What's On Your Mind Today?
Mrs_Hoffer
Posts: 5,194 Member
This is where you can share what's on your mind. Recipes, ideas, workouts, anything that you think might be helpful to others.
Maybe, you've tried something that has worked for you in the past and would like to share it with the group. Maybe, you have a NSV (Non Scale Victory) that you would like to share with the group. Anything that you feel comfortable sharing or anything that you feel comfortable asking the group for help....this is the place to come.
The GOOD!! What NSV did you have this week!!
The BAD!! So what....you ate the whole thing!!
The UGLY!! That darn scale went through the window this week....it deserved it too!!
So, what's on your mind today??
Maybe, you've tried something that has worked for you in the past and would like to share it with the group. Maybe, you have a NSV (Non Scale Victory) that you would like to share with the group. Anything that you feel comfortable sharing or anything that you feel comfortable asking the group for help....this is the place to come.
The GOOD!! What NSV did you have this week!!
The BAD!! So what....you ate the whole thing!!
The UGLY!! That darn scale went through the window this week....it deserved it too!!
So, what's on your mind today??
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Replies
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For 2022
I’m ditching
I can’T
And replacing it with
I can TRY12 -
6 -
Take each challenge as it comes. Solve JUST THAT ONE. Get the the first / next checkpoint.
Move forward till you discover the NEXT challenge
Repeat.
You don't have to solve ALLL of them IN ADVANCE .....10 -
What's on my mind is how irritating it is that you have to open up a thread to bookmark it or unbookmark it now... Quite annoying. I used to be able to just go thru here quickly and bookmark each day...
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@SummerSkier - I can’t bookmark anything anymore. I just get an error message.1
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If you open the thread you can bookmark it towards the top of the page without error. But that means you have to open all 31 threads individually and bookmark each one at the top of the page. It's the same in reverse if you're like me and remove prior months bookmarks. Quite time consuming, but it's the only option with the new MFP community software.biketheworld wrote: »@SummerSkier - I can’t bookmark anything anymore. I just get an error message.1 -
Here’s what’s on my mind…I went out for dinner last night and did everything according to plan. Salmon with an Asian prep, salad with light dressing and a small crab cake. No alcohol, nothing for dessert, pineapple at home.
It was a fairly small restaurant, maybe 8 other parties, and of all of them, I was the only one not going for it. Most were doing what I used to do, getting what they wanted. I’ve just lost 23, 3 to go and then maintenance. I’m fine giving things up to lose but I’m trying to picture living like this. Or doing what the others did and then eating reduced calories for a while. Maybe that’s the answer. Part of this is I can’t really burn many calories working out right now. So maybe the other answer is adding back my current deficit (250) plus exercise calories when I’m able to get back to it gets me there. The child in my mind is telling me to get to target, eat what I want and then just lose again when I get up 5-10 pounds. My inner child is raising a ruckus right now….9 -
The thing about yo yo ing is that those 5 to 10 are always fat and unhealthy. And you are damaging yourself every single time. Tell your inner child that short term gluttony is always long term misery. And there is always tomorrow to enjoy one of the things you left on the menu today. I do keep quite a few treats in the house and what keeps me from going hog wild on them is knowing that I will enjoy them at some point. Maybe not today or tomorrow but they will make the menu when I choose. Not when my inner glutton does9
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I know you’re right. I have to embrace the permanence of this. I ate whatever I wanted my whole life, punctuated by several periods of loss here. Maintenance for me is a new gear.7
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@Arc2Arc I know your challenge and think many of us have been through this throughout our lives. @SummerSkier offers some great perspective as you acknowledged as well.
A number of folks here recommended T. Colin Campbell’s boom Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition and I am giving it a read right now (and finding it insightful, even if I can’t imagine ever comprehensively embracing the WFPB diet exclusively). Thanks @Mrs_Hoffer who posted about it most recently.
The following hit me like a a ton of bricks when I read it, and it comes back in other forms throughout the book — and I think I was just really ready for this message. Sharing it with you:
Julie7 -
Very helpful input, @SummerSkier and @jamcnewman. Thank you. I do have to figure out ways to make this sustainable.5
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Here’s what’s on my mind…I went out for dinner last night and did everything according to plan. Salmon with an Asian prep, salad with light dressing and a small crab cake. No alcohol, nothing for dessert, pineapple at home.
It was a fairly small restaurant, maybe 8 other parties, and of all of them, I was the only one not going for it. Most were doing what I used to do, getting what they wanted. I’ve just lost 23, 3 to go and then maintenance. I’m fine giving things up to lose but I’m trying to picture living like this. Or doing what the others did and then eating reduced calories for a while. Maybe that’s the answer. Part of this is I can’t really burn many calories working out right now. So maybe the other answer is adding back my current deficit (250) plus exercise calories when I’m able to get back to it gets me there. The child in my mind is telling me to get to target, eat what I want and then just lose again when I get up 5-10 pounds. My inner child is raising a ruckus right now….
Hi @Arc2Arc!
I’m going to chime in with a few thoughts - to take or leave
1. Regarding the other diners. ~75% of Americans are overweight or obese. I use this when I feel badly I can’t eat out like I used to. Also, we don’t know if they teach exercise classes 4 hours a day or swim competitively for an hour each morning.
We just get to figure out ourselves.
2. It *really* helps to not think of maintenance as forever. Sometimes we take it moment by moment or meal to meal & sometimes we can be easily flowing for 6 months etc. I will say that*for me* it got significantly easier around 1.5 years. (I was terrified I’d gain all 70 lbs back like Every Other Time.”
Maintenance does not provide the same endorphin hit that the scale gives us while dieting. I purposely lost verrrry slowly as I neared my goal weight so I was used to not getting that biochemical reward.
Remind yourself that you DO get more calories when you maintain & for some of us that leads -after a while- to being able to eat even more (possibly because of muscle Less fat, more every day movement, more vigorous exercise.)
3. Really zero in on your compelling reason for wanting to be a lighter weight. Post it around your home. If it’s Not Compelling, dig deeper.
Food is a transient, short term reward. Your compelling reason needs to be more important than the short term. We basically need a long term benefit that prevents us from the quick fix.
4. My child pops up occasionally- she’s the old me, a saboteur - and quite tricky. But as you maintain, you develop ways to ignore her trickiness & eventually she can’t throw anything at you to trick you into giving up your long term goal which is not weight loss. It’s Maintenance. That’s the holy grail.
5. It helps me to think of my situation as similar to an alcoholic’s or someone with anorexia. In all 3, we need to harness our brain for the benefit of our body & ignore the unhealthy impulses.
Best,
🌸Maddie
PS it really does get easier. Honest.
#NeverGiveUp14 -
I’m truly grateful for these comments. I’ve already reread them several times.6
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@Arc2Arc One question to ask yourself might be how often are you going to go out to eat? If it is only very occasionally and you maintain a good diet the rest of the time, you will probably be able to indulge a bit.
Also, I learned recently in the book ¨Metabolical¨ that 20% of obese people are actually metabolically healthy and they have no greater risk of heart disease or other causes of early death than normal weight people (it is the 80% of people that are not metabolically healthy that skew the statistics.) So those 5 or 10 pounds may or may not be unhealthy, depending on what you were eating to get there to maintain your metabolic fitness. For me, once I let myself gain 5-10 pounds, my history is that I don´t consistently start dieting again until I have gained back all the weight and then some. So I know it is dangerous for me to ever let myself go back to the non-vigilant place by letting my inner child run the show and gradually eat more processed foods.
One thing I read recently in the book ¨The Nordic Way¨ that might be helpful for you is the results of the study: Diet, Obesity and Genes (DiOGenes) (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00390637 shows the basic design to give you an idea of how large it was. It was a huge controlled study in 2010 in six different countries in Europe, involving 45 scientists, that specifically looked at comparing different 6 in terms of how good they are for maintenance. As far as I know it is the first large controlled study exploring weight maintenance. They had all participants lose 20% of their body weight on the same meal replacement diet and then split them into six different diets for maintenance to follow for a year and see which group maintained the best. The ¨winning¨ diet was so superior to the others in terms of weight maintenance AND satisfaction that many of the subjects chose to stay on it and a number also lost more weight on it. What the book said is that both low carb and low fat diets tend not to be sustainable for maintenance. The diet that was sustainable was the high protein, low glycemic index diet. The Nordic diet, based on the diet of proponents of that diet, encourages you to get sufficient protein and limit carbs to a 2:1 ratio to protein and eat primarily low glycemic index and whole foods.
I like what I am doing now, low carb, because of my insulin resistance, but my own plan is to gradually liberalize it as I get more metabolically healthy and hopefully use that limit of 2 grams carbs for every gram protein and make sure my carbs are whole and low GI as a maintenance plan, but I will begin to try to lose weight with it and make it habitual. Reportedly that way of eating is best for maintenance without tracking or counting anything. BTW they said the average American man eats 3 grams of carbs for every gram of protein and the ratio of the average American woman is more than 3 grams of carbs for every gram of protein. For many of us, that is a huge excess of carbs when we eat like other Americans and screws up our metabolism.8 -
My Word for 2022 is DIVERSIFY
For January, I will be diversifying my types of intentional activity (and creative endeavors - once the 30 Days of Doodles are over tomorrow, I won't be including reporting that aspect here in UAC - the Dec thread was my only Daily Accountable thread at the time when I first started Dec 6)
For this week, I am playing with how to stack what I want to turn into my Daily Work-Day Morning Routine (still on vacation - so "getting up when alarm rings" is still not at "regular work-day time" yet) Triggers / timing for some of my other ideas may end up being better suited to later-in-the-day stacked routines.
Plan so far :- up when alarm wrings - or before (semi-established - was sometimes getting up before actual alarm previously)
- TURN ALARM OFF (hubby sleeps later) (semi-established; sometimes problematic when I got up early 🤷♀️ )
- weigh first thing on wii / tv (well-established for years - great prompt-point)
- Reps To The Rhythm youtube / tv (new - this week doing 12 min standing core for 5 days)
- Balance on wobble cushion & drink water while coffee brews (water new - needed it after R2tR 😅 )
- Update Tracker Spreadsheet (new )
- (rest of Morning routine not settled yet - some of my ideas may turn out to be better shifted to later-in-the-day groupings)
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Alright...I've developed a mindset that I'm hoping will support me in maintenance. To get there I've had to deal with a number of distortions in my mind about food, choice, my abilities and what it would be like to be in maintenance. That damn spoiled little kid in me doesn't want to have to choose. The adult in me had and has to continue to tame him. I love challenges and maintenance seems like a really good one with the best kinds of rewards. Thanks again for the support. All I can say about the folks here is wow.9
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I am happy to hear this A2A! Just remember the thing about maintenance is that it is long term but you dont have to do the same thing forever. You can change your approach as often as you need to. But someone above mentioned the most critical thing and that is the idea that it's ok to just allow a 5-10 gain blindly because you can lose it again. Most often what I see is that is WAY harder to do that than just stay within a good 5 pound range. And before you know it the 5-10 is now 30 and you gain it all back.9
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I totally agree with @SummerSkier . In December, I was ill for the first 2+ weeks of the month. So with not feeling well enough to do more than the 20min minimum most days, coupled with eating more chocolates, christmas cookies, etc (which I usually 're-gift', but I didn't do as much re-gifting as I should have this year!), I knew I had to keep a close eye on my weight.
My goal was to NOT let the weight creep up over 5 lbs. (I'm a 'weigh every morning' kind of person). My weight fluctuated +3 to +6 lbs throughout the month, but now that Dec is over, I'm very happy to report that my Libra app shows that I only gained 3 lbs in Dec. (AND I've already taken off 2 of those lbs!!!!!) It's MUCH, MUCH easier to do when you can 'catch it' at the 5lb or 10lb mark!!9 -
Thanks @SummerSkier and @Mrs_Hoffer! I'm actually looking forward to finding what works for me. I plan on continuing to log and am open to the possibilities as I learn how to do this. Tracking and giving myself a narrow weight range makes sense.3
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SummerSkier wrote: »I am happy to hear this A2A! Just remember the thing about maintenance is that it is long term but you dont have to do the same thing forever. You can change your approach as often as you need to. But someone above mentioned the most critical thing and that is the idea that it's ok to just allow a 5-10 gain blindly because you can lose it again. Most often what I see is that is WAY harder to do that than just stay within a good 5 pound range. And before you know it the 5-10 is now 30 and you gain it all back.
I totally agree with @SummerSkier
I got hammered for 3-lb maintenance range In a maintenance discussion on MFP a couple of years ago, so I changed it to 5 lbs. I got up about 6-7 before I actually turned it around.
I really regret that & plan to go back to 3 lbs once I get backdown another couple of pounds.
I’m not alone in finding weight loss surprisingly difficult once in maintenance …
Better just to keep it off.
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Ok...I have the beginnings of a maintenance plan in place. Part of that is targeting calories based on TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). In the 10 weeks I've been on MFP I've lost at about a pound per week beyond what I'd targeted in MFP's assumption based calculator. When I first began realizing this, I was exercising heavily, burning around 4,000 calories per week. At that point I assumed most of it was attributable to understated exercise calories.
About three weeks ago I had to suspend vigorous exercise to deal with a leftover injury from an accident (exercise unrelated). I kept the MFP calculator set to lightly active with a 250 calorie per day deficit. In those three weeks, instead of my rate of weight loss getting closer to the 1/2 per week the calulator was targeting, I've continued to drop a pound a week more than the target.
Can my metabolism really be 500 calories a day greater than MFP assumptions? Would that mean I'm burning 500 more per day than the average person? What if anything might I be missing? What is a normal metabolism range? I've done resistance training for many years, I do have a fair amount of muscle but more like a basketball player than a body builder.
I fear dominating the discussion here but I'm hoping discussion of this point will be helpful to the group.3 -
I think it's all a mystery A2A and you have to figure out what works. The #s don't always work exactly as the spreadsheet or data predicts. To enter maintenance I would continue to monitor closely and add 200 cals for 2 weeks and see what happens. If you are still losing, add another 200 for maybe 3 weeks or 4 and see what the scale says.
What's interesting is that there are SO MANY moving parts to the equations that it's almost impossible for the MFP and data to be exact for you. And it might change after a few months also. Esp if you are able to add more activity to the mix.
I am looking forward to seeing your approach and seeing how close you are to the 500 cals able to add to maintain. I will say that I look at weight loss and gain in my own body like a HUGE SHIP at sea. Once I get the ship moving in one direction when I take the throttle off, it slows but it keeps moving forward until inertia stops it. So when I was losing I had a lot of inertia for loss going on and it looked like I could keep adding and adding but eventually the SHIP was becalmed and you could start to see it moving the other way. That teeter totter is where you strive to be.7 -
Yes I’ve seen many on the Maintenance Board say the same. Shop
Analogy seems to work - on both directions
I’d add:
Don’t accept MFP or your exercise tracked as 100% accurate
Even well meaning tracking is on avg 10-20% off.
Use your Own data over time. It’s the most accurate.
And I do the calorie amounts more loosely than many but daily weighing catches the upticks & then I can adjust7 -
Thanks @SummerSkier and @MadisonMolly2017. Adding 200 calories to start seems like a good idea.3
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Question or thought:
When using a caffeinated water mix such as crystal light with the 16 oz of water and by adding a 12 oz can of plain seltzer do you think it would reduce the caffein content in the product?
This is something I do but could not get a clear answer when I goggled it.0 -
@Arc2Arc MyFitnessPal calculations assume that ¨a calorie is a calorie¨ and ¨calories in, calories out.¨ By their calculations, you would lose as much weight eating 1500 calories of cookies, as you would eating 1500 calories of raw spinach. But the reality is that the quality of your food, types of food, how the food is processed, etc, alters how much you burn. Another reality is that your gut microbiome can can digest carbs and some people get 30% or more calories digested out of the same amount of calories ingested. Some people´s bodies hold onto fat more. I happened to have watched a video this morning that addressed this well The relevant part starts at around minute 44:25.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7YoUrpHr9A&ab_channel=LewisHowes
What I do is try to be consistent in how I measure and record things, but I know that MFPs figures really are not accurate in themselves. They are just a proxy. But over time what is the difference if it is making the same systematic error and I have learned about how much of the foods I typically eat that I can eat and still lose or maintain.5 -
snowshoe072 wrote: »Question or thought:
When using a caffeinated water mix such as crystal light with the 16 oz of water and by adding a 12 oz can of plain seltzer do you think it would reduce the caffein content in the product?
This is something I do but could not get a clear answer when I goggled it.
@snowshoe072
If I’m understanding correctly, you are wondering if
1) 16oz water + 1 serving Crystal Light
And
2) 16oz water + 12 oz seltzer water + 1 serving Crystal Light
Would have less caffeine?
They would have the same if the seltzer had no caffeine
However the caffeine would be diluted so you’d have 1/2 the caffeine PER 14 oz.
Instead of all the caffeine in 16oz
Hope I understood correctly your question
Maddie
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@MadisonMolly2017 You understood exactly your answer is what I was thinking and couldn’t seem to find confirmation anywhere. They always said great minds think alike0
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snowshoe072 wrote: »@MadisonMolly2017 You understood exactly your answer is what I was thinking and couldn’t seem to find confirmation anywhere. They always said great minds think alike
Yes!! A lot of misinformation or just plain wrong stuff on internet too!
❤️1
