At Goal & Successfully Maintaining. So Why Am I Doing This All Over Again?

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  • luxia2020
    luxia2020 Posts: 55 Member
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    springlering62 wrote: »
    Truth!!!!!!!

    I roll the other direction. I try to choose the highest calorie version of meals out so I have a buffer.

    I'm glad I'm not crazy for doing the same thing! At least I'm being honest with myself, is how I see it! Having that food scale is an eye opener to what an appropriate amount of food really is! 😱
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,174 Member
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    ythannah wrote: »
    springlering62 wrote: »
    In fact, he seems to have found the absolute most generic, home-cook recipe entries for most the meals he’s logged.

    This was the SO's biggest pitfall when logging also, choosing the most attractive (lowest calorie) entries over the more accurate ones.

    It was a huge disaster for him since he works away for two weeks at a time and eats all his meals in a cafeteria so he was stuck with guesstimating anyway. But he was determined to make those numbers fit his goal, regardless of what he'd actually eaten.

    I feel like this is part of a larger cognitive effect one can fall into when calorie counting, thinking that what is logged is what results in weight gain, loss, maintenance - moreso than what is actually done. The "if I can find a low example to log, all is well" aspect is one of the risks, but so is finding the highest exercise calorie estimate to log.

    I found myself sometimes falling for a less destructive variant of this, feeling like if I forgot to record a workout on my fitness tracker or the like, it didn't count. 😆 Sure, I may not have stats to help me count it accurately, but my body counts everything . . . just like it counts the unadmitted calories from any lowball food estimates. 🙄
  • wunderkindking
    wunderkindking Posts: 1,615 Member
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    I... mean sort of? I am always striving to do better at the things I love doing that are also active. Those aren't things that have a 'as hard as it will ever be' though - they're basically sports so my performance can ALWAYS improve in both technical/skill ways that are benefited by fitness

    Difficulty/challenge for the sake of it?

    Absolutely no, and also no thank you. I run and lift but I am absolutely not in that regard on an ever increasing speed/duration/weight journey. It's not fun for me and I get enough challenge in life being life.
  • rheddmobile
    rheddmobile Posts: 6,840 Member
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    springlering62 wrote: »
    BL has joined us on the Dark Side. This morning he got up and said,”You know? I’m rearranging my class schedule. The ones I’ve been taking aren’t hard enough anymore.”

    😎👍🏻👏🏻

    Are you still challenged?

    I am very motivated by competition and have to set challenges for myself or I start slacking off. However, I can’t keep trying to up my game on the same goal, day in day out, I have to switch it up. So for example I might work on improving my 5k speed for several months, then work on improving my mileage, then enter a trail race series for the first time, then try out an ultra marathon for the first time. Or maybe I am just not feeling it with the running so I have a goal of improving my max deadlift. Or maybe I am sick of both lifting and running so I just keep doing the minimum to not go backwards, and try learning a new type of dance for a while. Recently I have been doing belly dance on my recovery days.

    I absolutely agree about the joy of movement being a huge motivator. But there are also those days when it just doesn’t feel joyful, and that’s okay too, exercise works even on days when you aren’t “feeling it.”
  • BMcC9
    BMcC9 Posts: 4,374 Member
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    wunderkindking wrote: »
    I think my thing is mostly that I still have some mental hang-ups around exercise.

    I exercise, but for me it's all... play?

    I paddleboard, swim, hike, trail run, horseback ride, hike (long and hard ones), play dog sports and recently have taken to climbing stuff. Those are ALL exercise of various sorts some of them pretty intensely athletic. They're hobbies and games that happen to involve movement and I do for love of the game/activity in and of itself. I GET that.

    But my exercise outside that is limited to a 5K jog in which idgaf about my speed and just kind of do by rote and routine, and about 20 minutes of lifting 3 or 4 miles a week wherein I DO increase my weights for the sake of continued resistance but not a whole lot and is also just rote routine.

    Work out as joy in and of itself is pretty outside my mindset, *personally*. If it's not something a 12 year old would do for entertainment and/or is any activity taught as a class/I would have found in a gym class I just kind of 'eh' out of it and do the bare minimum because I'm a grown up and should -- or because it'll help me continue to do well and have fun doing my fun stuff.

    Nothing wrong with loving the things I don't - I get that and love it - but nothing wrong with play being your exercise or just kind of 'ugh, this again'ing it either.

    THIS     Active living in whatever way you love to live! I too do better in "play mode" (and not just in the activity arena either) In high school when I had a part-time job at the public library, I had a private "beat the clock to shelve this cart of books" mode ... to stop myself from going "ooh! gotta remember to read THIS one ... let me read the back (or liner) notes on THIS-OTHER one .... etc etc"
  • ythannah
    ythannah Posts: 4,365 Member
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    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    I feel like this is part of a larger cognitive effect one can fall into when calorie counting, thinking that what is logged is what results in weight gain, loss, maintenance - moreso than what is actually done. The "if I can find a low example to log, all is well" aspect is one of the risks, but so is finding the highest exercise calorie estimate to log.

    Yes, you've nailed it exactly. Fortunately, however, he is much more serious about staying low carb because he does NOT want to be pre-diabetic or diabetic. Although he's not logging this time around, just keeping a mental carb tally... which has led to errors when he "forgot" something he ate.
    BMcC9 wrote: »

    THIS     Active living in whatever way you love to live! I too do better in "play mode" (and not just in the activity arena either) In high school when I had a part-time job at the public library, I had a private "beat the clock to shelve this cart of books" mode ... to stop myself from going "ooh! gotta remember to read THIS one ... let me read the back (or liner) notes on THIS-OTHER one .... etc etc"

    I shelved in our uni library for a year full-time, then part-time. I was very early 20s and the year I shelved in serials (lots of heavy bound journals) was my absolute fittest until I took up deliberate exercise in my late 40s.
  • BMcC9
    BMcC9 Posts: 4,374 Member
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    Been there. Done that (in a Law Library) . Had the biceps back then ...
  • steveko89
    steveko89 Posts: 2,216 Member
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    springlering62 wrote: »

    I think as we get used to better choices, our bodies can’t cope with some of the old ones any longer? (Ask me about that batch of Xmas toffee cookies I put away . Urgh. * Shudder*.)

    I think age and duration of lifestyle shift plays a factor as well. I've always had a pretty resilient stomach and can typically eat anything without consequence. However, at nearly 33 now, having been at MFP for coming up on 11 years, and incrementally focusing on "better" nutrition for most of that time I find that my tolerance for indulgences waning to a degree. Nothing overly problematic but a general sense of feeling gross after I have certain things occasionally. It was really apparent during our vacation back in late July; between fast food during the 12 hour drives, eating out for most meals, boardwalk treats, less exercise, and the general toll of travelling with a toddler just left me feeling blah both physically and mentally for how I was treating my body.

    As much as a shudder when I think about the teenage late night taco bell trips with friends (~3000 calories in my standard order) and the many beer-laiden college weekends my body endured those tendencies are still hard to contend with from time to time, as illustrated by that DQ story.
  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 7,471 Member
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    Oh well said @dralicephd !!!!

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