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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I joined in January before life overwhelmed me so left. I’m going to try harder this time round. The obstacles are here to stay so I have to find ways round them.6
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I joined in January before life overwhelmed me so left. I’m going to try harder this time round. The obstacles are here to stay so I have to find ways round them.
Very, very true. I like your spirit @Lessennan !!2 -
I’m wondering what everyone is planning as their minimum 20 mins exercise.
I’m hoping to walk much longer than that but if the weather is inclement I’m for 20 mins exercise bike beside the radiator!3 -
I’m wondering what everyone is planning as their minimum 20 mins exercise.
I’m hoping to walk much longer than that but if the weather is inclement I’m for 20 mins exercise bike beside the radiator!
@Lessennan some people say in their daily post what they did for exercise that day... we have all kinds of things going on!!
Feel free to join us for the remainder of February here:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/142439-ultimate-accountability-challenge-february-2022
where you can see what everyone posts daily (prior to March 1!)1 -
Getting organised for 1st March.
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I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed: trying to find the right calorie/nutrition balance to lose weight and also build up endurance to cycle longer. I'm 6'1" tall and weigh 148kg this morning. MFP reckons I will lose weight at 2000 calories a day, but that has not been my experience. I will lose weight pretty consistently at 1700 calories/day if I don't exercise. But then yesterday I went for a 3 hour bike ride with one hill and had to take the train home because it wiped me out. I have signed up to ride London Revolution in October and am hoping to have figured out my fueling and cycling plan by then.7
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I’m wondering what everyone is planning as their minimum 20 mins exercise.
I’m hoping to walk much longer than that but if the weather is inclement I’m for 20 mins exercise bike beside the radiator!
I'm hoping to do a lot of cycling and some strength training. Your idea of the exercise bike by the radiator sounds nice and so much better than braving the cold and stormy weather we've been having lately!4 -
I’m wondering what everyone is planning as their minimum 20 mins exercise.
I’m hoping to walk much longer than that but if the weather is inclement I’m for 20 mins exercise bike beside the radiator!
@Lessennan
Nan, I'm also hoping to start walking outside more often. In the nicer weather, I like to walk into town (I live in the country), purchase a pint of chocolate (keto) ice cream, and eat it on my way back home..... total is about 11 miles. And YES I bring my debit card and a spoon with me! Lol. This year I also want to try to bicycle more. Hubby said late last year that my seat wasn't high enough and he thinks that's why biking always made my knees hurt so bad. He seems to think that if I raise my seat up, that will help my knees! I'm excited to give it a try! If it works, I want to buy a new bicycle, as the one I currently have is about 10 years old and was purchased at a yard sale! It's an 18-speed (?) and I can only use about 3 of those speeds! Only the larger gear wheel thingy works, not the small one. Lol.6 -
@lesdarts180 and anyone else that uses their weekly calorie amount instead of a daily amont to allow extra calories for outings and weekends can u please tell me how u do it??. I love to let me hair down on the w/e at least once or twice a week. I hve been doing this but not saving the calories up which has meant weight loss is very slow. So my plan this month Is to try to eat 100 calories less a day so that I can spluge for 2 days on the w/e without having to stress about the scale. @lesdarts180 is this similar to wat u do? Tell me wat has and has not worked for u. I know we hve spoken about this in the past but i was not ready tp execute it...Thanks in advance xox1
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Just had to share my newest purchase. It’s an eye massager by Bob and Brad. It has heat, massage and vibration. I just tried it and it was nice. The heat and massage felt good.11 -
@jmu1965 that looks very relaxing0
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I have been struggling with hunger for the last month or so. I wake up hungry, after I eat I want more food, and I am hungry in between meals. That makes it a real struggle to stick to a calorie deficit! That has not been my experience of weight loss so far, and it's been hard.
I posted about it in my daily posts some in February and some kind people offered suggestions. I thought I'd carry that forward to here so maybe other people could also benefit from the suggestions or add their own.
I will say yesterday I was not ridiculously hungry all day, so maybe it is something that is passing? It made me very hopeful.
@Mrs_Hoffer suggested cutting out grains. I have so far in weight loss journey been unwilling to cut anything out completely. But in an effort to help with the hunger I upped my fiber which meant upping my carbs, including grains. So maybe that unintentionally has had the opposite effect.
@Jana_2020 suggested modified fasting. I think I definitely couldn't do full fasting but maybe I could try some kind of modified fasting. I have always been a person who eats a lot of small meals and I get hungry between meals. I wake up hungry and if I don't eat breakfast soon after waking I feel sick. And I do eat a bedtime snack/treat, which I know is not recommended. It's been a thing I think since having kids (my oldest is almost 10). Once I am done with them for the day I relax and eat a cookie. I know it's a bad idea, but when I try cutting out I get so sad about it! But maybe I should at least try that. We eat dinner at 5:30 and I eat breakfast at 7, so that would be a decent window of not eating if I tried that.
@MadisonMolly2017 Offered some suggestions of things she has done towards a healthy diet. And then asked some questions to try to troubleshoot.
1. How much you’ve lost total - As of Jan 1, 25 pounds.
2. How much you’ve lost since Jan 1 -
As of this morning I am actually exactly the same weight I was on Jan 1. But I have mostly been trending higher.
3. Your current BMI & weight
weight 148.6, BMI 24.7. This hunger problem started right around when I started hovering around the top edge of the "healthy" BMI, and it does make me wonder if maybe that's just as good as it gets? But I would like to be more in the middle of the range.
4. When you track EVERYTHING, how many calories do you eat?
That's a hard one to answer because I usually stop tracking when i start to go over my target. I was going for a while with 1200 M-Th, 2000 calories F, 1350 Sat and Sun, and sticking to that and losing. Now I am aiming for 1350 a day but have not succeeded. Monday I maybe for the first time completely tracked a day where my nibbling was out of control and it amounted to an extra ~500 calories, for 1850 calories.
5. What’s your exercise look like?
I aim for 15 minutes of MommaStrong (HIIT program) and 30 minutes of walking a day.
6. Height
5' 4 3/4'' The BMI calculations above are with rounding up to 5'5'. I never know if that is fair. If I do 5'4'', I am not in the healthy range.
7. How often are you hungry?
For the last month, ALL THE TIME. Except for yesterday. Yesterday for some reason I was not super hungry all day, so maybe I am finally on a good road?
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Cowphilosopher wrote: »I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed: trying to find the right calorie/nutrition balance to lose weight and also build up endurance to cycle longer. I'm 6'1" tall and weigh 148kg this morning. MFP reckons I will lose weight at 2000 calories a day, but that has not been my experience. I will lose weight pretty consistently at 1700 calories/day if I don't exercise. But then yesterday I went for a 3 hour bike ride with one hill and had to take the train home because it wiped me out. I have signed up to ride London Revolution in October and am hoping to have figured out my fueling and cycling plan by then.
It is hard to "train" when you are in a calorie deficit. A 3 hr bike ride is a LOT of energy expended. I try to separate the 2 things if I can. For maintaining weight I use the TDEE method so that I am not yo yo ing calories daily. That means I eat the same amount every day regardless of exercise. There is something about "eating back" exercise calories which always makes me cringe a little because I do see folks saying ohhh I ate 200 over so I am going to go workout now. Or I am going to run an extra 4 miles because I want the nutella. I think when you try to intertwine weight loss like that you put yourself in a bad cycle. (my opinion).
Hopefully as you get closer to your big cycling plan you can switch to maintenance so you can fuel your rides. MFP is always a good starting place to get your calories but then you have to know yourself and get data in order to tailor a plan just for you. And it's never static either because we are ever changing.3 -
Im at a bit of an impass. Ive been sticking to my calories carefully but I got extremely dizzy and numb this evening and incredibly hungry. Ive been hungry for days but I dont remember being this hungry before. I thought I would faint. I ate and after an hour I felt better. my new medication is affecting insulin and I didnt know that. I guess Im wondering how to proceed with calorie restriction and exercising if my medication can be so tempermental.
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@Cowphilosopher - When I began endurance training I had to be either at maintenance calories or at a very slight deficit. In the end I usually would wind up having a day where I ate everything in site cancelling out whatever small deficit I had accumulated. I found the best results focusing on keeping all the foods I ate as clean as possible (Matt Fitzgerald Diet Quality Score for an example to get some ideas). I also swore by my recovery drink which I kept at a 2:1 carb to protein ratio. You're putting one heck of a beating on your body now and need to take extra care of it in every way so it will reward you when you get to the day of your event. You should also try and learn your resting heart rate if you don't already know it. You can often get ahead of the fatigue associated with overtraining (and even get forewarned of illness) when you see an increase in that metric. Overtraining can take quite a while to properly bounce back from, particularly if you keep pushing and get injured.
Just some thoughts. Best wishes, I'm very excited to hear how things progress with your rides. Very inspiring!1 -
@Caroline_slowandsteady What you're mentioning about small meals and getting hungry reminds me of the process of becoming "fat adapted" vs being a "sugar burner" that a physician and weight loss coach has spoken about on a podcast I follow. Have you ever heard of Katrina Ubell (physician and weight loss/life coach)? Here is a link to free resources on her site. Her free e-books talk about becoming fat adapted and she talks a LOT about this topic (small meals, snacking, getting hungry) in her podcasts (here's a link to her podcasts and there's a podcast roadmap in the above link, too - you can also just listen to her on whatever podcast app you use). Her "niche audience" is other physicians (busy schedules, often restricted on when you can eat, etc) but of course the concepts apply to all busy people. Just thought I'd mention this because her podcasts have helped me change so much of my mindset/habits!0
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daciasil21 wrote: »Im at a bit of an impass. Ive been sticking to my calories carefully but I got extremely dizzy and numb this evening and incredibly hungry. Ive been hungry for days but I dont remember being this hungry before. I thought I would faint. I ate and after an hour I felt better. my new medication is affecting insulin and I didnt know that. I guess Im wondering how to proceed with calorie restriction and exercising if my medication can be so tempermental.
the biggest secret to losing weight and maintaining that is misunderstood imo is that it CANNOT absolutely not leave you weak and hungry at all. It sounds like you need to stabilize your medications first and then review a deficit and whay types of foods might help you work within those boundaries better - not just the # of cals. Hope you are feeling better today,4 -
@Caroline_slowandsteady
I'd be more interested in what a typical weeks food looks like. It could be related to what you're eating rather than number of calories. You might also want to consider three meals per day and no snacking. There are many health related web sites that that push one view or the other but changing it up might be something worth experimenting with.
I eat two normal meals per day (brunch and dinner) plus a snack which may be another typical meal or actual snack food like nuts, fruit, clif bar, etc depending on how many calories I have available. If I'm burning a ton of calories with exercise I may add a protein shake in the morning. The purpose of my snack is to make sure my calories are over 1000 for the day. While I usually eat in the 1200-1300 range there are times when I have big salads which aren't caloric since I only spritz with olive oil so my calorie count is pretty low after dinner.
A few months back I did a post about hunger and often hunger is something other than the need to eat but rather thirst, boredom, cravings, sleep deprivation, emotional issues, eating the wrong foods, medical issues, stress, etc. So to me this indicates that when you feel hungry you should have a mental checklist of whether it's truly hunger or something else.5 -
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Wow, I just sat down at my laptop after being away from home for a day and a half and there are so many posts and so many questions.
First one: @donna25trinity asked me a question about averaging calories. First, let me remind everyone that I am a little old lady so my calorie requirements are quite low, yours may be higher.
I am maintaining now but when I was actively losing weight at a reasonable rate (22.5 kg in 9 months ie just over 1lb per week average) I used to reckon on keeping my normal intake at about 1,000 calories a day plus a small part of my exercise calories*. You get a lot of criticism here on MFP if you go that low but I needed to average about 1,200 per day and holidays and days out are bound to be higher. I took several holidays, days out, family celebrations. You can nearly always plan ahead for these occasions and “bank” calories in the same way you might save up for something special. “banking” beforehand is much more effective than going into “debt”.
Saving 100 calories per day for 5 days is only the equivalent of a dessert or a glass of wine and a chocolate on each of those weekend days. You can’t just indulge without counting.
If you are going to be very restrictive you have to make every food choice “work” – you need your protein, fibre, vitamins, whatever is important to you.
*I agree with @SummerSkier that “exercise calories” are a mixed blessing, try not to get too hung up on it.4 -
To quote @Caroline_slowandsteady, “And I do eat a bedtime snack/treat, which I know is not recommended.” There is nothing wrong with a bedtime snack. There is nothing “wrong” with any food. Just plan for it and choose wisely. Personally, I have dinner at 7pm or later and have a treat before bed. (and I did this even when losing weight). You have to find a way of eating which satisfies you, take no notice of any of the so-called “experts” on the web or TV.
Similar to my answer to Donna – you have to find what suits you. Some people find protein satiating, some find that they like a high volume of food – lots of veggies work for me. I have a good breakfast and dinner and only a light lunch. I live alone and am retired so I can totally please myself but I get that you have other people and obligations to take into account.
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@daciasil21 Do you have a blood glucose test kit/monitor? If not, I think you should get one if you are on a medication that affects insulin/blood sugar because what you described sure sounds like low blood sugar which can be quite dangerous. A doctor´s order is not required if you are privately paying. You should be able to get one on Amazon or a drug or discount store like Walmart very inexpensively that includes some starter supplies like test strips (it is the test strips that cause most of the cost for diabetics who need to test a lot, but really isn´t that expensive if you only test occasionally). I got a second one for $12 that I have kept in my gym bag ¨just in case¨ since I was close to the cut off for a diabetes diagnosis at one point. I occasionally test my blood sugar, especially if I have a headache or dizziness. Even though I have not yet had a low reading, it is reassuring for me to know that the cause is not low blood sugar. It would be even more important to know if it WAS low blood sugar.5
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Thank you for your responses. I will get a glucose test kit to better guage whats going on. I think I'll adjust my calorie goal for now to a bit higher and see how that works. I might need to eat more frequently too. I'm glad I was made aware of the medication's interactions in a somewhat innocuous way and nothing too serious happened！4
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Exercise calories are a nightmare for me. How do I ever know my efforts were enough?0
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From @Caroline_slowandsteady …
@MadisonMolly2017 Offered some suggestions of things she has done towards a healthy diet. And then asked some questions to try to troubleshoot.
1. How much you’ve lost total - As of Jan 1, 25 pounds.
2. How much you’ve lost since Jan 1 -
As of this morning I am actually exactly the same weight I was on Jan 1. But I have mostly been trending higher.
3. Your current BMI & weight
weight 148.6, BMI 24.7. This hunger problem started right around when I started hovering around the top edge of the "healthy" BMI, and it does make me wonder if maybe that's just as good as it gets? But I would like to be more in the middle of the range.
4. When you track EVERYTHING, how many calories do you eat?
That's a hard one to answer because I usually stop tracking when i start to go over my target. I was going for a while with 1200 M-Th, 2000 calories F, 1350 Sat and Sun, and sticking to that and losing. Now I am aiming for 1350 a day but have not succeeded. Monday I maybe for the first time completely tracked a day where my nibbling was out of control and it amounted to an extra ~500 calories, for 1850 calories.
5. What’s your exercise look like?
I aim for 15 minutes of MommaStrong (HIIT program) and 30 minutes of walking a day.
6. Height
5' 4 3/4'' The BMI calculations above are with rounding up to 5'5'. I never know if that is fair. If I do 5'4'', I am not in the healthy range.
7. How often are you hungry?
For the last month, ALL THE TIME. Except for yesterday. Yesterday for some reason I was not super hungry all day, so maybe I am finally on a good road?
[/quote]
@Caroline_slowandsteady
I’m glad you are feeling less hungry!
My “mouth” hunger is quite problematic if I eat salty or sugary foods. I’m assuming you drink water (1oz per kg of body weight per day).
I got hungrier when I got into the healthy BMI range, too! So I lost another 4-6 lbs very slowly & got Very Hungry. Declared maintenance. Weight went up some due to more food lol
My goal all along was to choose a maintenance range that I can maintain.
All my doctor cares about is BMI under 24.9! So the rest are “vanity” pounds.
After a year or two, I was ready to slim down some more. Not at all as hungry as before (likely because I hadn’t just had a transplant & lost 35-40 lbs over 4-7 months.)
This really worked for me.
How do you feel about maintaining your current weight (fine to use 5’5”) for a month or two? Letting your body recover from dieting? Was your lifetime high weight 173?
Then, I’d focus on question number 4. Really lock in recording every nibble. You will find you can eat fat more calories. You’ve maintained 2 months & gone over your calories…so by recording EVERYTHING you will learn you can eat more! This is an essential skill for maintenance. You realize it’s just data & will work to your advantage to record all you eat !!
I still can’t believe I can eat as much as I do.
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Caroline_slowandsteady wrote: »I have been struggling with hunger for the last month or so. I wake up hungry, after I eat I want more food, and I am hungry in between meals. That makes it a real struggle to stick to a calorie deficit! That has not been my experience of weight loss so far, and it's been hard.
I posted about it in my daily posts some in February and some kind people offered suggestions. I thought I'd carry that forward to here so maybe other people could also benefit from the suggestions or add their own.
I will say yesterday I was not ridiculously hungry all day, so maybe it is something that is passing? It made me very hopeful.
@Mrs_Hoffer suggested cutting out grains. I have so far in weight loss journey been unwilling to cut anything out completely. But in an effort to help with the hunger I upped my fiber which meant upping my carbs, including grains. So maybe that unintentionally has had the opposite effect.
@Jana_2020 suggested modified fasting. I think I definitely couldn't do full fasting but maybe I could try some kind of modified fasting. I have always been a person who eats a lot of small meals and I get hungry between meals. I wake up hungry and if I don't eat breakfast soon after waking I feel sick. And I do eat a bedtime snack/treat, which I know is not recommended. It's been a thing I think since having kids (my oldest is almost 10). Once I am done with them for the day I relax and eat a cookie. I know it's a bad idea, but when I try cutting out I get so sad about it! But maybe I should at least try that. We eat dinner at 5:30 and I eat breakfast at 7, so that would be a decent window of not eating if I tried that.
@MadisonMolly2017 Offered some suggestions of things she has done towards a healthy diet. And then asked some questions to try to troubleshoot.
1. How much you’ve lost total - As of Jan 1, 25 pounds.
2. How much you’ve lost since Jan 1 -
As of this morning I am actually exactly the same weight I was on Jan 1. But I have mostly been trending higher.
3. Your current BMI & weight
weight 148.6, BMI 24.7. This hunger problem started right around when I started hovering around the top edge of the "healthy" BMI, and it does make me wonder if maybe that's just as good as it gets? But I would like to be more in the middle of the range.
4. When you track EVERYTHING, how many calories do you eat?
That's a hard one to answer because I usually stop tracking when i start to go over my target. I was going for a while with 1200 M-Th, 2000 calories F, 1350 Sat and Sun, and sticking to that and losing. Now I am aiming for 1350 a day but have not succeeded. Monday I maybe for the first time completely tracked a day where my nibbling was out of control and it amounted to an extra ~500 calories, for 1850 calories.
5. What’s your exercise look like?
I aim for 15 minutes of MommaStrong (HIIT program) and 30 minutes of walking a day.
6. Height
5' 4 3/4'' The BMI calculations above are with rounding up to 5'5'. I never know if that is fair. If I do 5'4'', I am not in the healthy range.
7. How often are you hungry?
For the last month, ALL THE TIME. Except for yesterday. Yesterday for some reason I was not super hungry all day, so maybe I am finally on a good road?
What does a meal or a snack for you look like? I agree with your approach not to cut anything out completely, and have found that lean proteins and whole grains do fill me up. I find that a lot of packaged foods don't fill me up or make me more hungry. So, like, a bowl of cereal will only keep me occupied while I am eating it but the second I am done, I am hungry for more. And don't get me started on those "just 100 calories" packaged snacks because I will eat all of them and not even register. Breakfast for me now is something like oatmeal with fruit and almond butter (or peanut butter), or an egg on toast. To a certain extent, by cutting calories, you will feel hungry. But if you wake up hungry and you're hungry all day long, and you go to bed hungry, I think there are some changes you can make. So give us an idea of what a day of food looks like for you and we can go from there.0 -
@SummerSkier I had to look up TDEE because that is a new one for me. I found a calculator that reckons that my total daily expenditure of energy is 3494 calories which seems remarkably high. MFP reckons I will lose weight eating 2000 calories but that has not been my experience. I can lose weight eating 1700 calories and doing no exercise. I am trying to eat clean, especially on cycle days. During the week, there are a couple of HIIT days to boost my endurance and fitness levels. On the long cycle days, I eat much more at breakfast and plan to eat a lot on the bike. I think part of the challenge was retrieving and opening things from a jersey pocket whilst wearing thick winter gloves. But the goal ride is early October so I'm hoping it won't be so cold.
@WhatMeRunning I do have a heart rate monitor and I use it for longer rides to make sure I don't start out too hard, which is a habit I have. I will have to check out the Matt Fitzgerald Diet Quality Score, so thanks for that. What do you use as your recovery drink, if you don't mind sharing?0 -
Thank you to everyone for your responses! I am going to write back in a few posts.
@makattack220 that podcast looks interesting. I looked around her website a bit and couldn't find anything about the fat adapted vs. sugar burning issue. Can you summarize it for me? I do think that sounds like me, potentially.
@LazyBlondeChef that's an interesting idea of switching up my way of eating. The only times in my life that I have had only 3 meals a day have been on vacations where I am eating out and eating a lot and just not feeling hungry between meals. Those times have always resulted in weight gain. I've been a snacker my whole life.
@TerriRichardson112 I do that checklist - or just checking in with myself - but this has felt like real, true body hunger.1 -
@Cowphilosopher and others who asked what I am eating:
In my weight loss so far I have mainly had meals that are mostly vegetables - LOTS of vegetables - with ~3oz of protein and ~1/2 cup of carbohydrate. That was my "meal pattern" that I settled on for weight loss before I was willing to track, and I kept going with it with tracking. That got me down ~20 pounds at which point I plateaued and began tracking. The changes with tracking mainly focused on the sauce - I had not been worrying about the sauce, but I began to try to reduce the calories from that.
Snacks for a while have been an afternoon snack that is usually some berries and lowfat cottage cheese and honey or half an apple and peanut butter. And a bedtime snack that is 1/2 cup of whole milk in the milk frother (like a cappuccino without the coffee) and a <100 calorie cookie/other treat.
I do drink lots of water and decaf/herbal tea.1 -
@MadisonMolly2017 Thank you so much for your kind response. I was really expecting you to lay down the law and tell me to get more serious about eating less! I think your answer to "Really lock in recording every nibble. ... You realize it’s just data & will work to your advantage to record all you eat !!" is exactly what I need to focus on now.
I am not going to give up on pre-tracking my days or having a goal of 1350. But when I want to eat something that is over the goal, I am going to think about why I am eating it and if those reasons seem good enough, I will eat it and record it. For this month. And see what I learn.
I am frustrated by this extra hunger because I have been losing weight - slow and steady - for almost 3 years now - and I have never been this hungry. And my diet has not really changed. (To answer your question @MadisonMolly2017, I am losing "baby weight" from my about-to-be 10 year old. I am not counting from my high weight when I was pregnant with her or immediately post-partum, but a few months in I pretty much stabilized around 170, and I am counting from the point at which I decided to work on losing weight (which was actually rather a high point in that stable range).)
I think what happened was:
1. This has been getting steadily harder for a while, as I look back at my records. Really since getting within the healthy BMI range. Which is why I joined UAC, but I haven't really seen much of a loss with UAC - still in that top of the healthy BMI range. @MadisonMolly2017 I love that you call them "vanity pounds" - I guess they are. I want to lose more because I weighed less pre-pregnancy, and because these extra pounds are almost all in my belly, which I think is bad for me and also - yeah, vanity.
2. Then in January I had my covid booster which resulted in a flare of my autoimmune thyroid condition, with some weird hormone blips. I backed off trying to track or eat to a pattern while that was active. But I think I maybe tried to get back into it too soon. I do think some of the hunger initially was hormonal.
3. Several weeks (a month?) ago I decided to tackle the hunger and also the constipation I was experiencing (which were both probably due to reason #2) by eating more fiber. I was noticing I was not usually that close to the recommended 25. I upped the fiber by adding more carbs and reducing fat to fit them in. I think that may have been counter productive? I do still think it seems like a good idea to eat fiber. But I think that is one of the things I need to collect more data on. I think I am definitely seeing a difference between adding in chia seeds, which does not seem to affect me much, vs. having a snack of oatmeal, which I tried, which left me starving and shaky. Oatmeal has never been a great snack for me. Also kashi cereal, which we have in the cabinet for my kids which I tried adding in because it has so much fiber but it also has so much sugar and salt and I don't think it's a great choice.
@MadisonMolly2017 I love your idea that the choice is not between giving up and fighting harder. But I could just take a pause for data collection and then decide what to do next. I think that's my goal for March.2
