Maintaining during the pandemic

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  • ExpressoLove11
    ExpressoLove11 Posts: 337 Member
    Diatonic12 wrote: »
    @evilokc That's the way you do it. Muscles are everything and supplements ain't free. I take my daily vitamin with a dose of reality. Think Dire Straits here.

    I very much enjoy this fitness take on Knopfler's genius
  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,286 Member
    koalathebear wrote: »
    I have struggled.
    - January 2019, I was five feet tall and 86.6 kg - very overweight
    - latter part of 2019, after working very hard I got myself down to 54-55kg ... losing 32-36kg, getting to around a size 8 - 10 after having been a size 16 / size 18 for the last 20 years or so
    - end of 2019 / beginning of 2020, we had the bushfires in Australia and extremely bad toxic smoke in Canberra, making it hard to exercise. I managed to maintain more or less, but it was hard.

    Alas, during lockdown and the latest holiday season, I've struggled to maintain and am currently on 60-61kg which is a fairly significant weight gain .. I guess around 13 pounds? My clothing size is now around 10-12.

    I am still doing a tonne of exercise - cardio in the morning and lots of walking. The problem is that I'm just eating more than I should and not having a deficit. I know exactly what I need to do, I know what I need to eat and what I should not eat - it's a self-control issue. The danger time is the evenings - I'm really good in the mornings and afternoons and early evenings, but then I snack in the evening and destroy whatever deficit I've accrued during the day with exercise. I make excuses for myself - that it's been a stressful year, dealing with a lot of stuff. But I think I need to get a grip.

    So as of today, I've gone back into MFP and 'reset' it in the sense that rather than saying starting weight 86.6 kg and goal weight 54-55kg, I've said my starting weight is my current weight of 61.7 kg and I'm starting again from today. I think leaving my original weight in there was lulling me into a false sense of complacency.

    The lockdowns are emotionally hard on all of us. You are not alone. I think the average person has gained 15 pounds. There are the fortunate ones who actually used the time to get into shape..while the rest of us were losing ours. It sounds like you're getting it together.. the motivation. you have to stay on track is working during the day. I wonder if there is a trigger of a routine that you're doing in the evenings that leads to overeating. Maybe sitting down to watch t.v.? Maybe shake up your routine...see if that flips a switch.
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
    edited January 2021
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  • koalathebear
    koalathebear Posts: 236 Member
    edited January 2021
    elisa123gal wrote: »
    koalathebear wrote: »
    The lockdowns are emotionally hard on all of us. You are not alone. I think the average person has gained 15 pounds. There are the fortunate ones who actually used the time to get into shape..while the rest of us were losing ours. It sounds like you're getting it together.. the motivation. you have to stay on track is working during the day. I wonder if there is a trigger of a routine that you're doing in the evenings that leads to overeating. Maybe sitting down to watch t.v.? Maybe shake up your routine...see if that flips a switch.

    The thing is, I've managed to do cardio and walking every day during the pandemic because I'm lucky to live in Canberra which is low density so even during the worst of COVID, we could still go for walks and do our own exercise - although gyms closed down etc.

    My night time routine is just that I start getting peckish for snacks (potato crisps, chocolate, biscuits etc at night) so I need to either find another snack or spread out my eating during the day so that I allocate snack budget towards the night. This happens regardless of whether I'm at my computer or doing puzzles in the kitchen - but now that I'm being very conscious about it, I am resisting the urge to go over-budget.

    The second issue is that for me my maintenance calorie budget (without exercise calories) is 1300 calories a day and my weight loss budget is 1200 (without exercise calories). I have found over the last year that exercise calories can be a bit misleading and make me think I can eat more. Even if I exercise like a demon and earn a tonne of exercise calories that give me a exercise-created deficit, it sort of loses effectiveness if I eat beyond 1600/1700 calories in a day. If I eat 1200 - 1400 and maintain a modest deficit it's far more effective at losing weight than if I eat 1600/1700 and have a calorie budget of 500+ The occasional day of exceeding 1500 is totally fine - it's if I go for a few days of high calorie intake - exercise doesn't seem to be able to offset it much.

    So for my body at least, it seems that I can really only create a calorie deficit with exercise to a point. The other frustrating thing for me is that I'm so short that it's so easy for me to tip into the overweight category.

    As you have said - I'm taking steps to rectify my slide and I do know what I need to do and I have done it before - I just have to stay strong :D Thanks for listening.
  • DiabeticDer
    DiabeticDer Posts: 21 Member
    I was able to reach my goal weight during the pandemic. Rather than focusing on the pandemic I focused on my weight loss. My gym closed so I found work out videos and have been buying dumb bells and when weather permits go for walks and bike rides. My regular cardio class that I used to do at the gym now meets during its regularly scheduled times over zoom. To limit our exposure we have done more meal planning so we only need to go to the grocery store once a week. I've really embraced low-carb cooking and baking.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,521 Member
    Yes! I'm getting pretty good at exercising outdoors, on my bike trainer, and with my meager weight set. But, I'm missing swimming!
  • Fit_Happens_2021
    Fit_Happens_2021 Posts: 303 Member
    My gym has reopened and I am going to aquafit classes and power circuit now, but last summer the gym was shut and it was too hot to exercise outdoors. We bough a VR set up and I do PowerBeatsVR and BoxVR, both get the heart rate up and it is a lot of fun.
  • iowalinda
    iowalinda Posts: 354 Member
    I think it was my mindset. I gained 20 lbs from March of last year to the beginning of this year. I slowly started letting myself eat stuff I shouldn't - in amounts that I shouldn't. I finally had a wake-up call when none of my goal-weight clothes would fit me any longer. Glad to say that I was able to reverse the weight gain and am back at my goal weight. So glad I didn't let it get further out of contol.
  • Noreenmarie1234
    Noreenmarie1234 Posts: 7,493 Member
    It was SOO much easier to maintain during the pandemic because I had lots of time to exercise. Now that I am back to work, it is much harder because I am not getting those 1000 cal of exercise burned each day :(.

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