Had enough right now

RoyBeck wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

"Could it be that at 37 it's different from when I was 29 and 34???"
No!
(The major part of age-related reduction in calorie needs reflects changes in people's activity and exercise not the passing of years and at just 37 - you are just a baby!)

"Is 1900 too high? "
Very unlikely at your size.

"Am I walking too far?"
Dunno - how are you feeling from all that walking? Stressed, sore, tired all the time or does it feel normal?

"Started running a mile a day since March 1st"
Aha! There's the recent change in routine. Sore legs perhaps? A new and more intense exercise routine is a trigger for inflammation and water retention. Suggest you give this and any future routine change a month to settle out.
If you are still in a sustained calorie deficit you must still be losing fat despite the number on your bathroom scales not reflecting it.


PS
It might be worth looking into diet breaks if you are starting to feel beaten down (physically and/or mentally) by a sustained long term deficit.

@sijomial

I feel fine after my walks even after a 10 miler so definitely feel my body has adapted. Running just a mile though is really tiring on my legs the next day.

Diet break as in eat at maintenance for a period of time?

Thanks for your reply.

That's not surprising. Running not only requires a lot more oxygen update but is also a lot harder on the muscles, and burns more than twice as many calories as walking.

RoyBeck wrote: »

sijomial wrote: »

"Could it be that at 37 it's different from when I was 29 and 34???"
No!
(The major part of age-related reduction in calorie needs reflects changes in people's activity and exercise not the passing of years and at just 37 - you are just a baby!)

"Is 1900 too high? "
Very unlikely at your size.

"Am I walking too far?"
Dunno - how are you feeling from all that walking? Stressed, sore, tired all the time or does it feel normal?

"Started running a mile a day since March 1st"
Aha! There's the recent change in routine. Sore legs perhaps? A new and more intense exercise routine is a trigger for inflammation and water retention. Suggest you give this and any future routine change a month to settle out.
If you are still in a sustained calorie deficit you must still be losing fat despite the number on your bathroom scales not reflecting it.


PS
It might be worth looking into diet breaks if you are starting to feel beaten down (physically and/or mentally) by a sustained long term deficit.

@sijomial

I feel fine after my walks even after a 10 miler so definitely feel my body has adapted. Running just a mile though is really tiring on my legs the next day.

Diet break as in eat at maintenance for a period of time?

Thanks for your reply.

A long period of dieting is mentally and emotionally draining but there's also physical adaptations that can take place e.g. down-regulating fideting, feeling colder, a series of ways for your body to slow you down a bit in the face of an extended deficit.

A period eating at maintenace can be very helpful to refresh yourself mentally and physically. Plus it's good practice for maintenance at goal weight.

Tired legs can be a sign that you are retaning some water for repair to the muscles from their unaccustomed/new stress.

What are you doing that’s different than any other time you’ve dieted? Because I would expect the same outcome if your answer is that you’re doing everything the same. And I would also wonder why you would expect a different outcome than living the yo-yo diet life. I would change my process to reflect something I could do consistently and maintain over a lifetime.

RoyBeck wrote: »

Hi. I'm 37. I've lost 17lbs since November. I'm down to 247 from 264.

I eat 1900 a day of the same pre logged foods. Every single day I eat the same as I know the calorie content and it's just easier for me to monitor.

I agree with others that you would be well-served to continue how you plan to maintain your weight long term, and starting to experiment sometime soon to work out the finer points, if you can't imagine yourself eating the same foods every day for the rest of your life. Figuring out things like satiation, nutrition, tastiness, and overall happiness can be easier with that cushion of a small calorie deficit in case of . . . experiments that don't go so well.

I've walked 290 miles since January 1st and started running a mile a day since March 1st.

I've lost 2lbs in the past 3 weeks. I lost 60lbs in 2013 using MFP and 45 in 2018 in the same 4 month period I'm currently at. Could it be that at 37 it's different from when I was 29 and 34???

Because of age? Highly unlikely. (I'm 65, lost weight at 59-60. It widens my eyes when people worry about aging already being weight loss doom in their 30s/40s.)

What can be different with time (not necessarily age) is:

* Lifestyle. Lower activity in daily life reduces calorie expenditure; often people are less active as they age, but circumstances also change for other reasons. For example, many people are less acoutive in daily life because of pandemic-related lifestyle changes and constraints. In a context where even fidgetiness has been show to account for up to a couple hundred calories difference in calorie expenditure between otherwise similar people, these changes can be meaningful.

* Yo-yos in weight. Were your past losses maintained, or regained and re-lost? Bodies tend to become come good at whatever we train them to do. If there are yo-yos, one might think of that as training to expect periods of famine, and slow down various bodily processes more readily in response to calorie restrictions - subtle things, potentially, like hair growth rate, tiny changes in body temperature, etc. Some such changes can even persist after the diet: If intake goes up, but that subtle slowing continues, regain is faster.

* Loss of muscle mass. This one *is* a thing that will happen with aging, if we do nothing to counter it. Periods of extreme dieting (fast loss) can make that muscle loss happen relatively more quickly, especially if there's sub-ideal protein intake and general nutrition, and inactivity. The subtle slowings and lifestyle changes mentioned above can conspire in this muscle loss. The daily calorie expenditure difference between a pound of muscle and a pound of fat is believed to be only about 4 calories per pound per day, so very small, but it can be in the mix. Perhaps more importantly, I suspect that as people lose muscle, it becomes harder and less fun to be active in daily life and exercise, so that people who retain/build muscle may have lives with more movement and physical intensity.

So, aging? Not mostly, at least not per se. Past practices having an influence on subsequent results? More probable, IMO.

You can't change the past, but you control the future. If you've been losing around a pound a week, that may be pretty perfect. (Rough arithmetic, November to 3 weeks ago sounds like maybe 4 months, 16 weeks, 17 pounds lost total presumably including the last 3 weeks.) A little slower in the past 3 weeks is as likely to be a water weight issue from the new running, as from any other factor. Even if it isn't, 3 pounds in 2 weeks isn't crazy slow.

Are you doing any strength training at all? If not, consider it, even bodyweight training if you don't have gym/weights access.

Also, I assume you dialed in your macros with the foods you're eating daily, but eating the same things daily isn't an ideal nutritional plan, especially on the micronutrient front. IMO, taking a multivitamin or other supplements is not a solution for that. Are you using standard MFP macro percents? I can never remember what's standard for protein, maybe 20%? If so, that'd be 95g at 1900, which I wouldn't consider optimal at 247lbs. (I would find it OK for me, if losing/active at 5'5", 125 pounds, but I actually target more to hedge my bets.) Examine.com, which is generally regarded as evidence-based and neutral, suggests a minimum of 134g, and up to 168, though I made a guess or two at some of the settings for you.
ut
https://examine.com/nutrition/protein-intake-calculator/
https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/

If you've yo-yo-ed before, your best bet now would be to train your body to exploit the maximum number of calories possible and still lose weight (a path of learning to thrive), rather than training your body to expect future famine ( a path of learning to limp along on minimum calories).

Is 1900 too high?

Improbable. I admit I'm mysteriously a good calorie burner for a li'l ol' lady, but I'd lose on that, albeit slowly, even at my current size and age 65, doing less cardio than it sounds like you are.

Am I walking too far?

Is it causing you pain or injury? Is it at least moderately enjoyable to you, as a way to spend large blocks of your time? Is it allowing you enough time and energy for work, chores, family, friends, other hobbies/activities important to you? Do you see yourself as enjoying this kind of routine long term, as a way to maintain health and weight?

If the answers to those three questions are a confident No, Yes, Yes, Yes, then you're not walking too far. Any other answers, I'd suggest you consider a different routine. Physical well-being and time is about all life is made of, and we only get so much of either, so it's good to spend them well, IMO.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Best wishes!

AnnPT77 wrote: »

bubus05 wrote: »

See the problem with cardio exercises in general, including walking, is that your body adapts. What may have been a tough workout before, a few months later becomes easy. A five mile walk may have burned x cals before but as your body gets stronger the exercise gets more comfortable the body needs less energy hence will burn less calories. So you need to increase the pressure, switch to running is one way very effective to be sure, the other is going for anaerobic high intensity training with weights or sprinting.
1900 cals/day seem ok, but I would change my macros periodically, to see how the body reacts to carbs fats proteins.
Sadly our metabolism does slow with age, what may have been a sufficient diet a decade earlier, now may not be good enough to lose weight.
In any case patience is key, I began my journey last march. Age 49 male at 275 lbs my target was to lose a 100 lbs.
MyFitnesspal gave me 1500 cal/day to lose 2 lbs/week and I have been on that ever since. After a year I am down about 90 lbs but it took ages to really get going. Give it time...

A bunch of this, unfortunately, is counterfactual. You got a bunch of disagrees, but I'm going to use my words to explain why I'd be inclined to do likewise.

First, the same activity, done at the same intensity (pace, or other relevant intensity metric), for the same time duration, at the same body weight, burns approximately the same number of calories . It can't not. It's just physics. In most normal activity like walking or biking, efficiency (in a true physical sense) doesn't change much. (In those rare cases where efficiency may be a bigger factor, the activity isn't technically the same, and the effect is unlikely to be massive anyway; and in many activities, a more efficient person will have capabilities that let them burn more calories in a time interval than a less-efficient one for the same cost in fatigue, so there's an offsetting practical factor.)

As a person gets fitter, the activity will feel easier, perhaps much easier. As a person gets fitter, a heart-rate-based calorie estimate (like from a heart rate monitor) may estimate fewer calories, because it measures heart rate and estimates calories: The fitter person's more capable heart pumps more blood volume per beat, so needs fewer beats to deliver the same blood volume, the blood volume delivers oxygen, and it's oxygen utilization that actually correlates relatively closely with calorie burn, not heartbeats.

Yes, as one loses weight, weight-bearing activities burn fewer calories, because it takes less energy to move the lighter body. Also, some of the activities you mention (running vs. walking, sprinting vs. slower running) do burn more calories per minute than walking, but can be continued for relatively shorter time periods because of fatigue, so the net may not be better, depending on time budget. (Fatiguing activities have other downsides, but no need to get into that here, except to say that fatigue can bleed calorie burn out of the rest of the day.)

"Anaerobic high intensity training" is generally over-rated for calorie burn, in part because heart-rate monitors tend to over-estimate its calories (because heart rate goes up for reasons other than oxygen demand), in part because it feels satisfyingly difficult, and in part because people compare EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, a.k.a. afterburn) percents, rather than doing the arithmetic to discover that the difference in calories that's at play is not generally really significant.

Our "metabolism" may not slow that much with age, certainly not much by your 40s. A TDEE calculator estimates my BMR ("metabolism") at 65 to be 100ish calories lower than it was at 25, 40 years younger. That's half a serving of peanut butter, more or less. Further, if I use one of the research based formulas that considers body fat percentage, it estimates my BMR at 25 and 65, with the same body fat percent, as . . . exactly equal. Food for thought, about the importance of maintaining muscle mass to the extent feasible. (FWIW, I used https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/).

I agree with you about the "give it time" part, though, 100%. 🙂

Ok for the sake of argument...
suppose there are two guys, same weight, same age, running a five mile track. One is a pro athlete, the other is an amateur. I bet the pro guy will burn less calories doing the same routine, TBH I find it fascinating it is even debated.
You seem to agree metabolism does slow down with age, the question is by how much...I guess it depends. The point is if you eat the same food at 40 you used to eat at 20 chances are you will get fat. I happened to me.
Anaerobic high intensity training is hardly over rated if anything it is under rated, ask any professional athlete what they do if they want to lose weight.
Thanks for your opinion, even if we disagree...