1600 calories, even if exercise calories netted the same intake (go figure).
Anyway, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to have 2 more weeks of data; that would put me going into the diet break. I know I need to be as accurate as I can about where my maintenance calorie level is because I know I need to be completely out of deficit eating during that 2 weeks.
I still think, though, that I want to drop my deficit and just add back more exercise calories instead. I can keep myself right now at the average daily total intake of around 2100 calories like I've been doing the last 4 weeks; just instead of having a deficit of 1600 calories and adding back in 50% exercise, what I want to do is drop down to 1400 calories and start adding back in 75% exercise.
Looking at the pedometer link you gave, I should be somewhere near 900 calories burned for 15,000 steps. I've been recording about 500 calories per 15,000 steps, so the 75% would put me much closer to the chart's numbers; in fact, I probably ought to be recording 80% instead of 75% to get me to the 900 number.1
