Weekly chat - July 30 - Aug 5

shorty313

Welcome to our weekly thread! Please feel free to repost the thread on Monday of each new week. Just remember to change the dates in the topic title.

We post here for motivation and support. Feel free to share your successes and your failures. Really, you should feel free to share whatever is on your mind. Just be respectful and expect respect in return.

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Paul (PJYoung2012)
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Debbie (shorty313)
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Jackie (jaxygirl)
Sonya (sonyachan)
Ellie (ellie78)
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shorty313

YAY OLYMPICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sonyachan

YAY OLYMPICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes! I am highly motivated in my swimming now!

ellie78

I need to start watching (been DVRing) and get some of that Olympic motivation!

I'm curious as I know people do different things. Do you eat flat calories every day or do the eat back exercise calories thing and which one do you feel works better? I've done both and I'm starting to think that the flat calorie thing just isn't working for me, mostly due to my lifestyle, but we also need to do what works.

At any rate, I've decided to drop my calories and pull out the old HRM and give that a go for awhile. My scale keeps creeping up and I need to get this under control!

shorty313

Ellie - I started with 1450 cals plus exercise, and did that for a few months. At that point I was running and lifting on the same days, so it was 3x/week higher cals, 4x a week 1450 cals. I was averaging about 0.5lb/ week loss. Then I started separating my exercise days and decided to eat a flat amount all week, since I was exercising 6/7 days. I went to 1750 cals/day, which was a slight increase in weekly cals. Doing that I'd hold steady for a few weeks, then drop 1-1.5 lb all at once. I recently decided to cut back a bit more to break the plateau i was stuck at, I think I'm at 1680 right now. I find it EASIER to eat the same amount daily, but I think I lost more consistently eating more on exercise days. Who knows? It's an experiment for sure!

Speaking of experiments, I'm slowly adding dairy and gluten back to my diet this week to see what happens. Fingers crossed!

saihtnyc

I'm also motivated for swimming in part due to the Olympics - I started doing laps last Friday & Saturday and sheesh I'm out of shape for swimming! But I loved it and will keep going over the pool. Without a gym membership and it being so hot for running, swimming at our neighborhood pool is a great solution!

I need new goggles though.

Shrinking_Moody

Hey Everyone -

Ellie - Having only been on this site for about a month and a half - I'm still doing things the MFP way. I'm at 1200 calories per day - and I do eat back my exercise calories. I've lost about 13lbs to day which is basically on track for my 2lb per week goal - but I'm starting to feel more tired so I've thought about tweaking those numbers a bit. I've also been reading up on the whole EM2WL thing.


I'm glad it's already Wednesday - and looking forward to our mini-break this weekend - just to Charlotte (about an hour away) for a theme park visit - but still a nice little break. I'm a little concerned about the junk food but hoping I can stick to decent food choices and that all of the walking/water park fun will balance out my eating habits for Saturday. I'll be wearing my HRM too - just to be sure.

Also hoping my little guy does well using the potty while we are there. He's not a fan of going in public places - but seems to adjust pretty well with his foldable potty seat thing. I'll just have to remember to ask him frequently and take a change or two of clothes just in case.

Hope you all have had/continue to have a great week.

ellie78

I have been on the EM2WL train for about 5 months now. I think my problem is that I'm just not disciplined enough with measuring, little snacks, a drink, etc that were fine to have extra at a lower amount but at the small deficit of the EM2WL method I seem to actually be gaining at this point from it after spending months without any change in my weight. I dropped my calories back down to 1500 from 2000 so we will see how this goes, I will still end up close to 2000 on exercise days so the change will really come on rest days. We'll see how it goes I guess. I'm going to officially re-weigh in on Friday and get back on track with some losses! (i hope!)

neurochamp

Wow, looks like it's been a quiet week!

I've spent almost the entire week cleaning my house from top to bottom...even though I know I'll just have to do it again after this weekend.... So... my husband and friends have this yearly competition where they have a "decathlon" of "fake sports" (air hockey, ping pong, foosball, mini golf, etc.). In short, sixteen 30-something guys are going to be at my house all weekend, eating, drinking, making a mess, breaking my stuff, and being generally loud until I make my husband shush them at 3am so I can sleep. I'm used to it - this is the 11th year of the games - but I'm usually pretty cranky and eager to have my nice, quiet personal space bubble back by the end of the weekend :bigsmile:

Hope everyone else is having a good week! The weekend is almost here! :drinker:

shorty313

Emma that sounds fun!

Looks like all is well over here, back to my dairy and gluten eating self :bigsmile:

neurochamp

That's great news, glad you're feeling better (and can eat your normal diet again)!

coreyisaacs

Read the scariest thing last night on MFP.

My wife scours the forums and reads a ton of them. She found one that prompted us to have a nutrition and health chat with our 11 year old daughter. There was a member of MFP who was advocating an unhealthy way of eating, and by unhealthy I mean she was eating a cup of carrots a day. Literally. Here daily calories were averaging about 200-500. It was to the point she was logging Halls (registered trademark) cough drops. She was severely emaciated and malnourished.

Since MFP does have a help function, my wife graciously asked the help department if they could get in touch with her and get her some help. She was 5'4", weighed 113 lbs., and wanted to get to 90 lbs. Terribly unhealthy. I really hope they can help her.

It was just scary.

ellie78

That is scary. There are an unfortunately large number of people using these types of sites who are not trying to get healthy. I feel like the mods do a pretty good job of tracking that type of thing in the forums when it turns towards advocating but controls seem to more or less stop there. Good for you for talking to your daughter about health and nutrition. It just doesn't seem like there are a lot of resources for young people to learn about those things anymore.

neurochamp

Agreed - both that this behavior is horrifying and that young people (women for the most part) don't seem to always have the resources and support they need to make healthy decisions. It certainly doesn't help that our society's standards for beauty are unrealistic and in a lot of cases extremely unhealthy. As a college prof who teaches about nutrition, obesity, and eating disorders (admittedly only as one topic of many in my Brain & Behavior class...), it's pretty eye-opening how poorly most of my students understand eating disorders. Definitely kudos to you (Corey) for talking to your daughter about this.

saihtnyc

I had an eating disorder when I was 14, i barely ate anything. It is really easy to slide down that slippery slope.

saihtnyc

Today I finally went running again, after perhaps months. The longer it goes without running, the harder it is to get out there. It was getting dark, we had 2/3 kids asleep, so I went out before it was completely dark. I wasn't that fast, but I'm so relieved I did 2.3 miles. I need to keep at it now!

I was motivated because my mid-day eating was a bit crazy. I didn't have time for lunch before taking my son to a birthday party, so I had a Kind mini bar (fruit and nut bar) on the way. Then at the party they had pizza and cake for the kids and parents. So since I was starving, I had a piece of pizza. I was trying not to have another, so I had some fruit, but in the end had a second piece. Then my son didn't eat the cake so I ate some of his piece. Ugh. Was not worth it!