NovusDies wrote: »

@eliezalot

Originally I planned to take a 4 month break/recomp period starting mid February to have an extended maintenance practice and concentrate more on the gym side of things. I had just gotten into the swing of things when covid closed down, well, everything. I scrambled trying to get some equipment for the house but so was everyone else and getting used was not working and new was just too expensive. I decided to return to losing.

I am a little concerned that I had to cancel my plan. I was following my gut instinct which has guided me pretty well up until now. I was planning on 4 months in maintenance, 2 months of losing, and 4 more months of maintenance. The idea was to give myself enough time to get maintenance right or wrong, spend 2 months evaluating and deciding what to do better, and then 4 more months before finishing my weight loss.

Ah well... I harp on the importance of adaptation so I have been forced to adapt.

bmeadows380 wrote: »

conniewilkins56 wrote: »

deafenbaugh wrote: »

OK, more questions. What is NEAT and TDEE?

Hi there!...asking questions is how we learn....I have lost 90 lbs and still have about 70 to go....

NEAT.....non- exercise activity thermogenesis....energy expended is for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating, or sports like exercise....even trivial physical activities that increase your metabolic rate such as typing, sewing, going to the bathroom, etc.

TDEE....your total daily energy expenditure Is an estimation of how many calories you burn per day when exercise is taken into account...

I have BED....Binge Eating Disorder and I am on my first planned 2 week diet break or eating my maintenance calories to help my body reset my hormones and metabolism....I am recording my progress in the posts...

I hope this helped you!

Got it!

@deafenbaugh

The difference between NEAT and TDEE is often the reason why MFP's calories value will vary from other calculators that you find. MFP is designed to use NEAT, which does NOT included intentional exercise. When you go through MFP's guided setup and choose your activity level, that is to be your daily activity level without any workouts or purposeful exercise. Do you work at a desk job where you sit most of the time? Or have some sort of job requiring you to sit most of the time? Then even if you work out for 1 an a day intensely, you should still choose sedentary as your daily setting. If you have a job where you are moderately active - say a cashier, or you are at home puttering around the house, you would choose either lightly active or perhaps moderately active. If you have a job where you are moving quite a bit or something that keeps you on your feet a lot during the day, then you'd be encouraged to choose moderately active to active. MFP then expects you to log any intentional, purposeful exercise that you do separately, which in turn earns back calories to add to your daily total - so if you move more, you get to eat more.

There's guidelines around here somewhere that talk about step counts compared to MFP's activity ratings - most people are typically a little more active than they think and probably should be choosing lightly active (I think 3,000 steps is the cut off for sedentary, and 7500 is the cut off for lightly active). But that's only a 250 calorie difference between sedentary and lightly active.

Many people don't eat all their exercise calories back, but shoot for between 50% to 75% instead, unless they are syncing a fitness tracker with negative adjustments enabled which will automatically adjust your daily calorie goal depending on your activity. I don't have a fitness tracker than can do that and prefer myself to just log my calories manually and use 75% of them. The reason for the portion is that the actual burn varies between people, so we log a little less than we actually did to be on the safe side to make up for the estimations that the formulas use in figuring out burns - the values given in MFP's database use a general formula based on your stats to spit out an estimated calorie burn based upon a statistical table value of calories burned per minute per your weight - since is a generalization, they can be close or not so close. I've been told the walking values are actually pretty close, but others can be off - for instance, I don't use the elliptical trainer values because I think they are way over estimated compared to the actual effort I am expending when I use my elliptical since my elliptical is a cheap home one.

TDEE, on the other hand, takes into account all calories burned (total daily expenditure). so if you use a calculator using TDEE, they want you to include your regular exercise in when you choose your activity level as they assume you keep to a regular schedule each day and do pretty much the same routine every day. In the case of TDEE, you get one number that you strive to eat toward each day, and you do NOT log exercise because its already calculated into your deficit number. The point is a week's worth of activity, so if you are less active one day, but more active another and eat to the same TDEE number every day, it'll likely average out correctly, but if you find that your activity level varies quite a bit from day to day, TDEE may end up giving you too many calories or too little.

This is why I prefer the NEAT method MFP uses as my daily activity can be all over the place. Some days, I'm lucky to ht 7500 steps, though I try for at least that many a day; other days, like today, I'll have 17,000+ in. It all depends on what I get into. so I'd rather have a daily minimum set and then just add back in whatever activity I get for more calories. For instance: I burned over 1000 calories (and that's using 75% of my actual time!) today in my first 2 hours of mowing grass according to MFP's formula, so while I'm using a minimum daily deficit of 1500 calories, today I was able to eat at least 2500 calories and still meet my 1.5 lb/wk loss deficit level (well, I think I'm still in the ball park; I gave up trying to keep track of all my activity after the 3rd hour of mowing grass lol).

While MFP is designed to use the NEAT method and intends for you to add back your daily exercise calories, if you prefer to use hte TDEE method instead, its easy to do - simply use a TDEE calculator, find the calorie goal you should have each day based on your stats and desired loss rate, and then manually plug that in as your MFP calorie goal, then eat to that number every day. Give it 6 weeks and check your average loss rate over that 6 weeks and adjust your calorie goal as necessary to get to your desired loss rate.

NovusDies wrote: »

FrecklePatch wrote: »

I typed out a massive introduction and hit Done instead of Post Reply.

Short story, I'm Lori.
Im tall and eat things I love.
I weigh all of my food.
I have 65 more pounds to lose, and have lost 25.
My calorie goal is 1680.
I am mostly active.
I've lost and gained 80 lbs about 6 times.
I am a recovering addict.

I'd love some new friends, please!

I have a subconscious fear that I won't lose weight unless I'm keto. Its ridic, I know. Just calling myself out.

I have a cold and am up 3 lbs, and my hubs has the same cold and has lost EIGHT.

Thanks for listening.
Lori

Hi @FrecklePatch Lori,

Welcome.

During the 6 or so iterations of losing 80 pounds did you do keto each time?

Please remember that while you have a cold you really should be eating your maintenance calories so your body has the energy it needs to fight the illness. This will probably make the scale go up slightly more but what is important is getting better fast. The scale will go back down soon enough.

It seems the challenge for you is to stop taking vacations from the weight and work on permanence. What will you do differently this time? How will you alter your habits and mindset so that portion control and activity are normal?