Thoughts, Epiphanies, Insights, & Quotables

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  • conniewilkins56
    conniewilkins56 Posts: 3,391 Member
    Sometimes it is crazy how your body works or reacts to different situations.....after two strenuous swimming workouts Thurs. Fri. And Sat., I had a short swim Sun. and a rest day Mon....I kept holding the same weight and then after doing nothing yesterday, I was down 1.2 lbs this morning!...I am still up 2 lbs from my two week break but at least it is going down...and I am averaging about one pound a week the last 15 months...88 lb loss total...my husband also had his spinal procedure yesterday and that relieved some stress I was feeling...every day brings a new challenge !
  • speyerj
    speyerj Posts: 1,369 Member
    @conniewilkins56 - stress, both physical and mental, causes us to retain water. It's no wonder that once a major source of stress was gone your weight dropped too. I bet you'll continue to see a drop over this week. I'm so happy for you and your husband that his procedure went well. And congratulations on an 88 pound loss. A HUGE accomplishment!
  • conniewilkins56
    conniewilkins56 Posts: 3,391 Member
    Bobs burgers one thing that keeps me motivated is my age....most of you that are in your 30s and 40s hopefully have many more years of your life to live...at 69 I realistically am in the last 1/3 of my life....I wasted 40 years playing with my health and my weight....I was fortunate not to really let my weight hold me back but looking back now I could have done so much more!...and my weight did take its toll on me....back surgery,2 knees replaced, shoulder surgery, and high blood pressure to name a few health issues...I am extremely lucky that I am as mobile as I am!...now I want the last 1/3 of my life to be healthy,thinner and as easy as possible!...being overweight is hard...think about all of the possibilities you will be open to if you continue losing weight!...and you will have many years to enjoy your rewards!
  • hansep0012
    hansep0012 Posts: 385 Member
    "Temporary failure becomes permanent defeat only when you say so" (unknown author)
  • Ccricfo
    Ccricfo Posts: 156 Member
    conniewilkins56 Amen! You said exactly what I was thinking.....when I looked at my medical records with my doctor and realized that everything wrong with me was directly related to my obesity....and that it would just keep getting worse if the trend continued, I had to acknowledge the 800 lb gorilla in the room. The idea of being completely disabled was a jolt! Hence here I am.
  • jodibeth5744
    jodibeth5744 Posts: 65 Member
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  • eliezalot
    eliezalot Posts: 620 Member
    "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement" - my dad.

    I've always liked this one - he always throws this out when I'm feeling bad about messing something up. As I struggle a lot with perfectionism, I think it has been a particularly useful way to frame my weight loss mentality - mistakes are totally fine, perhaps even desirable, because you have the opportunity to learn from them. Did I go way over my calories at a party? That's okay, figure out what I learned from it, and move on. Sometimes the lesson is "This is great, I can allow myself to do this a few times a year and enjoy it." Or it could be "Wow this feels awful, what can I do differently next time? Maybe take smaller helpings, focusing on the food items that I really want and skipping the ones I'm less excited about." Without having made the error in judgement, I might have still been on track calorie-wise, but would be less prepared for when a similar situation arises in the future.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,394 Member
    Sometimes it is crazy how your body works or reacts to different situations.....after two strenuous swimming workouts Thurs. Fri. And Sat., I had a short swim Sun. and a rest day Mon....I kept holding the same weight and then after doing nothing yesterday, I was down 1.2 lbs this morning!...I am still up 2 lbs from my two week break but at least it is going down...and I am averaging about one pound a week the last 15 months...88 lb loss total...my husband also had his spinal procedure yesterday and that relieved some stress I was feeling...every day brings a new challenge !

    Connie, I caught a post by you on the main boards, but it sounds to me that you're doing ok mostly?

    88+ lbs in a year is certainly far from slow starting and ending weight matters but I went a touch slower and still, in retrospect, can tell you it was as fast as it should have if not a touch more than that--for me. So not slow.

    Becoming more active, especially as a larger person can cause large swings in weight.

    Do I think you burn 1000 Cal swimming 90 minutes? I would have to know your current info and work abilities to venture an opinion. You burn calories by swimming, for sure. And quite a few of them during the event. But they are hard to quantify. Breaststroke or butterfly... 25m laps with 1 minute rests, or 20*50m non stop flip turns at a time?

    For myself, since I don't swim laps, I usually use a reduced leisurely swimming time to account for pool activity. It's not common for me and I would say I probably underestimate slightly when I do that (based on post activity hunger), but it's generally been in the context of a vacation with looser logging for me, and weight wise the logging discrepancy is minor in my case.

    Your experience of losing scale weight on a rest day is fairly common: you reduce water weight retention for muscle repair when you're less sore.

    Anyway, i will look for any other post you've written on the subject... but it does sound as if you're on an ok track especially since you've already dropped any weight you regained during your recent break

    https://exrx.net/Calculators/Calories would give you an idea about net calories burned during the time you are engaged in the actual exercise activitym

    Because of how MFP accounts for calories during the day (sedentary is set to 1.25*BMR calories), out of your net calories burned you would eat back all of them except for 0.25*BMR/1440*minutes of activity if MFP is set to sedentary.
  • conniewilkins56
    conniewilkins56 Posts: 3,391 Member
    Thanks, I think....I do not do numbers well....give me a spelling test!...

    I am not an Olympic swimmer by any means....I do a few free style laps but I also do water aerobics,tread water continuously for 30 minutes and jog at a slow pace back and forth across the pool for 30 minutes non stop....

    I started out at 350 May 28, 2019 and I am now 260... I am 5’9” ( I am shrinking in height I might be 5’ 8” )...I am set at sedentary and 1 1/2 lbs a week loss...I usually get between 3000 and 4000 steps a day not counting my pool activity...I rarely hit my protein levels....

    I just need some help sorting things out if I am doing what I should be and eating enough or too much....I am usually not hungry but I do have stuff going on in my life such as my husbands health that is causing me anxiety...

    I am not quitting...only a stumble in the road and a woe is me week....

    Thanks again
  • conniewilkins56
    conniewilkins56 Posts: 3,391 Member
    Oh, and I am 69 so I am not a spring chicken....I carry a lot of weight in my arms and legs....no one ever guesses how much I weigh....thank God!
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,394 Member
    Above tells me you're taller than me even after we account for our mutual shrinkage!!! :wink:

    It also tells me that if you're setup as sedentary you should be able to eat the 25% of exercise calories you mentioned somewhere else that you do eat from your swimming.

    If your total intake is falling to below 1500 Cal, I would consider reducing the targeted deficit.

    Thinking as to what I would be tempted to do in your position? I would aim to eat 1750 or so accurately counted calories consisting of foods I would be willing to eat indefinitely while continuing to increase my activity levels and letting the rest sort itself out.

    note my emphasis throughout on accurate counting. my 1750 may be your 1500 and v.v. depending on how we count.

    Unless you have a kidney issue I don't see the benefit of not meeting one's protein target (I like yogurt so that's an easy one for me)! I also like to (over)hit my fiber targets (i like the already mentioned yogurt with fiber rich cereal so that's an easy one for me)! :wink: :
  • conniewilkins56
    conniewilkins56 Posts: 3,391 Member
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    Above tells me you're taller than me even after we account for our mutual shrinkage!!! :wink:

    It also tells me that if you're setup as sedentary you should be able to eat the 25% of exercise calories you mentioned somewhere else that you do eat from your swimming.

    If your total intake is falling to below 1500 Cal, I would consider reducing the targeted deficit.

    Thinking as to what I would be tempted to do in your position? I would aim to eat 1750 or so accurately counted calories consisting of foods I would be willing to eat indefinitely while continuing to increase my activity levels and letting the rest sort itself out.

    note my emphasis throughout on accurate counting. my 1750 may be your 1500 and v.v. depending on how we count.

    Unless you have a kidney issue I don't see the benefit of not meeting one's protein target (I like yogurt so that's an easy one for me)! I also like to (over)hit my fiber targets (i like the already mentioned yogurt with fiber rich cereal so that's an easy one for me)! :wink: :

    Ok...this really helps....the extra calories from exercising are very much enjoyed!...I do not intentionally miss my protein goals, it just happens...I am going to try an make an effort to increase protein and eat a few less carbs...I love my carbs...I almost always get enough fiber....I think I log pretty accurately so that isn’t a problem for me...I am also trying to find another exercise that I enjoy....thankfully I can swim here year round...1500 calories a day I can live with!

    This is what I love about MFP....always someone to help you sort things out!...
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,394 Member
    Connie pls note that the ultimate arbiter is progress over time.

    So if you input fairly regular weigh ins into libra or happy scale or trendweight or a weighted moving average spreadsheet and you ultimately see a stall over an extended time period of ~6 weeks... then we do have a problem!

    Your 4K steps puts you at sedentary and should cover normal sedentary activity. You do the swimming activity on top. While I don't think that it necessarily qualifies as vigorous exercise throughout, it is also not sedentary throughout that timeframe. At your current size the 1000 Cal for 90 min is not far-fetched and taking 25% of that is certainly not far-fetched.

    HOWEVER, I do have a "concern" about accurate intake counting because of YOUR comments in various posts.

    "counting accurately" not only refers to correctly accounting for individual items etc etc etc. But also includes successfully accounting for (almost) everything. And I know from my own logging that no matter how careful I am when I log after the fact (and I do currently log after the fact) stuff gets missed and I remember about it the next day. Not to mention MFP not recording things I KNOW i've entered, and yet they're nowhere to be found hours later!!!

    And then you have things such as test bites that get missed. Or I'm in a hurry now, I'll log this later. I won't bother logging the spray of oil oil because it is nothing (well, about 10 Cal) . Or the 8g of lemon herb spice (at about 30 Cal). I just put a bit of ketchup it's low cal anyway (about 50g of ketchup or 55 Cal and it has sodium too!), oh I'll use a generic chocolate entry for this specific candy bar I ate (add another 20 Cal)... etc. All this amounts to what, 115 to 200 Cal (with bites), which is fine... as long as results are more or less in line!

    But troubleshooting lack of results requires vigilance while trying to figure things out, or an acceptance and satisfaction with a wider gamut of results when less vigilant and intense in our approach.

    So... your resting metabolic rate (you sitting quietly, not even reading) from your stats, assuming you're not a major outlier... is a bit over 1750.

    By definition a person who applies a 20% deficit from sedentary calories is eating at rmr/bmr calories levels. For better or for worse... that's the limit of a good sized but not overly aggressive deficit. The way to move that deficit to a larger size is by increasing the size of the pie and increasing TDEE to above sedentary.

    So. ~1750 ... we bump that down to 1500 for logging errors and for potentially some slow down from being in a deficit for a year.... so yes... eating 1500 and then a reasonable portion of exercise calories seems from the outside to most certainly have you at a good sized deficit... and the deficit (not the weight loss) is what you can control. If you apply the deficit the weight loss follows!

    BUT, as I said... vigilance.

    My dad was flabbergasted at the huge plate of... salad that I put in front of him. But I was flabbergasted at the amount of a "tablespoon" of oil he poured over his salad! (my best estimate was 35g, so just over 2 tablespoons) And of the pint of beer that accompanied it... and the "little sliver of cheese" that went on "some" crackers a few hours later (but the wasa box was gone in two days, and the 500g block of cheddar in 6 days... and I had zero)...

    So no. My dad cannot, currently, aim for a sub 2K diet and succeed even though his RMR is the same as you RMR and he is less active than you. Because he is starting from way higher than 2K and he is neither ready nor willing to avoid certain temptations. And being too hungry only makes the temptations more appealing and he also "deserves" a reward for being "good". There is a 1200 Cal diet with over-eating spikes jpg that is making the rounds... it perfectly describes the phenomenon of aiming too low and too aggressively.

    As @NovusDies has said before, all you can do is establish the pre-conditions that will eventually yield the results you want. Making sure you're consistently applying the pre-conditions is your win! The results eventually follow (and validate) that win!

    Also, given age group, there could be confounding because of medications. Anything that retains, or releases, water can play havoc with scale results. And so does (majorly) stress over loved ones!

    The good news is... you're obviously hanging in there.

    So... not sure if any of this helps; but a 1500+ the portion of exercise calories you're eating back sure as *kittens* does not sound to me like you're over-eating and I would not double down at this time! :)

    Take care of yourself!!!
  • conniewilkins56
    conniewilkins56 Posts: 3,391 Member
    Pav888..... sincere thanks for boosting my confidence and determination.....
  • phoenixmed
    phoenixmed Posts: 114 Member
    somethime, saying no is saying yes to yourself ( From someone who worked way to much lately and missed time to be able to have proper selfcare). I am learning to try to set my healthy boundaries without feeling to guilty. But it is hard with this pandemic. Gained back 10 pounds from stress eating and low exercise time in the last 5 months. )
  • conniewilkins56
    conniewilkins56 Posts: 3,391 Member
    phoenixmed wrote: »
    somethime, saying no is saying yes to yourself ( From someone who worked way to much lately and missed time to be able to have proper selfcare). I am learning to try to set my healthy boundaries without feeling to guilty. But it is hard with this pandemic. Gained back 10 pounds from stress eating and low exercise time in the last 5 months. )

    THIS is so important....caring and helping others we tend to neglect our own needs and health...sometimes you have to say NO!...your own well being is as important as others....it’s not being selfish to take care of yourself!
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    Sometimes saying yes to yourself is saying yes to someone/something else

    Expanding on @phoenixmed's thought...

    We all have a tank. This tank has a limited amount space. From this tank flows all the things we need to do in a given day. When the tank runs dry we are stuck in "diminishing returns". We might be able to do a little more but it will not get our best effort. Even that doesn't last... eventually we run out of gas.

    As I gained weight my tank filled with fat. I started getting out of breath easier. My sleep quality declined. Overall I started to feel worse. As I limited my abilities, health, and mood my number of yeses naturally declined. I just didn't have enough space left for all the fuel I needed to take care of things. Some of them were very important to me.

    By taking care of myself and losing weight my capacity is returning to normal. I am now able to say yes a lot more often.

    It was far less selfish for me to prioritize my health than even I realized.
  • Bella_Figura
    Bella_Figura Posts: 3,583 Member
    I had this epiphany a while back:

    Break the habit of leaving the best bit until last
    I used to do this with food all the time. e.g. I'd plough my way through the whole of the pizza crust - which I dislike - until I had only the squidgy centre of the pizza left on my plate; then I'd eat that part last.

    I'd eat all the unpalatable dry sponge parts of a slice of cake, and save the sweet, squidgy frosting for my last couple of mouthfuls.

    I'd eat the soft centres from a box of chocolates (ugh) and save the delicious toffees and nougats until the end.

    Sometimes this tactic backfired, and I was too full by the time I'd eaten all the pizza crust or the dry sponge cake to manage the squidgy best bits. Sometimes I'd made myself feel so sick on the overly sweet soft centred chocolates that I couldn't face the toffees and someone else snaffled them before I got my second wind.

    But on many other occasions I'd eat past the point of comfort because I still had the best bit on my plate and I couldn't bear to miss out on eating it even though I was far too full to properly enjoy it.

    The epiphany was - just stop doing this, and eat the best parts first! And it was revelatory! I've discovered that once I've eaten the best bit, I often lose my appetite for the unpalatable bits and can happily walk away from them. Hundreds/thousands of calories from unpalatable foods have been avoided! And the best bits have been savoured in all their glory, because I wasn't overly sated and uncomfortable.

    I've now extended this philosophy to other areas of my life. For example, I now wear my favourite clothes all the time, rather than saving them 'for best'. Too many times in the past I've had to take my best clothes (sometimes still with the labels attached) to the charity shop because they're now too big or too small. I missed the opportunity to wear them when they actually fit me. I'm not making that mistake again!

  • conniewilkins56
    conniewilkins56 Posts: 3,391 Member
    Wonderful idea!