Eating splurges & Weight maintenance

LifeLongJourney

I am no longer trying to loose weight, I am trying to maintain, and I couldn't find a maintenance thread, so sorry if this is the wrong place.

This past month has not been good for me, I have been stress eating and bored snacking. It started off with a little bit of sweets a few days in the weeks of this month but recently in the last three weeks I have eaten out at least once in each of those three weeks.

I am moving from my hometown in a few days I wanted to eat at the places I won;t be able to eat at again, even if I haven't been there in years. For old times sake, but now I am feeling overwhelmingly guilty. The first two eat out meals I ate was a "rip off" poutine, where it's chunky fires, lots of gravy and lots of cheese. I call it rip off because they don't use cheese curds. The week after that I had a fish burger with pea soup. I am not concerned about the pea soup but I didn't know the fish in my fish burger would be deep fried... I never had something deep fried in over a year... and then today... I had my last "celebration" meal, which was a sea food platter which had 8 oz halibut, 5 Shrimp, 4 Scallops, and a "cod cake" when it's like a pattie made with cod, and potatoes. On the side of that i has some mashed potatoes and veggies. But once again... I didn't know in till I got it, that the fish would be deep fried (both in a batter or course).

I did weigh myself this morning, before I ate that very unhealthy lunch... and I didn't gain weight. So even with my eating habits bad this month and worse as the month comes to a end, I still haven;t gained weight but after this meal... I feel really disgusted with myself and now very paranoid I will gain weight back. Because I did feel so bad about the deep fried stuff I did head to the track where I walked a brisk pace for a hour, but I don't think it is enough to counter act it. I never input the cardio on MFP app because I don't trust the calorie burn. Plus when I see I went over fats, I dunno how much of that I burn off, I can only kidn of guess the calories.

I dunno if MFP is the best app for help me maintain weight, but my activity level is actually not very high. I do some strength training, so I have a bit of muscle mass, but nothing too vigorous, and I hardly do cardio as I used too. I basically sit on my butt all day. So, MFP tells me I have to eat 1710 a day to maintain my weight, and I have been using that as a guideline and I have no idea it's even accurate and different sites and apps tell me different numbers for maintenance.

I'm 133 pounds, and I am 21 years old and female, and I am 5'5''. And of course, eating such things has taken me over my calorie limit on those days I went to eat out.

I am getting off track. Anyway, I am feeling utterly gross and guilty about how I ate this month, and I can't get it back. I keep telling myself when I move, I will go back to my super healthy eating habit ways, but I almost don't trust myself. I feel lucky for not gaining anything back this month(yet) and even though I haven't(yet), I feel upset with myself that I even put such food past my lips so many times in one month.

In summery, is it possible to out exersize your splurges so it does not have any effect on your weight?
Does MFP give the most accurate numbers for calories burned and calories needed to maintain weight?

If anyone knows any sites they think is better for weight maintenance, or calorie burn, feel free to share too!

MTBrob

You can't exercise a way a bad diet.. just can't...


That being said... so what you had a few lousy meals just move forward.. You are only self sabotaging yourself when you say I will get back on track when I move etc etc.. I see it all the time.. I will change starting next week. I will change on monday ..

BULL CRAP !!!! Change STARTS NOW!

So... When you go to these restaurants order healthy.... You came on here posting your guilty conscience hoping it would make yo feel better but the only thing that really is going to make you feel better, is to get back on track ..

Its just Food... who cares if it will be a long time before you get to eat there again ...

SO how bad do you want it ? How bad do you want to keep the body you always wanted ?

Don't waste all your effort.... Whats more important to you ? Food or Health?

You are the only one who can decide.

LifeLongJourney

You can't exercise a way a bad diet.. just can't...


That being said... so what you had a few lousy meals just move forward.. You are only self sabotaging yourself when you say I will get back on track when I move etc etc.. I see it all the time.. I will change starting next week. I will change on monday ..

BULL CRAP !!!! Change STARTS NOW!

So... When you go to these restaurants order healthy.... You came on here posting your guilty conscience hoping it would make yo feel better but the only thing that really is going to make you feel better, is to get back on track ..

Its just Food... who cares if it will be a long time before you get to eat there again ...

SO how bad do you want it ? How bad do you want to keep the body you always wanted ?

Don't waste all your effort.... Whats more important to you ? Food or Health?

You are the only one who can decide.

Everything you said is the truth and brutal honesty is what I personally needed to hear. I dunno how to explain it but I knew all of this myself already, but I still needed to hear it from another person in order to motivate me back to my healthy eating habits. Back to the healthy person that I was before this month hit.

Health is more important. Food just lasts a few minutes when health lasts a life time.

I'm going to get back on track today, even though the day started off really bad I still have the rest of the day a head of me and I will make it count!

I will admit, the hardest part for me will be moving forward from my bad choices this month. I find it hard to move on from "failures", I can't just leave them in the past when they belong, but I certinally will try and like you said when I get back on track it will make me feel better.

huckleberry0070

If you're not sure about the maintenance calories MFP is calculating for you, shop around at a few other sites to see what they say. A lot of people say that MFP calculates things pretty low. I personally like this one: http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

If you want to find out your maintenance calories, just select the "gain muscle, lose fat" option. I put in the information you gave and selected a light activity level (1-3 hours per week light exercise) and it gave me maintenance calories of 1972.

Kelley528

It seems look you associate food with emotional needs. You are leaving your home town so you decide to bid farewell by eating. You went to eat at all the plaves you wont be able to eat at anymore. its not like they wont have food where you are moving to.

Going off track for one meal is not the end of the world. One day you can recover from. But you went off track 3 times all out of an emotional need to eat these foods.

Maybe this was just an experience the last few weeks and you will move to your new town and stay on track. But if you keep associating memories, happiness, emotions, etc... with food you will gain weight back.

Just be careful. if you want to have a so called cheat day and indulge just look at the reasons as to why you are doing it to make sure it doesnt override your progess and become the new way you eat again.

OhKelsey1

First, I know EXACTLY what you mean, because I've done it too. You hit your goal weight and you think, "Finally, I can relax!" Only relaxing turns into going back to bad habits. The thing about extra calories is, they stack up, and eventually they WILL catch up with you. I did that thing where I weighed myself after a bad meal and thought "Cool, didn't gain anything, dodged a bullet!' Then, after about 6 months of this, the weight started showing up.

You've got to get back to the determination you had with your weight loss. But you've also got to let GO of this last month. Feeling guilty is just going to make you feel worse. Let it go, and get back on track right this second!

MTBrob

I will admit, the hardest part for me will be moving forward from my bad choices this month. I find it hard to move on from "failures", I can't just leave them in the past when they belong, but I certinally will try and like you said when I get back on track it will make me feel better.

The ultimate failure would be to quit..

Don't quit after all the sweat
Don't quit after all the work
Don't quit after all the progress.
Don't quit EVER

Its not a diet it's a life change.. Welcome to your new life!