What should I try first?

DontThinkJustRun

Ok...so I'm trying to work off the 10lbs I've gained back since April and so far the only thing I've done is decrease my intake M-Th. I'm netting about 1200-1500. Obviously since I'm still overeating or eating at maintenance on the weekends I'm not seeing any loss. So what would be the best course of action? 1.Really try to tighten up the rope, difficult because of my preffered lifestyle. Or 2. really try to stick harder to 1200 net and tighten up a little bit on the weekends, say maybe only an off plan dinner OR dessert not both.

I burn 300-500 via exercise 3xs a week 500-700 1x a week and 800-1000 1x a week. My exercise is varied Yoga, Strength Training and Running and I am training for a half marathon, but that's in 4 weeks so my running will decrease a little at that time, but not much.

Ideally I want to pick a weight loss strategy that will yield about a 20lbs loss but also reflect as closely as possible to maintenance. So since I like to splurge on the weekends I'm leaning towards option 2, but am worried it's not going to be enough to see a loss. I know it seems weird of me to be asking this, I'm sure you're wondering why I don't just go back to how I was losing weight before. And I have done that, the last 10 lbs were very difficult for me to lose last time and now I want to lose an additional 10 on top of that so I'm just looking for ideas.

Thoughts?

Rae6503

What about tracking on weekends and just hitting maintenance? You'd be surprised how far over you really can go when you aren't paying attention.

dls06

I would take it slow and pick a 1/2 lb a week. Lose it slow and when it comes time to maintain you won't be doing too much different. I have been maintaining for about 6 months.

DontThinkJustRun

I am tracking on the weekends, that's how I know I'm WAY over. But I get what you're saying. Right now I easily hit 2500-3000 F-Su (Although sometimes since Sunday is my long run day, that's actually not going "over"). So if I could scale that back and like you said hit maintenance my deficit wouldn't be as high for the week, but still a deficit and in time that "should" result in a loss.

Julijulz

I see it this way...continue your exercise regimen because that looks amazing and only cheat one day a week. But make your cheating day only 300-400 calories more then a normal day. Of course dessert is going to easily take those calories from you. But I would track everyday of the week and only cheat on one specific food item. Probably something you've been craving all week so you won't be tempted any other time. I think you know what you should do. You just want us to tell you to do it. lol

DontThinkJustRun

I guess my issue is that I like to splurge on the weekends and I'm pretty sure there is nothing I can do to change that about me. So in all honestly I guess I'm asking how can I do that and still lose weight. And all I can come up with is eat low durning the week so there's room to go over on the weekends. I just need to adjust how much over I go on the weekends if I want to lose weight and then when it's time to maintain I can increase a little.

Rae6503

I actually keep track of my total calories in excel as well as on MFP (I'm pretty much a huge nerd FYI). Then I calculate a weekly average and that's really the number I try to keep at a certain level. You could try that.

Julijulz

Well, since we can't stop you from splurging, how about reducing the carb intake?? Would you be able to do that??

Rilke

Try eating less junk. Your refined sugar intake is entirely too high.

DontThinkJustRun

^Does MFP show a refined vs natural sugar breakdown?

I wouldn't base your comments on F-Su in my diary. I am already completely aware those days need work. M-Th is pretty balanced and how I *try* to eat as often as possible.

Low carb would be hard for me based on my personally preferences and being a runner. I am also not a big fan of limiting food groups, but balancing as best I can.

BeilaLin

I quickly scanned your diary for the past week and the past 2 weekends.

It seems like you do net around 1220-1420 MOST days of the week (M-F), but on the days you don't net in this range you are WELL over that range, like your Fridays. So just keep that in mind...For the past 11 days (Jul 7-Jul 17) , your net average is around 1755 net cals/per day.

Sundays you seem to "NET" well.
You'll eat a lot on Sunday, but exercise a lot on those Sundays too.

Saturdays, you don't NET well.
You'll eat a lot on Saturday, but do not exercise that much (in comparison to how much you ate.

Maybe you can find a balance between option 1 and 2. (Not sure what the main difference between 1 and 2 is though).

Tighten up overall, and also lighten up on the weekends.

So for example, every day, you seem to have 8 tablespoons of creamer, aim for 2 or none. Train your taste buds to like coffee plain by reducing the amount of creamer you use every day by less than 1 tbs of creamer. This worked for me, so now I just use a bit of almond milk/coconut milk and I only have coffee every other day switching between coffee and green tea. My goal is to just go with green tea only.

Another example of tweaking your diet is hollowing out your bagel. Put the PB on it, or some fruit, and no butter. It has less number of cals than a whole bagel with butter. And you would have eaten the PB for an evening snack anyways, so eat it earlier in the day for the energy.

Also, save high energy dense foods on days you are training, not on days you are not exercising. For example, last saturday, you had the odwalla bar AND chipotle for lunch. However you only exercised for 204 cals. Maybe this small amount of food (the odwalla bar) was not necessary. I would only eat both the odwalla and chipotle knowing that I was going to run for 1530 cals (your sunday burn). Does this make sense? Just eat enough for the amount of training that you will be doing.

Small, high calorie, nutrient dense foods are good, but not if you don't need the extra calories. On days you do not exercise that much, eat LARGE VOLUMOUS low calorie nutrient dense foods (fruits, veggies, I'm sure you know them all by now) and with a protein (cheese, yogurt, hummus) to help slow the absorbtion of the sugars.

Find ways to tweak what you already do, and balance the overeating on the weekends with your normal weekdays, because you never know when you may find yourself in a rut, and can't exercise or run the way you do, and you'll be stuck with having ate so many foods on the weekend and missed your exercise for some reason on Sunday/Saturday.

Good luck girl!

Rilke

^Does MFP show a refined vs natural sugar breakdown?

I wouldn't base your comments on F-Su in my diary. I am already completely aware those days need work. M-Th is pretty balanced and how I *try* to eat as often as possible.

Low carb would be hard for me based on my personally preferences and being a runner. I am also not a big fan of limiting food groups, but balancing as best I can.

Just observations, not judging or criticizing:

Last Wednesday: 302 calories from Snickers bars
Last Tuesday: 17 grams of sugar in that Odwalla bar
Both of these days, plus Monday, you got 150-170 calories per day from a Skinny Cow dessert.

Ignoring F-S like you said (though trying to improve your diet on these days would be wise. You can still splurge, just in moderation)

Thursday the 7: 180 calories from Brookside dark chocolate things.
Wednesday the 6: 353 calories from Odwalla + candy and 170 calories from Skinny Cow

I don't want to keep going back, but I think this illustrates what I said. Again, I am not criticizing . . . just trying to help.

DontThinkJustRun

Thanks Beila!

I'm working on the creamer thing. M-F I'm down to 6 Tbsps. My coffee mug is HUGE so at best I may be able to get myself down to 4, this is a work in process.

I agree with the odawalla bar thing. At the moment I've moved my afternoon snack to right after lunch or as part of my lunch because I find not eating a snack in the afternoon helpful with food obsession. I always crave something sweet right after lunch and often a piece of fruit just doesn't cut it. I've actually considered maybe buying some mini dark chocolates because 1 or 2 of those would be less cals.

I see the need to really align my nutrition with my exercise...that is also a work in process. Saturday's are difficult because I need to fuel up for Sunday's long run, but I don't think I need to fuel up that much...so some adjustments could certainly be made there. I think hitting maintenance Saturday's could be doable, but if I eat in a deficit Saturday's I find myself getting hungry and dizzy during my long run Sunday's.

Friday's are a bit of a loss...that is just purely emotional eating there...so that needs work...

BeilaLin

I actually keep track of my total calories in excel as well as on MFP (I'm pretty much a huge nerd FYI). Then I calculate a weekly average and that's really the number I try to keep at a certain level. You could try that.

I REALLY like this suggestion. This would work for people who splurge on weekends, or those who have extremely varied days of exercise and calorie intake (people who calorie cylce, train hard on weekends), etc....

DontThinkJustRun

Last Wednesday: 302 calories from Snickers bars
Last Tuesday: 17 grams of sugar in that Odwalla bar
Both of these days, plus Monday, you got 150-170 calories per day from a Skinny Cow dessert.

Ignoring F-S like you said (though trying to improve your diet on these days would be wise. You can still splurge, just in moderation)

Thursday the 7: 180 calories from Brookside dark chocolate things.
Wednesday the 6: 353 calories from Odwalla + candy and 170 calories from Skinny Cow

I don't want to keep going back, but I think this illustrates what I said. Again, I am not criticizing . . . just trying to help.

This just proves what poor memory I have! I completely forgot about all that stuff! LOL! I've been trying to "allow" intermittent splurges when craving arise to hopefully decrease the all out deliberate splurges on the weekends, clearly that's not working so maybe it's time to get back to saying no more often if I'm going to splurge on the weekend anyway.

Rilke

This just proves what poor memory I have! I completely forgot about all that stuff! LOL! I've been trying to "allow" intermittent splurges when craving arise to hopefully decrease the all out deliberate splurges on the weekends, clearly that's not working so maybe it's time to get back to saying no more often if I'm going to splurge on the weekend anyway.

Exactly my point. It seems too that you are aware of your eating weaknesses (emotional eating, not saying no), and poor memory or not you are tracking things. Awareness really is half (or more) the battle. And there is a lot of good advice from others in this thread

BeilaLin

Thanks Beila!

I'm working on the creamer thing. M-F I'm down to 6 Tbsps. My coffee mug is HUGE so at best I may be able to get myself down to 4, this is a work in process.

I agree with the odawalla bar thing. At the moment I've moved my afternoon snack to right after lunch or as part of my lunch because I find not eating a snack in the afternoon helpful with food obsession. I always crave something sweet right after lunch and often a piece of fruit just doesn't cut it. I've actually considered maybe buying some mini dark chocolates because 1 or 2 of those would be less cals.

I see the need to really align my nutrition with my exercise...that is also a work in process. Saturday's are difficult because I need to fuel up for Sunday's long run, but I don't think I need to fuel up that much...so some adjustments could certainly be made there. I think hitting maintenance Saturday's could be doable, but if I eat in a deficit Saturday's I find myself getting hungry and dizzy during my long run Sunday's.

Friday's are a bit of a loss...that is just purely emotional eating there...so that needs work...

Oh I didn't consider your need to carb fuel on Saturdays for Sunday's long run...This could also be accomplished by faster absorbing energry sources the DAY OF your runs....this way, you don't have to eat a whole lot on Saturdays, fueling your cravings for your after dinner snack on Saturdays. I see that you do that with your GU gel, and that may be all you need to keep you going. Try it out.

Also, as a note, consider what is actually fueling your long runs when you plan your meals. As a marathoner, do you want an odwalla bar or skinny cow to fuel you? Just an example, not critism at all.

Try to keep your snacks to less than 200 cals. Make the purpose of snacking to fuel you until the next meal, not make you feel full as if it were a meal. And when you eat fruits or ice cream (the skinny cow stuff) as snacks, it's fueling your hunger even more due to the sugar spikes, so eat those in controlled moderation or with proteins to slow the absorption.

I guess try new ways of snacking and eating less cals here and there. This way, you'll never miss a thing, and it will just be second nature.

DontThinkJustRun

Honestly the skinny cow's aren't for fuel at all...I have a sweet tooth...and I'm sure there are things that I could do to curb it, but I'm not sure I'm interested, it's been an issue my entire life and I have tried in the path to find other ways to deal with it and nothing really seems to work. I've even gone with the "clean diet" and that didn't help either. I do add the PB on Saturday's for fuel for Sunday.

I think step 1 is to "clean up" my weekday choices a bit. Step 2 would be to get my Friday's and Saturday's to maintenance levels and not over. See where that gets me and go from there.

BeilaLin

How was the "clean diet"? My friend just told me about this last week. The person doing her high colonic suggested it to her.

It's this one ($8 on amazon):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061735337/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1552100383&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1QHG2419THEHNVJZW7TT

I figured the skinny cow was more of a treat than dessert, and this may take time to beat the old habits. But for now, on Saturdays, consider your energy sources for long run days on Sundays, and make sure each food choice will give you optimal calorie burning for that day of the long run. If you have to have sweets, eat them earlier in the day on Saturday so that you can have the slower burning foods (PB, odwalla, carbs--but choose whole grains) eaten just before and closer to the running time.

If you feel you need to splurge, I would stick to one day of the weekend to splurging (maybe your fridays), and use the day before your long runs to carbo load and what not (I am no expert on this or have any idea about carbo loading).

I also like your idea of dark chocolate. I recently bought some organic dark chocolate from Dagoba brand and it's great! It doesn't make me want to eat more because of the intensity of the cocao (buy at least 72%). It actually has been my "stop eating" signal to my brain. Just 2 small pieces is around 50 cals.

Whatever sweet thing you get, make sure it's GOOD and what you WANT to eat, that way you don't go off eating more of other stuff and trying to figure out how to fill that need/desire. You know how Bethenny Frankel teaches this in her book.

Your step 1 / step 2 outlook looks good though, and you can use this week right now to change it and see how you like it. Just be mindful of the little things, and you'll see the difference in the big picture.

DontThinkJustRun

I was following Tosca Reno's recipes from the "Clean Diet" cookbook and book. I still use a lot of the recipes, but the "clean" lifestyle just isn't for me. I can no longer eat 5-6xs a day and as much as I want to be a full fledge health nut it's just not sustainable for me.

finabella

Hi

A few things that I would look at changing are

Stop having so much fun in the food department on a weekend, treat yourself but stop going 1000 cal over for the day. I usually have one free day a week but I still try to keep within 500cals of my allocation.

Add sugar to the list of items you can view in your daily dairy, I think you might get a surprise about how much sugar your consuming.

You talk allot about maintenance which confuses me as you need to decide if your happy at the weight you are or want to loose more and if you do want to lose forget maintenance stage. You are doing fantastic work in the exercise department but I think your eating is canceling all your hard work. (This is what I did myself for over 6 months until I found MFP and got serious).

DontThinkJustRun

^agreed...I'm not sure why I'm having so much trouble getting my weekends to a bit more respectable. I've always liked the say you can have it all, you just can't have it all at once!

I guess I focus a lot on maintenance because it was a difficult transition the first time and what led me to regain 10 lbs so I want to be sure it a more natural transition this time, even if it means losing slower.

BeilaLin

you can have it all, you just can't have it all at once!

And the others too!!

Here's a recap! LOL, I'm LOVING THIS BOOK, and I'm almost done! 20 more pages and then returning it tomorrow.....I've been meaning to type out the rules so I can print it on a notecard for myself...so here they are for you

---

1. Your Diet is a Bank Account:
Base your choices on balancing throughout the day, so you don't eat too much of any one thing and each meal balances the others with complementary food choices. Decide how you want to invest and balance it out.

2. You Can Have it All, Just Not All at Once:
Keep it simple, pick the one or two things you really want. You'll always have another chance to make a different choice in a later meal. So have the salad and the pizza and the wine. Or the soup, the salad, and the dessert.

3. Taste Everything, Eat Nothing:
Be choosy and discerning, especially if you have a lot of great choices of food to eat like at a buffet, and if you can't decide, just have small tastes of what you really truly want.

4. Pay Attention:
Don't eat until you're ready to pay attention to what you are eating and enjoy it sitting down and let your body register the meal--no standing up, working, driving, or watching TV.

5. Downsize Now!
Eat from smaller plates, bowls, glasses, cultivate a new sense of portions.

6. Cancel Your Membership in the Clean Plate Club:
Quit finishing everything on your plate--share it, save it, or leave it if it's not that good.

7. Check Yourself before you Wreck Yourself:
Stop Binge Eating! Never do it again.

8. Know Thyself:
Customize the way you eat to fit who you are.

9. Get Real:
Eat local, organic real food, not fake processed foods. Make sure you can pronounce the ingredients in the list.

10. Good For You:
Make every habit you change be from a place of caring for and loving yourself.

*Special, Secret sub-rule:
Don't Eat Boring Food:
Food should be enjoyed and exciting, otherwise you'll go off eating something else. When it comes to adding things to make your food more enjoyable and exciting, just remember the other rules and pick your battles--instead of plain boiled skinless chicken, have the breaded chicken dipped in flour and fried OR with the buttery marsala sauce, but not both! (Remember, you can have it all, just not all at once).