At Goal & Successfully Maintaining. So Why Am I Doing This All Over Again?
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springlering62 wrote: »Truth!!!!!!!
I roll the other direction. I try to choose the highest calorie version of meals out so I have a buffer.
I'm glad I'm not crazy for doing the same thing! At least I'm being honest with myself, is how I see it! Having that food scale is an eye opener to what an appropriate amount of food really is! 😱3 -
springlering62 wrote: »In fact, he seems to have found the absolute most generic, home-cook recipe entries for most the meals he’s logged.
This was the SO's biggest pitfall when logging also, choosing the most attractive (lowest calorie) entries over the more accurate ones.
It was a huge disaster for him since he works away for two weeks at a time and eats all his meals in a cafeteria so he was stuck with guesstimating anyway. But he was determined to make those numbers fit his goal, regardless of what he'd actually eaten.
I feel like this is part of a larger cognitive effect one can fall into when calorie counting, thinking that what is logged is what results in weight gain, loss, maintenance - moreso than what is actually done. The "if I can find a low example to log, all is well" aspect is one of the risks, but so is finding the highest exercise calorie estimate to log.
I found myself sometimes falling for a less destructive variant of this, feeling like if I forgot to record a workout on my fitness tracker or the like, it didn't count. 😆 Sure, I may not have stats to help me count it accurately, but my body counts everything . . . just like it counts the unadmitted calories from any lowball food estimates. 🙄
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BL has joined us on the Dark Side. This morning he got up and said,”You know? I’m rearranging my class schedule. The ones I’ve been taking aren’t hard enough anymore.”
😎👍🏻👏🏻
Are you still challenged?8 -
springlering62 wrote: »BL has joined us on the Dark Side. This morning he got up and said,”You know? I’m rearranging my class schedule. The ones I’ve been taking aren’t hard enough anymore.”
😎👍🏻👏🏻
Are you still challenged?
Ah, the seductive lure of continuing to increase fitness . . . especially once one reaches that tipping point between feeling like movement is difficult but necessary, vs. feeling like movement is essential in order to stay sane and happy.
Challenged? Moi? My discipline (a weak muscle for me) is challenged in Winter, more than my fitness. I work on that, because it's undesirable to reach on-water rowing season in Spring in a depleted state. (I am not a good role model, except maybe a model for gaming one's character faults in order to accomplish things.)5 -
I... mean sort of? I am always striving to do better at the things I love doing that are also active. Those aren't things that have a 'as hard as it will ever be' though - they're basically sports so my performance can ALWAYS improve in both technical/skill ways that are benefited by fitness
Difficulty/challenge for the sake of it?
Absolutely no, and also no thank you. I run and lift but I am absolutely not in that regard on an ever increasing speed/duration/weight journey. It's not fun for me and I get enough challenge in life being life.4 -
There is such a thing as “the joy of movement”. Where it feels so darned good to move, to challenge what movement you can do, and reach greedily for more.
It’s not always punishment or piggybacking effort or for results. It can truly just be joy.
Sometimes in yoga, I find myself breaking into a big sloppy grin for that very reason. I am so grateful to experience that joy that sometimes I have to actually suck the tears back in for fear of making a scene. “You’re crying with happiness because you can do a flow?”
Damn right I am. I hope my BL has reached that point.
I sincerely hope everyone reading this does, too.11 -
springlering62 wrote: »BL has joined us on the Dark Side. This morning he got up and said,”You know? I’m rearranging my class schedule. The ones I’ve been taking aren’t hard enough anymore.”
😎👍🏻👏🏻
Are you still challenged?
I am very motivated by competition and have to set challenges for myself or I start slacking off. However, I can’t keep trying to up my game on the same goal, day in day out, I have to switch it up. So for example I might work on improving my 5k speed for several months, then work on improving my mileage, then enter a trail race series for the first time, then try out an ultra marathon for the first time. Or maybe I am just not feeling it with the running so I have a goal of improving my max deadlift. Or maybe I am sick of both lifting and running so I just keep doing the minimum to not go backwards, and try learning a new type of dance for a while. Recently I have been doing belly dance on my recovery days.
I absolutely agree about the joy of movement being a huge motivator. But there are also those days when it just doesn’t feel joyful, and that’s okay too, exercise works even on days when you aren’t “feeling it.”4 -
I think my thing is mostly that I still have some mental hang-ups around exercise.
I exercise, but for me it's all... play?
I paddleboard, swim, hike, trail run, horseback ride, hike (long and hard ones), play dog sports and recently have taken to climbing stuff. Those are ALL exercise of various sorts some of them pretty intensely athletic. They're hobbies and games that happen to involve movement and I do for love of the game/activity in and of itself. I GET that.
But my exercise outside that is limited to a 5K jog in which idgaf about my speed and just kind of do by rote and routine, and about 20 minutes of lifting 3 or 4 miles a week wherein I DO increase my weights for the sake of continued resistance but not a whole lot and is also just rote routine.
Work out as joy in and of itself is pretty outside my mindset, *personally*. If it's not something a 12 year old would do for entertainment and/or is any activity taught as a class/I would have found in a gym class I just kind of 'eh' out of it and do the bare minimum because I'm a grown up and should -- or because it'll help me continue to do well and have fun doing my fun stuff.
Nothing wrong with loving the things I don't - I get that and love it - but nothing wrong with play being your exercise or just kind of 'ugh, this again'ing it either.6 -
BL is overjoyed. He weighed in this morning and was down half a pound from his previous best, to his lowest weight thus far.
This after being up a couple earlier this week, some holiday indulgences, and an unexpected detour to Mellow Mushroom (where you can’t not have Parmesan knots, right?!).
Again, if your weight is up but you’ve stuck to plan, don’t panic.
“Weight loss doesn’t happen in a straight line”.
^^^ MFP gold right thar9 -
wunderkindking wrote: »I think my thing is mostly that I still have some mental hang-ups around exercise.
I exercise, but for me it's all... play?
I paddleboard, swim, hike, trail run, horseback ride, hike (long and hard ones), play dog sports and recently have taken to climbing stuff. Those are ALL exercise of various sorts some of them pretty intensely athletic. They're hobbies and games that happen to involve movement and I do for love of the game/activity in and of itself. I GET that.
But my exercise outside that is limited to a 5K jog in which idgaf about my speed and just kind of do by rote and routine, and about 20 minutes of lifting 3 or 4 miles a week wherein I DO increase my weights for the sake of continued resistance but not a whole lot and is also just rote routine.
Work out as joy in and of itself is pretty outside my mindset, *personally*. If it's not something a 12 year old would do for entertainment and/or is any activity taught as a class/I would have found in a gym class I just kind of 'eh' out of it and do the bare minimum because I'm a grown up and should -- or because it'll help me continue to do well and have fun doing my fun stuff.
Nothing wrong with loving the things I don't - I get that and love it - but nothing wrong with play being your exercise or just kind of 'ugh, this again'ing it either.
THIS Active living in whatever way you love to live! I too do better in "play mode" (and not just in the activity arena either) In high school when I had a part-time job at the public library, I had a private "beat the clock to shelve this cart of books" mode ... to stop myself from going "ooh! gotta remember to read THIS one ... let me read the back (or liner) notes on THIS-OTHER one .... etc etc"3 -
I feel like this is part of a larger cognitive effect one can fall into when calorie counting, thinking that what is logged is what results in weight gain, loss, maintenance - moreso than what is actually done. The "if I can find a low example to log, all is well" aspect is one of the risks, but so is finding the highest exercise calorie estimate to log.
Yes, you've nailed it exactly. Fortunately, however, he is much more serious about staying low carb because he does NOT want to be pre-diabetic or diabetic. Although he's not logging this time around, just keeping a mental carb tally... which has led to errors when he "forgot" something he ate.
THIS Active living in whatever way you love to live! I too do better in "play mode" (and not just in the activity arena either) In high school when I had a part-time job at the public library, I had a private "beat the clock to shelve this cart of books" mode ... to stop myself from going "ooh! gotta remember to read THIS one ... let me read the back (or liner) notes on THIS-OTHER one .... etc etc"
I shelved in our uni library for a year full-time, then part-time. I was very early 20s and the year I shelved in serials (lots of heavy bound journals) was my absolute fittest until I took up deliberate exercise in my late 40s.2 -
Been there. Done that (in a Law Library) . Had the biceps back then ...4
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Next time I make Christmas dinner, I’ll check the calories first. I’ve never cooked prime rib before. Holy #%*+!!!!’ It’s a hundred calories per ounce! We were both parsing out our little pieces of meat, and mutually agreed a lesser cut would have been more enjoyable and more filling.
Can’t even give leftovers to the dog because…..horseradish glaze. Looks like meat scented heavy-on-the-vegetable wraps the next couple of days to use it up!!!!!
Merry Christmas, you lovely folks!8 -
rheddmobile wrote: »...
I absolutely agree about the joy of movement being a huge motivator. But there are also those days when it just doesn’t feel joyful, and that’s okay too, exercise works even on days when you aren’t “feeling it.”
When I feel that way, I tell myself that I will feel a sense of accomplishment when the workout is done. That reminder has gotten my lard *kitten* off the couch many times. And it never fails. I am always pleased with myself when I have completed a workout
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So last night, BL sheepishly admitted he was craving a DQ soft cone. He was embarrassed about it. Acted like it was something shameful to have a craving.
“How many calories you got left? Oh wow, that many? Why are you embarrassed? Let’s go get you one!”
So I rode with him to buy a medium sized cone.
This is a double NSV. He had far more than enough calories for that cone (or two, if he’d wanted), and I didn’t want anything on the tempting ice cream menu, because I’d planned for and already made a yogurt-pumpkin pudding, which tbh, that sounded better to me.
Afterwards he said, “ya know, I enjoyed it while I ate it but now I just feel sick.” Dude, I know. I know!!!!! Been there a hundred times. Your head says,”oooohhhhh I want this now” gimee gimee” but then afterwards you’re wondering why you ever did it. Mild nausea, heartburn. But as he said, it was good in the moment.
I think as we get used to better choices, our bodies can’t cope with some of the old ones any longer? (Ask me about that batch of Xmas toffee cookies I put away . Urgh. * Shudder*.)
BTW, he’s been playing Pokémon Go hard during the Holiday Event. There’s a holiday Pokémon named Vanillite that looks like a soft serve cone. That’s what got into his head, LMAO.
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springlering62 wrote: »
I think as we get used to better choices, our bodies can’t cope with some of the old ones any longer? (Ask me about that batch of Xmas toffee cookies I put away . Urgh. * Shudder*.)
I think age and duration of lifestyle shift plays a factor as well. I've always had a pretty resilient stomach and can typically eat anything without consequence. However, at nearly 33 now, having been at MFP for coming up on 11 years, and incrementally focusing on "better" nutrition for most of that time I find that my tolerance for indulgences waning to a degree. Nothing overly problematic but a general sense of feeling gross after I have certain things occasionally. It was really apparent during our vacation back in late July; between fast food during the 12 hour drives, eating out for most meals, boardwalk treats, less exercise, and the general toll of travelling with a toddler just left me feeling blah both physically and mentally for how I was treating my body.
As much as a shudder when I think about the teenage late night taco bell trips with friends (~3000 calories in my standard order) and the many beer-laiden college weekends my body endured those tendencies are still hard to contend with from time to time, as illustrated by that DQ story.
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springlering62 wrote: »I think as we get used to better choices, our bodies can’t cope with some of the old ones any longer?
I've wondered about this as well. However, is it possible that we are just more attentive to how we feel? And/or we just didn't notice how bad we felt normally before? I can say that a year ago, I generally felt pretty blah from lack of exercise and eating too much. If I overindulged, it wasn't much of a difference from a normal day. I didn't notice how I was feeling on most days, so on a "bad" day there wasn't much difference. Contrast that to now: I feel pretty good on most days, so when I overindulge I REALLY feel how crappy it makes me feel.
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Oh well said @dralicephd !!!!1
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dralicephd wrote: »springlering62 wrote: »I think as we get used to better choices, our bodies can’t cope with some of the old ones any longer?
I've wondered about this as well. However, is it possible that we are just more attentive to how we feel? And/or we just didn't notice how bad we felt normally before? I can say that a year ago, I generally felt pretty blah from lack of exercise and eating too much. If I overindulged, it wasn't much of a difference from a normal day. I didn't notice how I was feeling on most days, so on a "bad" day there wasn't much difference. Contrast that to now: I feel pretty good on most days, so when I overindulge I REALLY feel how crappy it makes me feel.
For me I don't perceive that much difference in my baseline level of wellness but I think this also has to do with relative age and weight; I'm pretty much hanging out at the same "healthy" weight I started with MFP 10.5 years ago but I'm much stronger, athletic and way better body composition now at 32 than I was at 22. I absolutely notice a lack of movement though. I last had a workout on 12/18 due to a sinus infection and pulled muscle in my chest from coughing during said sinus infection and related discovery of cough suppressant allergy (been an eventful last two weeks, holidays notwithstanding) and I'm ITCHING to get a workout on. Trying to be patient.6 -
I have a strong, vivid, memory of early on in my weight loss journey going overboard at some thing or another and feeling really, really, overfull and finding that feeling *comfortable* and *pleasant*. It made me sleepy - and you know stuffed feeling - and I LIKED IT.
Over full these days just makes me feel terrible and gross and regret all my decisions.
Same physical sensations. I just no longer associate it with some kind of positive thing - in part I'm sure because I'm not used to it but also because some emotional connotations broke with the habit.6
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