Of refeeds and diet breaks
Replies
-
Right. I think we can at least agree that glucose is readily available fuel for immediate use by whatever system needs it.
Glycogen as a storage bundle of glucose, will be freely released from the liver to provide more glucose as needs are increased. During intense glycolytic activity muscle glycogen provides glucose for muscles.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22417/
There is never a point in time where we don’t have blood glucose circulation otherwise we’d die.
Yep, agree with all of that.
I think the part that is in question, is a drop (like I observed in the noted fasted measurements) an indicator of glycogen store depletion? Outside of biopsy, wouldn't that over ketone presence be a better indicator of liver glycogen levels? If not, what do you think qualifies as a non-invasive quantification?
It really depends. Were those home meters, or laboratory/hospital meters?
Home meters can be up to 15 or 20 percent off. That makes your 85 and your 75 about equal, with possibly a slight dip at 120 hours from the 75 to 60, but even that 60 is within 15 percent of the 75.
From a purely scientific standpoint, I'd say that you were fairly stable, which indicates nothing beyond that you are human with a functional pancreas and functional alpha and beta cells.8 -
collectingblues wrote: »Nony_Mouse wrote: »I've finally read nearly all of this thread. But I need people to dumb things down for me.
@Nony_Mouse Why are you now doing "moderately low carb"? I must admit I cringe at the thought of one of my heroes going the low carb cult route, but knowing you, you will have a good reason.
I've always eaten lowish carb (around 100-120) at a deficit, not because I think there's any magic in it, just because it's easier for me to create and sustain a deficit that way. Even at maintenance 150g a day would be the norm for me most of the time. I'm all about the protein, and the things I eat tend to be higher fat (I'm looking at you, avocado and halloumi, oh and dark choc pb in my shakes!), so by the time those two things are in there's not a lot of room left for carbs, and they're the thing I care least about. Nothing cultish about it, just basic maths. I just don't shout it from the rooftops that I'm technically low carb (if you subscribe to that meaning lower than 150g), because it's just the way I eat. Dropped that a little lower than normal the past few days simply to shift some of the unholy amount of water weight I was lugging around. Purely psychological, I know it isn't fat weight.
So there you go, I've always been moderately low carb, you just didn't know it
I've been doing the same thing, Nony. The dietitian had me doing a moderate low carb during the pre-race taper, to try to curb that taper weight gain and keep my brain from freaking out. I actually enjoyed it, and found it easier to do when I was focusing on protein more, so it seems to have stuck.
*slowly raises hand* I'm also low to moderate carb right now, just because that's how the macros land when I focus on protein. I would actually prefer to be higher carb since I'm ramping up my cycling and running, but I seem to be unconsciously reaching for the protein, fat and fiber trifecta.
Me, too. I've been really good at managing my macros for the last couple of months for roughly a 1/3 for each. My exercise has been crap for the last few weeks (though still getting steps) because of the 15 hour work days. But I keeping on track with what I can. I keep lots of food in my office, so even when there are emergency meetings, I can still manage my nutrition--at least the macros.
I have to say I feel you on the work hours cutting into activity time
I retired last May (sing hallelujah!) but for the 14 previous years I had a 4 hour daily commute and my activity was practically nothing outside of weekends. I'm impressed you're keeping up with your steps (I think you have a more or less sedentary job in mental health counselling?) Yeah, I ended up keeping a bunch of portioned out food in my office, because toward the end there I was hitting the snack machine for potato chips and snickers bars almost on the hour. 2 -
Right. I think we can at least agree that glucose is readily available fuel for immediate use by whatever system needs it.
Glycogen as a storage bundle of glucose, will be freely released from the liver to provide more glucose as needs are increased. During intense glycolytic activity muscle glycogen provides glucose for muscles.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22417/
There is never a point in time where we don’t have blood glucose circulation otherwise we’d die.
Yep, agree with all of that.
I think the part that is in question, is a drop (like I observed in the noted fasted measurements) an indicator of glycogen store depletion? Outside of biopsy, wouldn't that over ketone presence be a better indicator of liver glycogen levels? If not, what do you think qualifies as a non-invasive quantification?
I think your fasting glucose measurements are more indicative of metabolic health and glucose utilization as opposed to measuring stores. And I think this is where the divide in our understanding came to a pause, when I assumed you were speaking to total muscle glycogen, and not liver glycogen. So, if you were talking about liver glycogen, then yes, you're correct, ketone presence would indeed qualify as a measurement of liver glycogen depletion. For non-invasive techniques, I did come across this in passing, but it still requires testing outside of just using blood glucose solely: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_anyone_have_a_protocol_to_quantify_glycogen_levels_in_liver_and_skeletal_muscles
In your case, assuming you were following a keto diet for some time prior to the carb refeed, by definition your liver glycogen would be low if producing ketones, the glucose response from the carb refeed is initially an insulin resistant response.
From Lyle's ketogenic diet book:
Insulin resistance
Although low-carbohydrate diets tend to normalize insulin and blood glucose levels in many
individuals, a little known effect is increased insulin resistance when carbohydrates are refed.
There is little research concerning the physiological effects of refeeding carbohydrates after long-
71
term ketogenic dieting although fasting has been studied to some degree. Early ketogenic diet
literature mentions a condition called ‘alloxan’ or ‘starvation diabetes’, referring to an initial
insulin resistance when carbohydrates are reintroduced to the diet following carbohydrate
restriction (2).
In brief, the initial physiological response to carbohydrate refeeding looks similar to what is
seen in Type II diabetics, namely blood sugar swings and hyperinsulinemia. This type of
response is also seen in individuals on a CKD. It should be noted that this response did not occur
universally in research, being more prevalent in those who had preexisting glucose control
problems. As well, exercise appears to affect how well or poorly the body handles carbohydrates
during refeeding.
One hypothesis for this effect was that ketones themselves interfered with insulin binding
and glucose utilization but this was shown not to be the case (3,4). In fact, ketones may actually
improve insulin binding (2). The exact reason for this ‘insulin resistance’ was not determined until
much later. The change was ultimately found to be caused by changes in enzyme levels,
especially in those enzymes involved in both fat and carbohydrate burning (5). High levels of free
fatty acid levels also affect glucose transport and utilization (6).
Long periods of time without carbohydrate consumption leads to a down regulation in the
enzymes responsible for carbohydrate burning. Additionally, high levels of free fatty acids in the
bloodstream may impair glucose transport (6).
This change occurs both in the liver (5) and in the muscle (5,7). During carbohydrate
refeeding, the body upregulates levels of these enzymes but there is a delay during which the body
may have difficulty storing and utilizing dietary carbohydrates. This delay is approximately 5
hours to upregulate liver enzyme levels and anywhere from 24-48 hours in muscle tissue (8,9).
While there is a decrease in carbohydrate oxidation in the muscle, this is accompanied by an
increase in glycogen storage (7).
These time courses for enzyme up-regulation correspond well with what is often seen in
individuals on a CKD, which is really nothing more than a ketogenic diet followed by carbohydrate
refeeding done on a weekly basis. Frequently, individuals will report the presence of urinary
ketones during the first few hours of their carb-loading period, seeming to contradict the idea that
carbohydrates always interrupt ketosis. This suggests that the liver is continuing to oxidize fat
at an accelerated rate and that ingested carbohydrates are essentially not being ‘recognized’ by
the liver.
After approximately 5 hours, when liver enzymes upregulate, urinary ketone levels
typically decrease as liver glycogen begins to refill. Another interesting aspect of carbohydrate
refeeding is that liver glycogen is not initially refilled by incoming glucose. Rather glucose is
released into the bloodstream for muscle glycogen resynthesis (especially if muscle glycogen
stores are depleted) initially, refilling liver glycogen later.
In practice, many individuals report what appears to be rebound hypoglycemia (low blood
sugar) either during the carb-up or during the first few days of eating carbohydrates when
ketogenic eating is ended, for the reasons discussed above.
Ketones themselves do not appear to alter how cells respond to insulin (4) which goes
against the popular belief that ketogenic diets somehow alter fat cells, making them more likely
to store fat when the ketogenic diet is ended. Practical experience shows this to be true, as many
72
individuals have little trouble maintaining their bodyfat levels when the ketogenic diet is stopped,
especially if their activity patterns are maintained.3 -
MegaMooseEsq wrote: »Haven't been posting but happily keeping up with everyone's stories!
So my diet break led into the realization that I probably don't need to lose more weight, new goal = recomp. So r-e-a-l-l-y extended diet break
. I read all these posts here about you guys struggling to eat too much and thought, there's NO WAY I would have that problem! And yet here I am often having an extra snack I otherwise wouldn't have even thought about because I need a few more calories.
I guess it makes sense though. I gained weight over the years getting slowly used to a little bit more food and a little bit more food. And so in the process of losing the weight very slowly, I got used to a little bit less food and a little bit less food.
I spent a lot of the last 2 years trying to get in a deficit and not managing to, or hitting the deficit one day and then undoing it the next, so maintaining. But my mindset was always deficit. It's weird not having that in the back of my mind anymore!
I've still bumped into the same threads you respond to lol.
And welcome to the recomp club. The painstaking process of feeling like you're spinning your wheels that only becomes apparent that progress is occurring over months, as opposed to weeks.
It's a little bit jarring isn't it? Completely not feeling the need to cut anymore after doing it for so long scares a lot of people.
Yeppers, I've seen you wandering around out there in the mfp wild west!
Considering I lost 15 lbs over almost 2 years, and then another 5 lbs over the next year and a half
you'd think spinning my wheels would be old hat by now, but yeah it's weird. I'm unusually patient by nature though, so I'm sure I'll settle into the new mindset soon. It is kind of nice to step on the scale, see I'm still in my range, and know that means job well done.
I think you might have been around MFP long enough to have seen the threads in their infancy when it was a true wild west haha, but seems like nothing has changed much. At least there aren't threads making claims that peeing out white stuff is the body getting rid of fat. That thread is forever burned into memory and I think it's about 6 years old?
At least with recomp, you know that you can measure success by progressively increasing strength, new vascularity, and/or suddenly seeing muscle definition you haven't seen before if remaining around the same weight. These are objective measurements of progress. If nothing changes, well, then .. time to get some new tires (>_<)
My face literally made the "woo" expression reading this.
I believe I made many unsubtle "white substance" expulsion comments in that thread. The OP specifically used chicken fat as her example. I couldn't ignore taking the shot, so to speak.5 -
@anubis609
Thank you! I haven't had any problems in the TOM department; my only issue was feeling deprived and having a difficult time staying within my budget. I'm not having tiredness issues or mood swings or anything like that; just an increased desire to cheat and being unhappy with my limits, which is why I'm working in the diet break. And if winter would ever let go, I'm itching to start getting some walking in!
I"m a little confused on the 12-14 x current body weight recommendation. When I re-do my profile on MFP to maintain, I get 2460 calories; calcuator.net gives me 2360. But 12X271 (my current weight) = a whopping 3252 calories! That's a big jump for a mostly sedentary person, so I'm a little confused as to what to look for.
I'm definitely not even trying to explain macros to my sister right now; right now its all about getting her used to eating less than she did before. She's complained often of being breathless just walking across a parking lot and of her joints hurting and aching, so I'm working with her on diet for now; hopefully, as she loses weight, the load on her joints will ease and she'll be able to start incorporating more activity. And I do hope that the positive feedback you mention will kick in for her. She was used to eating probably close to 3,000 calories a day; a horrible diet for a woman who is 5'2" and completely sedentary! I started her out around 1700 which is a little over a lb a week deficit for her, but I'm hoping that at first, she'll lose more than that in water weight which will help to reinforce the idea that this will work. I didnt' want to start her at 0.5 lb a week because its so slow that I was afraid the progress would be discouraging for her and she'd quit - to keep her going, she needs to see the progress. And since she's just starting into the deficit, she's dealing with a hunger right now - her body and brain are used to just getting all the food they want, so they're whining; natural I know, but I'm hoping that the scale loss will help her see its completely worth it and she'll ride it out until she gets used to the lower amounts.
She was eating a lot of fast food and boxed foods such as french fries, cheese sticks, etc, so I'm working on getting her to change her diet style a little at a time. For this week, to get her started, I've worked with her on packing her lunch, trying to give her plenty of low calorie snacks such as broccoli, carrots, etc as well as protein like cottage cheese so she can spread it out through the day. I also plan to sit down with her this weekend (barring another snow storm that gets me called in for storm dispatching duty......) to plan out next week's menu for lunch and dinner so she can get used to the planning side.
IT's had a nice side benefit for me in getting me back into the groove, but I so hope this works out for her and that she keeps going despite the initial bump in getting moving and the occasional setback because her health is really in bad shape and losing weight has been proven time and again to be a help with the problems that she's dealing with. And I want her to feel good about herself again!
2 -
bmeadows380 wrote: »@anubis609
Thank you! I haven't had any problems in the TOM department; my only issue was feeling deprived and having a difficult time staying within my budget. I'm not having tiredness issues or mood swings or anything like that; just an increased desire to cheat and being unhappy with my limits, which is why I'm working in the diet break. And if winter would ever let go, I'm itching to start getting some walking in!
I"m a little confused on the 12-14 x current body weight recommendation. When I re-do my profile on MFP to maintain, I get 2460 calories; calcuator.net gives me 2360. But 12X271 (my current weight) = a whopping 3252 calories! That's a big jump for a mostly sedentary person, so I'm a little confused as to what to look for.
I'm definitely not even trying to explain macros to my sister right now; right now its all about getting her used to eating less than she did before. She's complained often of being breathless just walking across a parking lot and of her joints hurting and aching, so I'm working with her on diet for now; hopefully, as she loses weight, the load on her joints will ease and she'll be able to start incorporating more activity. And I do hope that the positive feedback you mention will kick in for her. She was used to eating probably close to 3,000 calories a day; a horrible diet for a woman who is 5'2" and completely sedentary! I started her out around 1700 which is a little over a lb a week deficit for her, but I'm hoping that at first, she'll lose more than that in water weight which will help to reinforce the idea that this will work. I didnt' want to start her at 0.5 lb a week because its so slow that I was afraid the progress would be discouraging for her and she'd quit - to keep her going, she needs to see the progress. And since she's just starting into the deficit, she's dealing with a hunger right now - her body and brain are used to just getting all the food they want, so they're whining; natural I know, but I'm hoping that the scale loss will help her see its completely worth it and she'll ride it out until she gets used to the lower amounts.
She was eating a lot of fast food and boxed foods such as french fries, cheese sticks, etc, so I'm working on getting her to change her diet style a little at a time. For this week, to get her started, I've worked with her on packing her lunch, trying to give her plenty of low calorie snacks such as broccoli, carrots, etc as well as protein like cottage cheese so she can spread it out through the day. I also plan to sit down with her this weekend (barring another snow storm that gets me called in for storm dispatching duty......) to plan out next week's menu for lunch and dinner so she can get used to the planning side.
IT's had a nice side benefit for me in getting me back into the groove, but I so hope this works out for her and that she keeps going despite the initial bump in getting moving and the occasional setback because her health is really in bad shape and losing weight has been proven time and again to be a help with the problems that she's dealing with. And I want her to feel good about herself again!
It's not too hard to imagine that a larger body of mass does require a lot of energy to sustain itself, but I understand where you're coming from. That rough estimate does get more inaccurate at either extreme of bf%, so use MFP's calculator instead. Just as a reiteration of that, I'll include an excerpt from Lyle's Women's Book:
Women, as usual, have their own specific issues related to maintenance calories. The first is that
their energy expenditure for all components of TDEE are roughly 10% below those of men. As discussed
in Chapter 10, most of this is related to differences in body composition (1). This difference is also
reflected in the calculations below and no further adjustments have to be made. There can also be slight
adjustments to TDEE based on the hormonal modifier present and detail-oriented readers may wish to
apply those. Do remember that all of these calculations are only estimates at best; no matter how close to
TDEE they come, they may still have to be adjusted over time.
Estimating RMR
The first step in calculating TDEE is to estimate RMR, the number of calories that the body burns at
complete rest. There are endless equations that have been developed over the years that range from simple
to very complicated. Since they all tend to give results within a few hundred calories of one another, I
prefer to use the simpler equations. For the most part, RMR equations have only been based around body
weight (often including age, height, gender and others) but given the importance of LBM in determining
RMR, these tend to become increasingly inaccurate for women with a very high or very low BF%.
For example, a commonly used equation for women is to multiply bodyweight by 10 cal/lb (22
cal/kg). While this is accurate within a certain range of BF%, it becomes progressively more inaccurate as
BF% goes up. For this reason, I prefer equations that take body composition into account and am
presenting a simple one that I derived myself from other, more complex, equations. It requires body weight
and some estimation of BF% so that the total amount of LBM can be calculated. I've shown the calculation
for two women of different body composition below.
RMR = (12 calories * LBM in pounds) + (2 calories *fat mass in pounds) or
RMR = (26.4 calories * LBM in kg) + (4.4 calories * fat mass in kg)
Example 1
Female at 150 lbs, 22% body fat with 117 lbs LBM and 30 lbs of fat
RMR = 150 lbs * 10 cal/lb = 1500 calories
RMR = (12*117) + (2*30) = 1404 + 60 = 1464 calories or 9.8 cal/lb
Example 2
Female at 250 lbs, 50% body fat with 125 lbs LBM and 125 lbs of fat
RMR = 250 lbs * 10 cal/lb = 2500 calories
RMR = (12*125) + (2*125) = 1750 calories or 7 cal/lb
You can see from the above calculations that while the 10 cal/lb value is very accurate for the leaner
woman it drastically over-estimates the woman with a high BF% with the actual value for RMR dropping
from 10 cal/lb to 7 cal/lb. For women who don't want to perform the above math, the following chart can
158
be used to estimate RMR from just bodyweight. Some estimate of BF% is still required but the values
under each BF% can be multiplied by total body weight to estimate RMR.
BF% 20 | 25 | 30 | 35 | 40 | 45 | 50
RMR (cal/lb) 10.0 | 9.5 | 9.0 | 8.5 | 8.0 | 7.5 | 7.0
RMR (cal/kg) 22 | 21 | 20 | 19 |17.5 | 16.5 | 15.5
To use the chart, bodyweight is multiplied by the RMR value underneath the appropriate BF% value.
The sample female at 150 lbs and 22% body fat would have an estimated RMR of 150 lbs * ~9.7 (halfway
between the 9.5 and 10.0 values for 20 and 25% body fat) or 1455 calories which is effectively identical to
the value I showed above. The 250 lb/50% body fat female would multiply her weight of 250 by 7 to get
an RMR of 1750, identical to the value calculated with the first equation. This value for RMR will be
modified by the activity multipliers, described next.
Activity Multipliers
If someone did nothing more than lay in bed all day, their TDEE would be equal to their RMR. Since
most do not, this value will be increased based on the level of activity being done. Traditionally, activity
multipliers have combined both TEA and NEAT but I find it more useful to split them up for better
accuracy. This approach also makes it easier to take into account changes in each when activity levels are
varying from day to day. Certainly only needing a single multiplier for every day would be simpler but this
tends to be unrealistic unless someone's daily activity is extremely consistent.
Daily Activity (NEAT)
Since not everybody is involved in formal exercise but everyone (unless they are completely
bedridden) performs at least some amount of daily activity, I will start with an estimation of that multiplier.
In the modern world, someone's activity may range from completely sedentary to requiring extremely high
levels of activity is their job or lifestyle is very labor intensive. For this reason, RMR multipliers from 1.2
to 1.9 are usually considered to be realistic with 2.5 times RMR being the maximum energy expenditure
that can be sustained for extended periods (athletes may surpass this for short periods due to their
incredibly high TEA values). For most people a realistic NEAT multiplier will be 1.4-1.7. In the chart
below, I've shown multipliers for different activity levels and their general descriptions.
Activity Level | Description | RMR Multiplier
Sedentary | Sitting, talking, reading, watching TV | 1.3-1.4
Light | Office work with moderate walking | 1.4-1.5
Moderate | Busy lifestyle w/ lots of walking | 1.6-1.7
High | Construction, hard labor | 1.7-1.9
If no formal exercise is being performed, RMR can simply be multiplied by the value above to get the
estimated TDEE. If our 150 pound female with a maintenance of 1455 calories had a sedentary lifestyle,
she would use a multiplier of 1.3 to get a maintenance of 1890-2040 calories (1455 * 1.3 or 1.4). If she
were moderately to highly active, she would use the 1.7 multiplier to get an estimated TDEE of 2475
calories/day (1455 calories/day * 1.7). If formal exercise is being done, it will have to be added to the
above value. I will also provide a chart later in the chapter that will simplify all of the calculations.
When using the above chart, I strongly encourage readers to be realistic about their daily activity
levels. Someone who sits in front of a computer most of the day and does little else will be somewhere
between sedentary and light activity even if they feel that is too low or dislike the relatively low TDEE
value that is estimates. Someone on their feet all day will be in the moderate category and few will achieve
the highest values unless they are moving continuously or working a very labor intensive job. While
many older estimates put most people's multiplier closer to 1.7, I feel that changes in the modern world
have made this too high for many people. Practically I would generally suggest erring on the side of too
low of a multiplier than too high. Calories always need to be adjusted based on real world changes and it's
better to be eating slightly too few and having to increase due to weight loss than the converse under most
circumstances.
1599 -
@bmeadows380
Just as a continuation from the above since the excerpt takes up space, but yes, be patient with your sister and yourself. Ideally, what she needs is the most basic of knowledge, and simply that's to reduce her total calorie intake. The approach I would personally take is to provide healthier alternatives to the foods she currently eats so that it's not a drastic difference from what she currently eats.
For example, if she eats fried chicken, fries, and fried cheese sticks, opt for grilled or rotisserie chicken, baked potato (you can include light drizzle of olive oil, chives, salt, pepper to taste), and string cheese sticks. From a macro perspective, it's about the same, but without the addition of being fried in vegetable oil, and the nutrient density has increased greatly.
You can include some creativity to have fun with food alternatives. If she's part of the selection process in enjoying what she's willing to eat, all the more she'll be into accepting the diet. The best diet is the one that doesn't feel like you're suffering.
If she's a textural eater and truly enjoys the crispiness of fried food, she can invest in an air fryer and air fry anything from vegetables to steak and bacon. Air fryers are dangerously fun (in a good way) to use for almost all your cooking.
If she's a volume eater and loves desserts, google recipes on protein fluff or protein frozen yogurt. It satisfies sweet cravings and is filling. I know I said to avoid supplements as much as possible, but desserts are eaten sparingly and so it's okay in this case. Hell, try adding her favorite protein powder flavor + some cocoa and cinnamon to reduced sodium/no sodium cottage cheese and it almost becomes a sweet ricotta type of treat.
You know her better, but she knows herself best. Just work with her and she'll either directly or indirectly let you know what she does and doesn't like.
And for simplicity's sake, if she's eaten her calculated calorie deficit for the day and she's still hungry, suggest that she can eat lean protein, like an egg white and turkey omelet or something. I linked the positive benefits of protein, even in an overfed state, though it's ideal to avoid overfeeding as much as possible: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321371925_The_Effects_of_Overfeeding_on_Body_Composition_The_Role_of_Macronutrient_Composition-A_Narrative_Review8 -
bmeadows380 wrote: »@anubis609
I"m a little confused on the 12-14 x current body weight recommendation. When I re-do my profile on MFP to maintain, I get 2460 calories; calcuator.net gives me 2360. But 12X271 (my current weight) = a whopping 3252 calories! That's a big jump for a mostly sedentary person, so I'm a little confused as to what to look for.
Bridget, thank you so much for posting this! I've been trying to re-figure my numbers and have run into the same confusion. Used the various calculators online to figure maintenance and was getting some pretty huge numbers, which caused me to chase my tail in WTF-land for a while. I found a pdf online of Lyle's Guide to Flexible Dieting and was beginning to use his calculations, which just confused me further. Then I got my copy of his Women's Book a couple of days ago but hadn't yet got to the section that @anubis609 pulled out. I'm now looking at a maintenance of 2478, which makes rather more sense.
I've been seesawing around a 7-lb range for a few months now and am pretty fed up with it. My first diet break was more confusing than enlightening, so I'm going to give it another shot with a little more awareness.1 -
@anubis609 - thank you very much for that excerpt with the formulas! That is so much more useful for me than the generic ones I was finding! It gives me a maintenance goal of around 2646, which is higher than MFP but may well prove to be more accurate. I was eating 1400 calories for a 1,000 calorie deficit, but I bumped it up to 1800 this week and had a 1.5 lb loss as of yesterday morning. I'll keep an eye on it for next week, and if I lose another 1.5 lbs, then I'll bump my intake up another 750 calories which would be closer Lyle's calculated value than MFP's. I very much appreciate this too, because with Lyle's formula, my 2 lb/week loss goal means I should be eating 1500-1600 calories a day and not the 1400 - that gives me much more room when I go back to full deficit!
This formula also gives my sister some more breathing room as well. The good news is that she loves vegetables but yes, she does loved her fried foods, too - french fries, cheese sticks, fried pickles, etc. I have a convection oven at my house, but I may bite the bullet and get an air fryer as well if it will encourage her to make her own stuff instead of buying the frozen boxed stuff.
On the one hand, she's not a big meat eater and unfortunately, she doesn't like chicken much. I've been working with her this week to try to get a variety of foods in her lunches and still give her things she likes - for instance, I bought her a bag of baked lays potato chips and purposely weighed them out into individual portions and packed them in ziplock bags so she could see what a serving size actually looked like, and so she could see she could still have the potato chips she loves; she just has to learn to portion them out.
I wish there was a way to bookmark a particular page in a thread - I don't want to lose this! I'll have to copy and paste it into an email for myself
2 -
MegaMooseEsq wrote: »Haven't been posting but happily keeping up with everyone's stories!
So my diet break led into the realization that I probably don't need to lose more weight, new goal = recomp. So r-e-a-l-l-y extended diet break . I read all these posts here about you guys struggling to eat too much and thought, there's NO WAY I would have that problem! And yet here I am often having an extra snack I otherwise wouldn't have even thought about because I need a few more calories.
I guess it makes sense though. I gained weight over the years getting slowly used to a little bit more food and a little bit more food. And so in the process of losing the weight very slowly, I got used to a little bit less food and a little bit less food.
I spent a lot of the last 2 years trying to get in a deficit and not managing to, or hitting the deficit one day and then undoing it the next, so maintaining. But my mindset was always deficit. It's weird not having that in the back of my mind anymore!
I've still bumped into the same threads you respond to lol.
And welcome to the recomp club. The painstaking process of feeling like you're spinning your wheels that only becomes apparent that progress is occurring over months, as opposed to weeks.
It's a little bit jarring isn't it? Completely not feeling the need to cut anymore after doing it for so long scares a lot of people.
Yeppers, I've seen you wandering around out there in the mfp wild west!
Considering I lost 15 lbs over almost 2 years, and then another 5 lbs over the next year and a half you'd think spinning my wheels would be old hat by now, but yeah it's weird. I'm unusually patient by nature though, so I'm sure I'll settle into the new mindset soon. It is kind of nice to step on the scale, see I'm still in my range, and know that means job well done.
I think you might have been around MFP long enough to have seen the threads in their infancy when it was a true wild west haha, but seems like nothing has changed much. At least there aren't threads making claims that peeing out white stuff is the body getting rid of fat. That thread is forever burned into memory and I think it's about 6 years old?
At least with recomp, you know that you can measure success by progressively increasing strength, new vascularity, and/or suddenly seeing muscle definition you haven't seen before if remaining around the same weight. These are objective measurements of progress. If nothing changes, well, then .. time to get some new tires (>_<)
My face literally made the "woo" expression reading this.
I believe I made many unsubtle "white substance" expulsion comments in that thread. The OP specifically used chicken fat as her example. I couldn't ignore taking the shot, so to speak.
Way to take one for the team.
0 -
bmeadows380 wrote: »@anubis609 - thank you very much for that excerpt with the formulas! That is so much more useful for me than the generic ones I was finding! It gives me a maintenance goal of around 2646, which is higher than MFP but may well prove to be more accurate. I was eating 1400 calories for a 1,000 calorie deficit, but I bumped it up to 1800 this week and had a 1.5 lb loss as of yesterday morning. I'll keep an eye on it for next week, and if I lose another 1.5 lbs, then I'll bump my intake up another 750 calories which would be closer Lyle's calculated value than MFP's. I very much appreciate this too, because with Lyle's formula, my 2 lb/week loss goal means I should be eating 1500-1600 calories a day and not the 1400 - that gives me much more room when I go back to full deficit!
This formula also gives my sister some more breathing room as well. The good news is that she loves vegetables but yes, she does loved her fried foods, too - french fries, cheese sticks, fried pickles, etc. I have a convection oven at my house, but I may bite the bullet and get an air fryer as well if it will encourage her to make her own stuff instead of buying the frozen boxed stuff.
On the one hand, she's not a big meat eater and unfortunately, she doesn't like chicken much. I've been working with her this week to try to get a variety of foods in her lunches and still give her things she likes - for instance, I bought her a bag of baked lays potato chips and purposely weighed them out into individual portions and packed them in ziplock bags so she could see what a serving size actually looked like, and so she could see she could still have the potato chips she loves; she just has to learn to portion them out.
I wish there was a way to bookmark a particular page in a thread - I don't want to lose this! I'll have to copy and paste it into an email for myself
You're welcome. And Lyle's work is much like a smartphone app, "there's an article (or book) for that." So, it's really hard to disagree with him.
Most overweight individuals tend to not be big meat eaters, especially women. And that's not an overstatement by any means. Remember that among the three macros, carbs and fat are the worst combination to pair together for optimal body composition. They're competing substrates for fuel in the body and it can only burn one or the other, and carbs/glucose is always first in line to be used as fuel. Fat goes straight to storage*. On the other hand, it's really hard to overeat animal protein, so people who like to eat a lot tend to not prefer them.
*Digested fat always goes to storage, but circulates out when insulin levels are low enough to meter them out via lipolysis. Glucose spikes increase insulin levels which halts lipolysis.
If you dive deeper into the Women's Book, Lyle explains that women are driven to eat carbs from a hormonal perspective, for better or for worse, they seek out these macros because in essence, they're comfort food. And no, carbs don't make you fat, but when paired together with fat, the fat makes you fat as a consequence of eating carbs.
That said, if she does like vegetables, there are a variety of plant-based proteins she can focus on which are usually also paired with high fiber (black beans, mushrooms, broccoli, endives, etc.). If she's metabolically healthy, meaning she doesn't have telling signs of insulin resistance (fatty liver, diabetes, PCOS, etc.) then she can eat the spectrum of all fruits and vegetables she likes. But just short of pure vegetarianism, she would still benefit from animal protein if she has an animal food preference.
And since I'm on the topic of new dieters, I just saw this last night from Picture Fit, and the channel is really geared toward dispensing evidence based research in an enjoyable and easily understandable way for anyone interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OVMc2D2Ri0 2 -
bmeadows380 wrote: »The good news is that she loves vegetables but yes, she does loved her fried foods, too - french fries, cheese sticks, fried pickles, etc. I have a convection oven at my house, but I may bite the bullet and get an air fryer as well if it will encourage her to make her own stuff instead of buying the frozen boxed stuff.
On the one hand, she's not a big meat eater and unfortunately, she doesn't like chicken much. I've been working with her this week to try to get a variety of foods in her lunches and still give her things she likes - for instance, I bought her a bag of baked lays potato chips and purposely weighed them out into individual portions and packed them in ziplock bags so she could see what a serving size actually looked like, and so she could see she could still have the potato chips she loves; she just has to learn to portion them out.
It sounds like you're doing great things for yourself and for your sister. Not to refute anything you or @anubis609 have said but just to add another possible approach to the brainstorm, when I started I didn't change any foods at all—e.g., I didn't swap a fried food for a baked version of the same food—I just started paying closer attention to how much of it I ate. I say this so that, if you find yourself getting any pushback on 'what' she's eating you could dial it back to just 'how much' for a little while. There is even anecdotal evidence that suggests people don't notice the quantity difference if they're served 20% less food, and/or that if you serve food on a smaller plate that looks piled up people are happier than if an emptier-looking big plate is put in front of them, even if the actual quantity of food on the two plates is the same. Needless to say, 20% less intake is huge, especially if you don't even notice. Emphasis on the word 'anecdotal' there please don't 'woo' me. I have nothing resembling Anubis's scientific knowledge in my arsenal. Just to put that out there as a strategy idea.
And if even THAT turns out to be too much of a change, supplemental adjustments; e.g., having that 20% less food sitting at a table over conversation instead of on the couch in front of the TV may help make it seem like enough food and/or curb mindless eating.
Still using my own experience as a template, maybe after a couple of weeks or a month she'll be used to that first transitional step enough that you can incrementally start swapping 'healthier substitutes'—a baked thing for a fried thing, a sautéed leafy green for a starch, etc. And in so doing, if these are introduced with the idea of 'Let's try this new thing' as opposed to 'We're not allowed that anymore', in the absence of the mindset of restriction (indeed perhaps substituted with that of adventure) the 'good' things tend to gradually and naturally start crowding out the 'bad' on their own. Like, 10 months in, I would still describe myself as someone who eats anything I want, except less, BUT if I were to look back on my food diary from 10 months ago versus today, I bet that what I wanted 10 months ago and what I want now are different, only it happened so gradually that I didn't notice the change as it was happening. And 10 months isn't much in the scheme of things, so even at a 50 BMI your sister's got time to make evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, changes.
Best of luck to you both!7 -
This content has been removed.
-
bmeadows380 wrote: »The good news is that she loves vegetables but yes, she does loved her fried foods, too - french fries, cheese sticks, fried pickles, etc. I have a convection oven at my house, but I may bite the bullet and get an air fryer as well if it will encourage her to make her own stuff instead of buying the frozen boxed stuff.
On the one hand, she's not a big meat eater and unfortunately, she doesn't like chicken much. I've been working with her this week to try to get a variety of foods in her lunches and still give her things she likes - for instance, I bought her a bag of baked lays potato chips and purposely weighed them out into individual portions and packed them in ziplock bags so she could see what a serving size actually looked like, and so she could see she could still have the potato chips she loves; she just has to learn to portion them out.
It sounds like you're doing great things for yourself and for your sister. Not to refute anything you or @anubis609 have said but just to add another possible approach to the brainstorm, when I started I didn't change any foods at all—e.g., I didn't swap a fried food for a baked version of the same food—I just started paying closer attention to how much of it I ate. I say this so that, if you find yourself getting any pushback on 'what' she's eating you could dial it back to just 'how much' for a little while. There is even anecdotal evidence that suggests people don't notice the quantity difference if they're served 20% less food, and/or that if you serve food on a smaller plate that looks piled up people are happier than if an emptier-looking big plate is put in front of them, even if the actual quantity of food on the two plates is the same. Needless to say, 20% less intake is huge, especially if you don't even notice. Emphasis on the word 'anecdotal' there please don't 'woo' me. I have nothing resembling Anubis's scientific knowledge in my arsenal. Just to put that out there as a strategy idea.
And if even THAT turns out to be too much of a change, supplemental adjustments; e.g., having that 20% less food sitting at a table over conversation instead of on the couch in front of the TV may help make it seem like enough food and/or curb mindless eating.
Still using my own experience as a template, maybe after a couple of weeks or a month she'll be used to that first transitional step enough that you can incrementally start swapping 'healthier substitutes'—a baked thing for a fried thing, a sautéed leafy green for a starch, etc. And in so doing, if these are introduced with the idea of 'Let's try this new thing' as opposed to 'We're not allowed that anymore', in the absence of the mindset of restriction (indeed perhaps substituted with that of adventure) the 'good' things tend to gradually and naturally start crowding out the 'bad' on their own. Like, 10 months in, I would still describe myself as someone who eats anything I want, except less, BUT if I were to look back on my food diary from 10 months ago versus today, I bet that what I wanted 10 months ago and what I want now are different, only it happened so gradually that I didn't notice the change as it was happening. And 10 months isn't much in the scheme of things, so even at a 50 BMI your sister's got time to make evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, changes.
Best of luck to you both!
There's actual evidence, not just anecdote, to support that serving food on a 10" plate vs a traditional 12" dinner plate actually reduced the caloric amount actually eaten. However, going smaller than that didn't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe87yDvRyQ8
That said, if the majority of the problem is reliance on pre-packaged boxed food items, whether it's frozen or fast food, portion size is determined by what's put in the box, and the plate size strategy becomes null. But you're correct that the entirety of her diet does not need to drastically change, if at all. I provided examples of specific swaps that could potentially take place slowly over time. But as an example of portion control, if I suggested the choice to eat a whole rotisserie chicken or 4 pieces of fried chicken: 1 leg, 1 thigh, 1 breast, 1 wing = 1/2 chicken (I know she doesn't like chicken, but it's just easier to compare as an example), assuming calories being equal, it's up to the individual to say what they'd feel more satisfied with. On the one hand, they get to eat twice as many pieces with the rotisserie vs only one. On the other hand, if they love fried food, they might just choose 4 pieces of chicken. And that's perfectly fine too. Either way, there's a calorie reduction as opposed to eating a whole fried chicken.
And yes, there are definitely studies that support eating at the dinner table vs watching tv as a predictor for risk of obesity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3663732/ - never mind that it was an adolescent study, it's applicable to all ages since dietary meal patterns are usually integrated in early childhood.
Don't worry about "woo" reactions. I get them regularly and I barely even pay attention to them anyway 4 -
bmeadows380 wrote: »The good news is that she loves vegetables but yes, she does loved her fried foods, too - french fries, cheese sticks, fried pickles, etc. I have a convection oven at my house, but I may bite the bullet and get an air fryer as well if it will encourage her to make her own stuff instead of buying the frozen boxed stuff.
On the one hand, she's not a big meat eater and unfortunately, she doesn't like chicken much. I've been working with her this week to try to get a variety of foods in her lunches and still give her things she likes - for instance, I bought her a bag of baked lays potato chips and purposely weighed them out into individual portions and packed them in ziplock bags so she could see what a serving size actually looked like, and so she could see she could still have the potato chips she loves; she just has to learn to portion them out.
It sounds like you're doing great things for yourself and for your sister. Not to refute anything you or @anubis609 have said but just to add another possible approach to the brainstorm, when I started I didn't change any foods at all—e.g., I didn't swap a fried food for a baked version of the same food—I just started paying closer attention to how much of it I ate. I say this so that, if you find yourself getting any pushback on 'what' she's eating you could dial it back to just 'how much' for a little while. There is even anecdotal evidence that suggests people don't notice the quantity difference if they're served 20% less food, and/or that if you serve food on a smaller plate that looks piled up people are happier than if an emptier-looking big plate is put in front of them, even if the actual quantity of food on the two plates is the same. Needless to say, 20% less intake is huge, especially if you don't even notice. Emphasis on the word 'anecdotal' there please don't 'woo' me. I have nothing resembling Anubis's scientific knowledge in my arsenal. Just to put that out there as a strategy idea.
And if even THAT turns out to be too much of a change, supplemental adjustments; e.g., having that 20% less food sitting at a table over conversation instead of on the couch in front of the TV may help make it seem like enough food and/or curb mindless eating.
Still using my own experience as a template, maybe after a couple of weeks or a month she'll be used to that first transitional step enough that you can incrementally start swapping 'healthier substitutes'—a baked thing for a fried thing, a sautéed leafy green for a starch, etc. And in so doing, if these are introduced with the idea of 'Let's try this new thing' as opposed to 'We're not allowed that anymore', in the absence of the mindset of restriction (indeed perhaps substituted with that of adventure) the 'good' things tend to gradually and naturally start crowding out the 'bad' on their own. Like, 10 months in, I would still describe myself as someone who eats anything I want, except less, BUT if I were to look back on my food diary from 10 months ago versus today, I bet that what I wanted 10 months ago and what I want now are different, only it happened so gradually that I didn't notice the change as it was happening. And 10 months isn't much in the scheme of things, so even at a 50 BMI your sister's got time to make evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, changes.
Best of luck to you both!
There's actual evidence, not just anecdote, to support that serving food on a 10" plate vs a traditional 12" dinner plate actually reduced the caloric amount actually eaten. However, going smaller than that didn't.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe87yDvRyQ8
That said, if the majority of the problem is reliance on pre-packaged boxed food items, whether it's frozen or fast food, portion size is determined by what's put in the box, and the plate size strategy becomes null. But you're correct that the entirety of her diet does not need to drastically change, if at all. I provided examples of specific swaps that could potentially take place slowly over time. But as an example of portion control, if I suggested the choice to eat a whole rotisserie chicken or 4 pieces of fried chicken: 1 leg, 1 thigh, 1 breast, 1 wing = 1/2 chicken (I know she doesn't like chicken, but it's just easier to compare as an example), assuming calories being equal, it's up to the individual to say what they'd feel more satisfied with. On the one hand, they get to eat twice as many pieces with the rotisserie vs only one. On the other hand, if they love fried food, they might just choose 4 pieces of chicken. And that's perfectly fine too. Either way, there's a calorie reduction as opposed to eating a whole fried chicken.
And yes, there are definitely studies that support eating at the dinner table vs watching tv as a predictor for risk of obesity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3663732/ - never mind that it was an adolescent study, it's applicable to all ages since dietary meal patterns are usually integrated in early childhood.
Don't worry about "woo" reactions. I get them regularly and I barely even pay attention to them anyway
Yes good point of course. I'll only add that if her preference is, say, for fish fingers or something that comes frozen in a box but not portioned into a meal-sized serving, the difference of whipping out 8 versus 10 fish fingers is significant.
Nice to know there's real evidence about portion and plate sizing stuff though. I've seen it in the form of BBC documentaries that seem to support the idea but they don't name their sources (or maybe they do in a web supplement but I've never looked).1 -
bmeadows380 wrote: »The good news is that she loves vegetables but yes, she does loved her fried foods, too - french fries, cheese sticks, fried pickles, etc. I have a convection oven at my house, but I may bite the bullet and get an air fryer as well if it will encourage her to make her own stuff instead of buying the frozen boxed stuff.
On the one hand, she's not a big meat eater and unfortunately, she doesn't like chicken much. I've been working with her this week to try to get a variety of foods in her lunches and still give her things she likes - for instance, I bought her a bag of baked lays potato chips and purposely weighed them out into individual portions and packed them in ziplock bags so she could see what a serving size actually looked like, and so she could see she could still have the potato chips she loves; she just has to learn to portion them out.
It sounds like you're doing great things for yourself and for your sister. Not to refute anything you or @anubis609 have said but just to add another possible approach to the brainstorm, when I started I didn't change any foods at all—e.g., I didn't swap a fried food for a baked version of the same food—I just started paying closer attention to how much of it I ate. I say this so that, if you find yourself getting any pushback on 'what' she's eating you could dial it back to just 'how much' for a little while. There is even anecdotal evidence that suggests people don't notice the quantity difference if they're served 20% less food, and/or that if you serve food on a smaller plate that looks piled up people are happier than if an emptier-looking big plate is put in front of them, even if the actual quantity of food on the two plates is the same. Needless to say, 20% less intake is huge, especially if you don't even notice. Emphasis on the word 'anecdotal' there please don't 'woo' me. I have nothing resembling Anubis's scientific knowledge in my arsenal. Just to put that out there as a strategy idea.
And if even THAT turns out to be too much of a change, supplemental adjustments; e.g., having that 20% less food sitting at a table over conversation instead of on the couch in front of the TV may help make it seem like enough food and/or curb mindless eating.
Still using my own experience as a template, maybe after a couple of weeks or a month she'll be used to that first transitional step enough that you can incrementally start swapping 'healthier substitutes'—a baked thing for a fried thing, a sautéed leafy green for a starch, etc. And in so doing, if these are introduced with the idea of 'Let's try this new thing' as opposed to 'We're not allowed that anymore', in the absence of the mindset of restriction (indeed perhaps substituted with that of adventure) the 'good' things tend to gradually and naturally start crowding out the 'bad' on their own. Like, 10 months in, I would still describe myself as someone who eats anything I want, except less, BUT if I were to look back on my food diary from 10 months ago versus today, I bet that what I wanted 10 months ago and what I want now are different, only it happened so gradually that I didn't notice the change as it was happening. And 10 months isn't much in the scheme of things, so even at a 50 BMI your sister's got time to make evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, changes.
Best of luck to you both!
There's actual evidence, not just anecdote, to support that serving food on a 10" plate vs a traditional 12" dinner plate actually reduced the caloric amount actually eaten. However, going smaller than that didn't.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe87yDvRyQ8
That said, if the majority of the problem is reliance on pre-packaged boxed food items, whether it's frozen or fast food, portion size is determined by what's put in the box, and the plate size strategy becomes null. But you're correct that the entirety of her diet does not need to drastically change, if at all. I provided examples of specific swaps that could potentially take place slowly over time. But as an example of portion control, if I suggested the choice to eat a whole rotisserie chicken or 4 pieces of fried chicken: 1 leg, 1 thigh, 1 breast, 1 wing = 1/2 chicken (I know she doesn't like chicken, but it's just easier to compare as an example), assuming calories being equal, it's up to the individual to say what they'd feel more satisfied with. On the one hand, they get to eat twice as many pieces with the rotisserie vs only one. On the other hand, if they love fried food, they might just choose 4 pieces of chicken. And that's perfectly fine too. Either way, there's a calorie reduction as opposed to eating a whole fried chicken.
And yes, there are definitely studies that support eating at the dinner table vs watching tv as a predictor for risk of obesity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3663732/ - never mind that it was an adolescent study, it's applicable to all ages since dietary meal patterns are usually integrated in early childhood.
Don't worry about "woo" reactions. I get them regularly and I barely even pay attention to them anyway
I doubt you get many woo reactions on this thread. I for one, appreciate every single nugget of wisdom that you so generously offer. Sometimes I don't understand them all, but I appreciate them. MFP should be paying you. It could supplement your income while you are out on leave from the leg modeling business.
9 -
@ZoneFive I didn't see your post right before mine, but I'm glad it helped! I was hearing the other formulas and knew that getting 3000+ calories as my maintance couldn't possibly be right, but I wasn't sure where the disconnect was, either
@HDBKLM You've got a lot of good advice; I won't woo you
I am trying to get her used to a deficit for now because with her height, she's not going to have nearly the range I did when I started (I'm 5'8"; she's petite. I'm solidly built with a large frame - think raw boned Swedish woman from the cliched pioneer movies, while she's smaller though still stout; she's more like the short, robust English farmer's wife you'd see in the old regency era movies lol) But I'm very much trying to get her to see that she can eat a much larger variety than she thinks she can; I don't her thinking in terms of "I can't have this" or "that's off limits"; I want her to think in terms of "is this worth the calories," or better yet "I really want this, but lets eat a smaller portion" and know how to be accurate with that smaller portion and not just eyeballing it. And it will be difficult with my mother as she lives with my parents and my mom's cooking; mom thinks very much in terms of "you can't have that" and its been an uphill battle to get her to realize it's not a matte of 'can't'; its a matter of portion size and is it worth it. That and getting mom to be accurate in what she's actually putting into her food.......(like putting 1/2 a stick of butter in her cooked apples and not telling me........)
At this point, its just making her aware of what an actual serving size is. And as Anubis said, I'm also working with her on trying to curb the mindless eating, which is more of her downfall than even portions sizes at dinner. She's bad for eating while at the computer and in front of the tv, and will keep bags of chips and boxes of crackers or bags of candy at the couch where she lives.
@anubis609 My sister does have PCOS and has been diagnosed as diabetic, though she also has episodes where her blood sugar drops on her. With this being the case, should I be trying to get her to move more to a lower carb diet? (slowly, of course, as I'm trying really hard not to change too much on her at once; just learning to start paying attention to the amount she its is daunting enough for her now!)
2 -
bmeadows380 wrote: »The good news is that she loves vegetables but yes, she does loved her fried foods, too - french fries, cheese sticks, fried pickles, etc. I have a convection oven at my house, but I may bite the bullet and get an air fryer as well if it will encourage her to make her own stuff instead of buying the frozen boxed stuff.
On the one hand, she's not a big meat eater and unfortunately, she doesn't like chicken much. I've been working with her this week to try to get a variety of foods in her lunches and still give her things she likes - for instance, I bought her a bag of baked lays potato chips and purposely weighed them out into individual portions and packed them in ziplock bags so she could see what a serving size actually looked like, and so she could see she could still have the potato chips she loves; she just has to learn to portion them out.
It sounds like you're doing great things for yourself and for your sister. Not to refute anything you or @anubis609 have said but just to add another possible approach to the brainstorm, when I started I didn't change any foods at all—e.g., I didn't swap a fried food for a baked version of the same food—I just started paying closer attention to how much of it I ate. I say this so that, if you find yourself getting any pushback on 'what' she's eating you could dial it back to just 'how much' for a little while. There is even anecdotal evidence that suggests people don't notice the quantity difference if they're served 20% less food, and/or that if you serve food on a smaller plate that looks piled up people are happier than if an emptier-looking big plate is put in front of them, even if the actual quantity of food on the two plates is the same. Needless to say, 20% less intake is huge, especially if you don't even notice. Emphasis on the word 'anecdotal' there please don't 'woo' me. I have nothing resembling Anubis's scientific knowledge in my arsenal. Just to put that out there as a strategy idea.
And if even THAT turns out to be too much of a change, supplemental adjustments; e.g., having that 20% less food sitting at a table over conversation instead of on the couch in front of the TV may help make it seem like enough food and/or curb mindless eating.
Still using my own experience as a template, maybe after a couple of weeks or a month she'll be used to that first transitional step enough that you can incrementally start swapping 'healthier substitutes'—a baked thing for a fried thing, a sautéed leafy green for a starch, etc. And in so doing, if these are introduced with the idea of 'Let's try this new thing' as opposed to 'We're not allowed that anymore', in the absence of the mindset of restriction (indeed perhaps substituted with that of adventure) the 'good' things tend to gradually and naturally start crowding out the 'bad' on their own. Like, 10 months in, I would still describe myself as someone who eats anything I want, except less, BUT if I were to look back on my food diary from 10 months ago versus today, I bet that what I wanted 10 months ago and what I want now are different, only it happened so gradually that I didn't notice the change as it was happening. And 10 months isn't much in the scheme of things, so even at a 50 BMI your sister's got time to make evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, changes.
Best of luck to you both!
There's actual evidence, not just anecdote, to support that serving food on a 10" plate vs a traditional 12" dinner plate actually reduced the caloric amount actually eaten. However, going smaller than that didn't.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe87yDvRyQ8
That said, if the majority of the problem is reliance on pre-packaged boxed food items, whether it's frozen or fast food, portion size is determined by what's put in the box, and the plate size strategy becomes null. But you're correct that the entirety of her diet does not need to drastically change, if at all. I provided examples of specific swaps that could potentially take place slowly over time. But as an example of portion control, if I suggested the choice to eat a whole rotisserie chicken or 4 pieces of fried chicken: 1 leg, 1 thigh, 1 breast, 1 wing = 1/2 chicken (I know she doesn't like chicken, but it's just easier to compare as an example), assuming calories being equal, it's up to the individual to say what they'd feel more satisfied with. On the one hand, they get to eat twice as many pieces with the rotisserie vs only one. On the other hand, if they love fried food, they might just choose 4 pieces of chicken. And that's perfectly fine too. Either way, there's a calorie reduction as opposed to eating a whole fried chicken.
And yes, there are definitely studies that support eating at the dinner table vs watching tv as a predictor for risk of obesity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3663732/ - never mind that it was an adolescent study, it's applicable to all ages since dietary meal patterns are usually integrated in early childhood.
Don't worry about "woo" reactions. I get them regularly and I barely even pay attention to them anyway
I doubt you get many woo reactions on this thread. I for one, appreciate every single nugget of wisdom that you so generously offer. Sometimes I don't understand them all, but I appreciate them. MFP should be paying you. It could supplement your income while you are out on leave from the leg modeling business.
Perhaps not here, but I get woos elsewhere, but I'm glad what I say makes sense to someone. I mostly regurgitate known information and partially apply theories based on limited experience. There are so many more qualified people than me. I just don't shut up And if someone actually wanted to pay me for my legs, I'd take the money and question their taste after I deposit it haha. 7 -
bmeadows380 wrote: »@ZoneFive I didn't see your post right before mine, but I'm glad it helped! I was hearing the other formulas and knew that getting 3000+ calories as my maintance couldn't possibly be right, but I wasn't sure where the disconnect was, either
@HDBKLM You've got a lot of good advice; I won't woo you
I am trying to get her used to a deficit for now because with her height, she's not going to have nearly the range I did when I started (I'm 5'8"; she's petite. I'm solidly built with a large frame - think raw boned Swedish woman from the cliched pioneer movies, while she's smaller though still stout; she's more like the short, robust English farmer's wife you'd see in the old regency era movies lol) But I'm very much trying to get her to see that she can eat a much larger variety than she thinks she can; I don't her thinking in terms of "I can't have this" or "that's off limits"; I want her to think in terms of "is this worth the calories," or better yet "I really want this, but lets eat a smaller portion" and know how to be accurate with that smaller portion and not just eyeballing it. And it will be difficult with my mother as she lives with my parents and my mom's cooking; mom thinks very much in terms of "you can't have that" and its been an uphill battle to get her to realize it's not a matte of 'can't'; its a matter of portion size and is it worth it. That and getting mom to be accurate in what she's actually putting into her food.......(like putting 1/2 a stick of butter in her cooked apples and not telling me........)
At this point, its just making her aware of what an actual serving size is. And as Anubis said, I'm also working with her on trying to curb the mindless eating, which is more of her downfall than even portions sizes at dinner. She's bad for eating while at the computer and in front of the tv, and will keep bags of chips and boxes of crackers or bags of candy at the couch where she lives.
@anubis609 My sister does have PCOS and has been diagnosed as diabetic, though she also has episodes where her blood sugar drops on her. With this being the case, should I be trying to get her to move more to a lower carb diet? (slowly, of course, as I'm trying really hard not to change too much on her at once; just learning to start paying attention to the amount she its is daunting enough for her now!)
While there is evidence for much more success with using a low carb diet in metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance states like PCOS and T2D, there's also evidence for improvement in those disorders with simple reductions in body fat, regardless of the diet. Reactive hypoglycemia occurs usually after meals when there's a spike in insulin from high carb food: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/reactive-hypoglycemia.html
Note in the treatment section a reduction in total carbohydrates, especially refined/sugary carbs, is first line advice, followed by an increase/focus on protein and fiber vegetables and fruit.
For the purposes of her being a new dieter, you're very much correct that just getting her used to being food aware will be first and foremost as a priority. But my own personal line of thought would be to eventually steer her in the direction of a low carb diet for metabolic health purposes in controlling her PCOS and glucose levels. Depending on how long she's been physiologically diabetic, the extent of beta cell damage can range from minimal to severe (requiring insulin), but in any case, PCOS tends to confound glucose tolerance in itself, so a lower carb diet would be a more successful strategy for long-term maintenance.
And as an added plug for reasons to invest in Lyle's book, he does address it as well:
Very Low-Carb, High Fat/Low-Carb and Ketogenic Diets`
While the above calculations will give most readers of this book at least moderate carbohydrate intake
recommendations, there may be situations where smaller female dieters (especially if their activity is not
high) end up below the threshold for a VLC diet (~80-120 grams of carbohydrates per day) or others where
a dieter deliberately chooses to lower carbohydrates to that level (i.e. PCOS/Category 3). This latter
situation would typically be the woman with severe PCOS or obesity related insulin resistance for whom
such diets are often profoundly beneficial. For those reasons, I want to look again at the topic of very-low
carbohydrate/high-fat/low carbohydrate diets in more detail.
While 80-120 g/day is the physiological cutoff for the development of nutritional ketosis, both
popular diets and research studies typically define the diet as containing 50 grams of digestible
carbohydrate per day. In general, these diets also tend to be higher in fat (since the day's calories have to
come from somewhere and only so much protein can be eaten) but this is not universal. It is more than
possible to do a very-low carbohydrate/very-low fat diet where the diet consists of almost purely protein
(with some vegetables and essential fats). This is generally called a Protein Sparing Modified Fast or
PSMF. While frequently surrounded by a combination of controversy, criticism, zealotry and
misconceptions, VLC diets have both pros and cons that I want to examine.
Perhaps the largest disadvantage of VLC diets is that many go through a roughly 3 week phase of
feeling very fatigued as they adapt to the diet. This can be limited by ensuring sufficient intakes of sodium,
potassium, magnesium and calcium, all of which are excreted in larger amounts. Even with sufficient
mineral intake, many still feel bad for those few weeks as the brain shifts to using ketones for fuel. Along
with mineral losses comes significant water loss which can cause some amount of dehydration along with
causing a rapid drop in body weight. This is one of the reasons people think that such diets have a
metabolic advantage and why dieters like them so much: losing several pounds of body weight in only a
few days is very rewarding. Some women also experience depression on such diets as brain levels of
serotonin drop. In contrast, others report feeling nearly euphoric with stable blood sugar and energy levels
throughout the day. This is highly individual and my experience is that anyone following a ketogenic diet
who hasn't started to feel better by week 3 probably isn't going to and the diet should be abandoned.
Overall, people with insulin resistance seem to be the ones who feel best on ketogenic diets, at least
after the adaptation period (and I mentioned earlier that lowered carbs/higher fat is already a better
approach in this case). Women in Category 3 who are inactive and/or who have PCOS related insulin
resistance often respond very positively to VLC diets. Even in the absence of weight/fat loss, health
parameters usually improve and often these diets are found to be at least slightly superior for weight and fat
loss, mostly due to better adherence (30). I'd add that a VLC diet combined with a reduction in
goitrogenic foods was found to reduce the thyroid antibodies seen in the autoimmune Hashimoto's
thyroiditis (30a). Whether this would be effective for other autoimmune conditions is unknown but, as
women are more likely to experience Hashimoto's, a VLC diet could be worthwhile consideration.
196
While most of the benefits on hunger and appetite is most likely due to an increased protein intake
(this tends to happen automatically on such diets which is another benefit), there are other potential causes.
Stable blood sugar is one of them as falling blood sugar can stimulate hunger. The presence of ketones in
the bloodstream may also be having some benefit. Perhaps the largest effect is that, for many people,
carbohydrate foods may act as triggers and cause a loss of control and overeating. As these foods have to
be eliminated on VLC diets, this is avoided. However, as I mentioned in Chapter 15, the removal of broad
categories or even specific foods can cause adherence issues over time as cravings increase.
This can be addressed later in the diet by finding ways to include those foods (strategies are discussed
in Chapter 21) and often women's taste for them decrease as taste buds change (requiring about 4-6 weeks).
I should note before continuing that, even in insulin resistant women, studies frequently find that highcarbohydrate/
low-fat diets can be effective but only so long as they are based primarily around
unrefined/high-fiber carbohydrates. In my experience, these aren't the types of foods most people on
higher-carbohydrate diets tend to eat and I feel that reducing total carbohydrate intake is usually superior.1 -
okay. If one wanted to look into low carb and very low carb diets, what are the best sources for sane advice and guidance on getting started? I just recently heard the lament that MFP only counted total carbs and not net; would someone doing low carb have to mentally make that calculation difference here?1
-
bmeadows380 wrote: »okay. If one wanted to look into low carb and very low carb diets, what are the best sources for sane advice and guidance on getting started? I just recently heard the lament that MFP only counted total carbs and not net; would someone doing low carb have to mentally make that calculation difference here?
Not necessarily. You could set yourself separate carb and fiber goals. I generally get 15-20g of fiber and I generally eat under 60 carbs. I could make it complicated and say that is 45 net carbs, or I can just meet the two goals. Net carbs are only important on a per meal basis for insulin dependent diabetics.
I had a dietician recently tell me that you can only subtract fiber if there is more than 5g. She said a lot of things that she didn't explain, I think she was trying to get around people reaching for highly processed foods with added fiber for marketing net carbs?0 -
As for MFP's carb counts, it doesn't count net carbs, but it's simple subtraction where total carbs - fiber = net carbs.
If you or your sister prefer to use an app that actually will calculate it for you, cron-o-meter actually does a superior job at calculating not only net carbs and tailoring macros, but it will also track as many micronutrients as it recognizes in its database: https://cronometer.com
Also, since there are a lot of us here who trend low/lower carb, you can ask direct questions in this thread about any information you might want to know.
The basic premise for [very] low carb/ketogenic diets is that total net carbs are ~50g or less. Protein is calculated to body weight or lbm if known, but on keto protein should err on the higher side to spare lean mass loss. And dietary fat fills up the rest of the calories - caveat: this is variable and should not be done to excess.
A good rule I prefer to follow for keeping it as simple as possible (Ted Naiman's approach) is that carbs + fat grams should be less than or equal to protein grams; e.g. 50g carbs + 100g fat = 150+ g of protein. It minimizes excessive fat and/or carbs, and places direct focus on protein.
Acceptable low carb fruits: berries, avocados. They have a lot of fiber per serving compared to other fruits. Be aware of the fat content in avocados.
Acceptable low carb vegetables: any green leafy vegetable grown above ground. Ground veggies like tubers, carrots, etc tend to have a lot of starch and little fiber.
Carbs should be fiber sources.
Protein: preferably animal protein, but plant based sources like tofu/tempeh/soy can be used along with chia and flax seeds, and others of that nature.
Fat: preferably non-vegetable oil sources, so use things like natural fat from lard, butter, olive oil, coconut oil, etc but used sparingly for cooking purposes.
In the obese dieter: body fat also contributes to a good portion of the fat macro.
Electrolytes: on a low carb diet, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium needs increase, so they will be exceeding MFP's regular suggestion because "keto flu" is the period of adaptation where the body is switching fuel sources, and as it does that, it will expel electrolytes during water dumps, so fatigue/lethargy/brain fog sets in. Sodium is priority over the others, however magnesium and potassium are equally important after that. Supplements for potassium can be taken, but somewhat not necessary if you can just use lite salt or potassium chloride. Magnesium may need supplementation, but usually not needed unless cramping or disturbed sleep occur.
ETA: Do not worry about being in ketosis .. a lot of keto/low carb dieters get hung up on this concept and it's absolutely unnecessary to care about them. They're just a consequence of low carbs and fat loss. That's it.
Resources:
My first and foremost recommendation is Lyle's ketogenic diet book, but it's also roughly 400 pages and 600 references of almost clinical writing, so it's not entertaining, but it is highly educational from a nutritional and biochemistry standpoint: https://store.bodyrecomposition.com/product/ketogenic-diet/; https://bodyrecomposition.com/?s=keto
For an easy digestible version of higher protein, moderate fat, low carb diets, Dr. Ted Naiman treats his diabetic/obese patients with this style of diet with much success: http://burnfatnotsugar.com (also on facebook)
Equally as informative with ever growing research is Optimising Nutrition (also a public facebook group): https://optimisingnutrition.com/2015/04/06/optimal-foods-for-blood-sugar-regulation-and-nutritoinal-ketosis/
The second best source, that is loosely based off Lyle's work as well as actual sound evidence based research is Ketogains (also a closed group on facebook): https://www.reddit.com/r/ketogains/wiki/index; ketogains.com
Another evidence based source that promotes evidence based research but aimed more for metabolic health and wellness as opposed to pure aesthetic body composition is Keto Saved Me Group (on facebook) - I'm also an admin there, but I'm also very terrible at my admin duties there, but I'll chime in when I need to: http://www.ketosavedme.com
The MFP low carb group is also another source and I'm kind of in there at times - but some of the threads follow the ultra high fat, low carb, low protein that's typical of what people think low carb/keto is: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/394-low-carber-daily-forum-the-lcd-group1 -
In my MFP settings I swapped sugar for fibre in the main window that displays macros, and put the fibre just to the right of the carbs so I can do the subtraction of carbs - fibre = net carbs automatically. Would that help?bmeadows380 wrote: »okay. If one wanted to look into low carb and very low carb diets, what are the best sources for sane advice and guidance on getting started? I just recently heard the lament that MFP only counted total carbs and not net; would someone doing low carb have to mentally make that calculation difference here?
1 -
thank you! I was also wondering what places would be good to get reasonable meal plan ideas for low carb. there are so many sites out there devoted to keto and low carb and paleo, but there is also so much woo that it's hard to be sure of some of these food blogs!
We'll see if my sister sticks this out or not. This week to get her started, I was packing her lunch when I packed mine, and entering the MFP counts. But I'm in the office today on storm watch duty and won't be home while she's off today. So I told her last night she needed to open the app and start entering food herself. She was reluctant to do it; her comment was "I'll just start watching how much I'm eating" which to me was "I don't like this and want to be able to eat more" and "that's too much work". She did do it, though, and I showed her how to find things and how to complete her diary, but we'll see if she sticks with it today. She commented that she was hungry after lunch, and I did tell her she could add more calories to lunch or snacks as long as she ate a lighter dinner and that she just needed to experiment around with her calorie spread and food types to find what works for her and helps her feel satiated. I did tell her that losing weight and feeling better does happen and vindicates the effort, but she then stated that she still wasn't sure it was worth it.
Now trying this was all her idea on Monday; she's the one who came to me and asked for help to get started and I haven't been saying a single word to her about losing weight and keeping my thoughts to myself. I think, though, that the fact that for the first time in our lives, I'm not only wearing smaller sizes than her, I'm also at her weight or a little lower hit her hard, as well as the fact that our brother is also losing a ton of weight after weight loss surgery; she used to be the lightest of all of us, but she's quickly becoming the heaviest, and she doesn't like that one bit. But after trying it for 4 days, she's not liking the cut in her portion sizes or telling herself she can't just eat what she wants, how much she wants, whenever she wants, so I don't know if she's going to stick to it or not. My money's on the not, I'm afraid, even though I hope against all hope that she keeps up with it as her health is in shambles and losing weight would help her in so many areas from her PCOS to her diabetes to her swollen ankles and achy joints and high blood pressure and high cholesterol and breathing issues......
I'll keep the low carb options as a back up; I don't know if it might be easier for her to just count carbs or not. It's a hard reality, but the truth is, she's lazy and doesn't like putting effort into anything she deems to be "hard". She wants a quick fix usually, so I was surprised she wanted to try the calorie counting and I did warn her that it wasn't easy and that she'd have to be firm with herself at first but that her body would adjust. My fear on the just counting carbs, though, is that if she doesn't also keep an eye on calories, she's just going to over-indulge on the low carb items, especially as she'd go for ham and hot dogs over lean chicken and fish, and that it wouldn't help her in the long run.
I myself have been trying to get a little lower carb, though I'm not really sure if it is completely necessary for me or not. Even though I have cut out potatoes and breads and corn except for rare indulgences, I still seem to be routinely eating around 45% carbs daily. My limit is set to 135g, but I'm always 30-75g over that each day, even if I subtract fiber intake. I struggle to get more fat in, and I'm concerned about increasing the fat because it seems to mess up my "pipes" which I have problems with anyway.
I was diagnosed with PCOS and insulin resistance 13 years ago and was immediately put on the highest dose of metformin they could give, even though my fasting blood sugar levels and A1C were fine, as that was the standard practice for PCOS treatment then. My new PCP recently asked me if I thought I was still insulin resistant since I've lost 100 lbs, but I told her she'd have to order the blood work and tell me. I've never had any trouble with my blood sugar; the last time it was checked, my fasting was 91, and that was after barely 8 hours of fasting, the minimum you could do it and get the test. For a while last year, I was tracking my blood sugar after some meals, but it never spiked out of normal range for me, even after heavy carb meals, so I quit checking on it, especially when I took into account the 20% tolerance some models could get. And that was back when I was still well above 300 lbs.
My PCP recently agreed to cut my metformin dosage in half. I'll have her do another round of bloodwork in July and specifically have her test for insulin resistance. If I still show as being resistant, then I'll try going low carb for a few months and see if that along with more weight loss helps without bumping the medication back up.1 -
bmeadows380 wrote: »We'll see if my sister sticks this out or not. This week to get her started, I was packing her lunch when I packed mine, and entering the MFP counts. But I'm in the office today on storm watch duty and won't be home while she's off today. So I told her last night she needed to open the app and start entering food herself. She was reluctant to do it; her comment was "I'll just start watching how much I'm eating" which to me was "I don't like this and want to be able to eat more" and "that's too much work". She did do it, though, and I showed her how to find things and how to complete her diary, but we'll see if she sticks with it today. She commented that she was hungry after lunch, and I did tell her she could add more calories to lunch or snacks as long as she ate a lighter dinner and that she just needed to experiment around with her calorie spread and food types to find what works for her and helps her feel satiated. I did tell her that losing weight and feeling better does happen and vindicates the effort, but she then stated that she still wasn't sure it was worth it.
Now trying this was all her idea on Monday; she's the one who came to me and asked for help to get started and I haven't been saying a single word to her about losing weight and keeping my thoughts to myself. I think, though, that the fact that for the first time in our lives, I'm not only wearing smaller sizes than her, I'm also at her weight or a little lower hit her hard, as well as the fact that our brother is also losing a ton of weight after weight loss surgery; she used to be the lightest of all of us, but she's quickly becoming the heaviest, and she doesn't like that one bit. But after trying it for 4 days, she's not liking the cut in her portion sizes or telling herself she can't just eat what she wants, how much she wants, whenever she wants, so I don't know if she's going to stick to it or not. My money's on the not, I'm afraid, even though I hope against all hope that she keeps up with it as her health is in shambles and losing weight would help her in so many areas from her PCOS to her diabetes to her swollen ankles and achy joints and high blood pressure and high cholesterol and breathing issues......
That sounds really discouraging about your sister resisting the process even though she's the one who suggested it, thus getting you to put in a bunch of effort to help get her off the ground. I wonder if it would help if you were to direct her toward the MFP boards? I remember when I started I spent a lot of time going through threads like 'What nobody tells you about losing weight', 'What's your most recent NSV?', etc. from beginning to end, and I felt like it really helped get me in the right headspace. Maybe your sister would take advice from a 'community of strangers' better than from her sister—not because you're doing anything wrong of course, just because of general sibling baggage?4 -
In my MFP settings I swapped sugar for fibre in the main window that displays macros, and put the fibre just to the right of the carbs so I can do the subtraction of carbs - fibre = net carbs automatically. Would that help?bmeadows380 wrote: »okay. If one wanted to look into low carb and very low carb diets, what are the best sources for sane advice and guidance on getting started? I just recently heard the lament that MFP only counted total carbs and not net; would someone doing low carb have to mentally make that calculation difference here?
@bmeadows380 - There's an add-in for the MFP app that calculates net carbs.
https://cavemanketo.com/configuring-mfp/
I've used it for several months now and it works well.1 -
:::Waving::: Just had a quick skim through to keep up with everyone. I'm still in my groove, working the refeeds, still regularly lifting (I added some more weight this past week and upped reps on some of the lifts) and still focusing on habits instead of the scale since I seem to have zeroed in on the fact that weighing myself does really trigger me into disordered behavior.
It happened enough that I noticed a pattern. I'd get on the scale, not be happy with it, get on track and um, stay on track to my detriment. Restrict too long to the point I'd not refeed when my body needed it ... and binge. Then I'd avoid the scale because I wanted to shift the water weight from the binge, so I'd eat at deficit, but stay at deficit because I was making up for binging, then get on the scale again... lather rinse, repeat. This cycle would usually take about 6 weeks to run its course. Thankfully, it pretty much had me maintaining my weight.
What I've been doing the past couple of weeks since coming to terms with this is simply a frank assessment in the mirror looking for tiny changes and using things like the fit of some articles of clothing to see progress (I'm not reliable at placing tape measures consistently, or I'd do that too). Since all I'm chasing at this point is vanity weight, I'm content with going by how little changes taking place in my body are going and keeping on top of that.
I'm finding this is working surprisingly well at keeping me on top of doing refeeds when they're supposed to happen and not when I'm desperate for them and end up binging instead.
I should add that once I get to a point where I'm happy with what I see in the mirror, I'm not sure if I'll get on the scale and call that maintenance or not. I can rely on my Fitbit to maintain without having to weigh myself, but the idea of trying to maintain without regularly weighing is a bit daunting. I might revisit the scale thing once I reach maintenance.12 -
That sounds really discouraging about your sister resisting the process even though she's the one who suggested it, thus getting you to put in a bunch of effort to help get her off the ground. I wonder if it would help if you were to direct her toward the MFP boards? I remember when I started I spent a lot of time going through threads like 'What nobody tells you about losing weight', 'What's your most recent NSV?', etc. from beginning to end, and I felt like it really helped get me in the right headspace. Maybe your sister would take advice from a 'community of strangers' better than from her sister—not because you're doing anything wrong of course, just because of general sibling baggage?
It is discouraging But I was afraid this would happen - she'd be all excited to try until she saw the effort needed and the fact she'd have to have some willpower and tell herself no. I"ll try to encourage her to read the forums; perhaps if she can make some friends it will help?
@alteredstates175 Thank you! I'll note that!
The good news is that while I'm sitting here rather bored, waiting for the snowstorm to start or for them to release me to go home, I did some searching for low carb recipes and planned out next week's menu. While the recipes don't really turn out to be very low carb, in my thoughts, when I laid out my meals for the week and saw the final totals, I was very pleased to see the carb counts for almost every day but 1 ending in green with a good boost in fiber, protein, and fats.
so at least my last several hours here wasn't a complete waste of time! lol1 -
alteredstates175 wrote: »But that’s just a small blip in the larger part of actual energy intake/output. Adjust accordingly and make small adjustments at a time to find your own sweet spot. Once you find a downward trend happening that still allows you to eat comfortably, you’re on the right track. It might take a while so patience will be your friend.
Was thinking of setting the target at 1800 and then exceeding that some days. Is a 10% cut too drastic? Or am I still too impatient? Thanks for your input.
Started a 5/2 plan on or about 21 Feb. 1800 calories per day weekdays - 2500 calories per day on weekends for refeeds (with more carbs). Eating back some exercise calories as well. Seems to be working - the trend line on Libra is downward, but the loss is slow.
Today is 4 1/2 weeks on this regimen. Would another diet break be advisable in a week or two?
As always, thanks to all for your sage advice.
0 -
I ran a 10K yesterday! I think it was a rage run (is that a thing?) I'm signed up for a couple of cycling metric centuries next month and because of the rain I haven't been able to do any speed and hill work. Yesterday was sunny, I had the time, I had a training ride planned and the derailleur on my bike was bent. I was so pissed I was crying, so I made myself put on my shoes to go for a walk which turned into a run and I just kept running (well, jogging really) until I just couldn't keep going. I honestly don't think I could have run that far if I had planned that distance. I was exhausted, and in a better frame of mind to make contingency plans. I think I've discovered a new alternative to exhausting myself with crying jags :drinker:
Here's something interesting going on. I hit maintenance about a month and a half ago, and I've lost a lb. since then, while I'm trying to gain back a lb. or two for a cushion. When I look at my stats, I see that what's happening is that the more I eat (meaning gradually adding calories to up my daily average), the more energy I have and the more intentional and background activity is increasing. I'm estimating that if I keep going at this rate, I'll need close to 2000 calories to maintain - crazy, right? I haven't felt this good since I was a kid!
I'm probably in a mild increased calorie manic phase and expect I will settle in to a somewhat lower calorie and activity routine (not sure if this level of activity is sustainable when I start feeling a little less bouncy), but just the realization that I'm not stuck at 1250 calories to maintain when I've been looking at that number for years is kind of euphoria-inducing 11
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 393.3K Introduce Yourself
- 43.8K Getting Started
- 260.2K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.9K Food and Nutrition
- 47.4K Recipes
- 232.5K Fitness and Exercise
- 424 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.5K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 153K Motivation and Support
- 8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.7K MyFitnessPal Information
- 24 News and Announcements
- 1.1K Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.6K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions