PAV8888 wrote: »

Connie you've asked about activity labels a few times.

I am not sure what you're using as a step source. But if you're using a Fitbit type device, 6000 steps usually correspond to a lightly active setting on MFP. And, if you were using lightly active, you would NOT log anything that is part of the 6000 steps as a separate exercise.

The way I translate activity labels to steps goes along the lines:
2500-3500 mid sedentary / not very active
5500-6500 mid lightly active
10000 well into active
13500 well into very active

If I walked 6000 steps and I kept swimming the way I am, would you get to eat a portion of those calories burned?....I love swimming but I do it so I can eat more!....right now to lose 1.5 lbs a week, I get 1370 calories a day....but when I burn between 700 to 900 calories exercising, I eat around 1550 to 1600 calories..

..but today I took a break from exercise and I only used about 300 calories doing various activities....
...I don’t think I ate enough yesterday and I had a huge calorie burn so I ate some extra calories today....it usually averages out in the week...

Thanks!

Laurie, I sure hope so!....this is the longest I have ever eaten healthy and sensibly in my entire life....when our son was born (10lb 9 oz ) I gained a ton and was checked for diabetes....when our
“ small “ daughter ( 9. Lb ) came along, I lost 50 lbs while I was pregnant!...from the time I was 16 at 145 lb (5’7”)...to my highest at 68 ( 5’9”)...over 350 lbs and climbing, my weight has been all over the place!...up and down through the years...MFP was going to be my last effort at losing weight because I had given up on everything!...

What would we do without PAV and Novus to give us advice, guide us, teach us, and mostly listen to us?

I await input alongside you, Bella. After losing 120 pounds, I was 18 from goal, and chose to "slam on the brakes" but that didn't work for me. I'm not sure what will work. There is something to be said about the psychological benefits of seeing that scale drop at a decent pace to keep you going. I'm not sure I have the patience to tolerate a very slow rate of loss and still apply the discipline necessary to keep losing? But then again - going to have to do it come maintenance. But I'm hoping a different head set will appear once I hit the ideal weight and the motivation will come from the pleasure I'll find in defending the new me - and new goals I'll make up?

I’ve pretty much decided that my last 25 lbs. will have to come off by eating at my goal maintenance calories. That means very, very slowly. I can’t do 1200 calories a day. My goal maintenance is 1550 which is fairly low but at least doable. Maybe “practicing” goal weight eating will result in some success without losing my mind trying to fight hunger.

Bella: if you're having an "easy" time as compared to past times and you've been successful throughout both in losing when you want to and maintaining when you want to (i.e. you didn't have trouble maintaining when you took your breaks)... then you can, of course continue at a fast pace, then maintenance break for a bit, then fast pace etc.

I am more worried about the ones of us who are "I'm on the game and losing" OR "I'm off the game and gaining". And THAT is where the change the amplitude of the wave comes from seeking slow movements up and down that take a long long time. This forces *US* to adapt to achieve that, right?

There is no clear cut win or guaranteed ways you know. I've seen at least a couple of studies where WITH SUFFICIENT SUPPORT (dietician, counseling, led groups, etc), people who lose fast have equal likelihood to maintain their loss with people who lose slower.

BUT... I sort of had to go at it the "ghetto" way (without the support) and having failed (many times) when going the "lose as quickly as I can so I can maintain at goal) way... I went for the open ended continuous long term management (so things have to be as easy as possible) method. OF COURSE when starting for Category 3, a period of faster loss is beyond fine. IMHO almost all the way to high overweight it makes sense to be talking up to 20% deficits out of actual (not out of expected) TDEE. But, by BMI ~27 or so. At that level, with reduced health risk and in the mid to low overweight category, THAT's when setting up maintenance, adding to the total time spent at a lower weight, flattening the wave... that's when all this comes into play and deficits reduce to 10 % ish of ACTUAL tdee (I stress *actual* because it may be, as you mentioned, lower than expected TDEE)

In the end though we all have to find our own reasoning and what we can each live with.

Bella, honestly, your presence here has been a ray of sunshine. Your success - which I can see is not because you are having an "easy" time, but because of your thought and all the work you are putting into this - and the insight you bring to the table (lol) every time you visit is truly inspiring.

And you express things so well! (I've just about given up on language...lol)

And mostly because of the sense of positivity you radiate.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bella for asking this question, and PAV and Psycho for your responses. I'm thinking I'll be close to worrying about this soon and it is good to be thinking about it again.

Right, my mind is churning all this over.

Just for clarity, I'll explain what I think I understand, so that I can be corrected if I'm wrong. This will be long, so for those who can't be bothered to plough through my verbosity, I'll summarise in one sentence at the end.

The long, verbose version:
Identical twins Ada and Bella are separated at birth, and Ada is adopted by the Outdoorsy-Adventurer family, while Bella is adopted by the Couch-Potato family. Ada spends her infancy, childhood and youth kayaking down the Amazon, trekking in the Himalayas, mountain-biking across Australia, and dog-sledding to the poles. Food is fuel. Dieting never crosses her mind. This behaviour continues into adulthood, and Ada maintains her lean physique and her splendid metabolism.

Bella spends her infancy, childhood and youth leisure hours sitting on a sofa reading and watching telly. She and her family get great joy and pleasure from their shared buckets of KFC and tins of Quality Street. They create happy memories from shared feasts and indulgent treats. Food is ever-present and has great emotional resonance. Exercise is shunned. Periodically Bella and her family try to lose some excess weight, but the pull of food is too strong. This behaviour continues into adulthood, and Bella gets larger and larger despite her efforts to diet. However, after one particularly determined episode of weight management, Bella finally reaches a healthy weight.

At this point, Ada and the newly-slim Bella are joyfully re-united and decide to live together for what remains of their lives. They're inseparable, and Bella adopts Ada's outdoorsy lifestyle. They do everything together. Both weigh 125 lbs.

Right from the get-go, they notice some differences. They spend every waking minute together, doing identical activity and ingesting exactly the same food and drink, but Ada's weight remains stable while Bella's weight begins to creep upwards. Furthermore, Ada never seems to think about food, but Bella thinks about it all the time, almost to the point of obsession. She feels constantly hungry, and there's temptation everywhere. At mealtimes, though she stops eating at the same time as Ada, she never feels satiated. It's a constant battle not to sneak off and eat a bag of donuts. She also feels constantly cold and tired.

After some months of experimentation, they calculate that for Bella's weight to remain stable, she needs to eat 500 calories/day fewer than Ada for doing identical activity....and this will be the case for the rest of their lives. And it's likely that she'll always feel more hungry, more tempted, more cold, more tired and less satiated than Ada.

"I can do it!" says Bella, grimly.
"I'll support you!" says Ada, guiltily, wondering if this means she'll never be able to have a bar of chocolate ever again, in case it sends Bella off into a tailspin.

The end....

1 line summary:
For the rest of my life I'll most likely need to live on several hundred calories a day fewer than someone of the same age/height/weight/gender/activity level who has never had a weight problem, and compared to that person I'll also feel more hungry, cold and tired, and less satiated. Forever and Ever. Amen.

Have I understood that right?

If I HAVE understood that right, how does that square with my experience to this point?

To date, I've lost 65lbs, which though not a HUGE sum, is still a pretty hefty amount of weight (31% of my starting body weight).

So shouldn't I have expected this metabolic slow-down to have started already?

Instead, my TDEE is pretty stable...Using SailRabbit to calculate my RMR, depending on which model is used, my RMR theoretically ranges from 1,190 to 1,460 and my TDEE theoretically ranges from 1,695 to 2,080 for my standard activity level (Light jogging or walking 5-7 days per week).


However, at 2,162 cals/day, my TDEE is higher even than that calculated by Cunningham, and hundreds higher if using Mifflin St Jeor, which is widely considered the most accurate estimate.

Against Mifflin St Jeor, my TDEE multiplier is 1.8, i.e. somewhere between 'Hard Labourer' and 'Professional/Olympic Athlete'.

It just doesn't make sense!

When I type my GOAL weight into SailRabbit and just take Mifflin St Jeor as the estimator, using 'hard laborour' as the activity level gives me a TDEE of around 1,869.


I could be wrong, but I think I could live long-term on 1,869 calories a day if I was mindful, motivated and careful to include enough protein and fibre. I think folks like Yooly would think they'd died and gone to heaven if they had a long-term maintenance calorie budget to 1,869.

But the theory of AT suggests I won't have 1,869, right? I may have closer to 1,500... (i.e. my current deficit budget).

But if the theory of AT's true (and I see no reason to disbelieve it)...why am I still losing about 1.48 lbs/week on a calorie budget of 1,500 calories, despite having lost a third of my body weight? Why is my body still being so efficient at burning calories? And will it stop being so efficient (pound for pound) if I push on to goal?

That's what I'm struggling to get my head around....

What I get from all of this is…..if I want to maintain a healthy weight, I will have to diet and exercise the rest of my life!….which isn’t a bad thing because at a healthy weight I will most likely live longer!

Yoolypr wrote: »

Hopefully I can get back to some serious exercise and earn an extra 200-300 calories which would boost me to 1800. At my age it’s more like declining vigor rather than increase. I think I’ll be in the 1400-1550 range at best.

That is one reason I love being in the pool a couple of hours four or five days a week….besides getting stronger and having more endurance, I can have a few more calories to eat!….I just can’t get in the water when it is so chilly outside!….

It is not 500---that seems remarkably excessive. How would you be reacting about this discussion if the figure was 50 or 27 after a year?

There is some recovery and it doesn't continue forever at the maximum. Furthermore, methodological and other questions aside larger loser is an extreme that nobody here I believe advocates as a modus operandi

There is some disagreement if the recovery is complete or partial and under what conditions and very little (or at least not discovered by me) clear and compelling research establishing figures beyond that it exists to some degree and there is a recovery to some degree and that there's a potential for a small degree of differences. (And always the full recovery with regain option exists which may not be ideal 😹😹😹)

It doesn't mean you will never have chocolate that's where the advocacy of losing weight in similar methods to how you're planning to maintain comes into play.

You view your internal reality and isolation so it's not all grim even though ahead of time we tend to exacerbate our problems.

All this addresses AT and not your reality.

Your reality and figures are totally different thing. And there would have to be a lot of review before we accept as incomprehensible the labels you assign yourself versus the amount of movement and exercise you perform every day.

Your main incomprehension stems from the labels asigned to the figures, and not necessarily the actual numbers.

So starting from the beginning:

Quick answer: you already have some AT that you are perfectly comfortable living with. Numbers need reviewing 😹

Expanding

The population estimate is the population estimate, individuals vary and a standard deviation or two is unlikely but not impossible for any one individual.

I walk around in the 15 to 20,000 step range and did that from pretty early in my weight loss ramping up a bit as it became easier.

In my case this represents 2 to 3 hours of trying to be active and not sitting on my butt which is what I tend to do most of the rest of the day in front of a computer screen. Ok. I maybe try to inject some extra activity these days. And get up every hour and all that jazz. And my Mifflin activity multiplier is in the 1.93 range

I'll try to bring up some of my old numbers later. But evaluating against an outside estimate with all the potential issues this has (Fitbit) I would say I've shown a less than 5% drop over time.

What I DO see is that when I'm more sedentary Fitbit underestimates my calories out, and when I'm very active it overestimates.

My math is not good enough to come up with a model and the averages are what count.

And I'm not going to be less active because at peak activity I burn fewer than expected calories

I'm not active just for the calories and OVER TIME appetite seems to stabilize close to need when no longer eating at deliberate continuous deficit

I don't tend to overeat because I'm really hungry, right? I would not really gain weight if I did.

I tend to overeat because cookies taste really good and or because I'm annoyed at the world or tired and cold/miserable.

So to part of your question you ARE exhibiting some AT and are more efficient than you think and sitting
Perfectly satisfied with that degree of at and activity. Danger; neither you nor I can engage in this level of activity when injured or possibly reach Connie's or yooly's age.

So your body *is* (probably) less efficient yet you don't séem to mind currently 😹 It will deteriorate at an accelerated rate the more into normal weight you push Ugh ugh ugh I have to leave for an appointment and try to wrap my null brain into something thoughtful later.

I hate MFP. I've written two responses that made more sense and they have both disappeared. I will try to return to this later but right now I want to smash the screen. And I apologize for the response from earlier today where I can barely make out what I'm rambling about. Obviously not enough coffee and too much google dictation.

Fat burn vs other burn during exercise of way less relevance especially to stored fat loss as compared to total quantity of calories burned over the course of the complete day.

Overall the more calories you use the more stored fat you will lose subject to the same intake regardless of the substrate that was directly utilized during the exercise. So optimizing for substrate is sub-optimal. In fact, burning carbs that have to be stored again is more energy intensive and wasteful than efficiently burning fat

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8Km is what, just about 10K steps for you? That puts you as ~active in the 1.6x range by itself. At 12K to 13.5K you're verging towards 1.7x or 1.8x (for most people who are tracking close to average blah blah yada yada)

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A power meter is an impartial arbiter. It is literally a power meter. It measures energy. Subject to normal measurement error and variance... it, how should I put it, measures energy spent! So it CAN'T overestimate what you've put out because that's what it measuring, and the only source of that energy is... YOU!

So you've spent that energy. TIMES A CONVERSION FACTOR because bio-chemical power ain't electricity.

And that's where the issues start because in reality only about 25% of the calories you're burning make it to the pedals. The rest become heat. And the more efficient you are, the less you "waste" on generating heat, and thus you burn fewer calories for the power levels you generate.

But the power your meter measured has been generated as measured.

https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/how-accurate-is-that-calorie-reading/

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How can eliminating exercise not reduce your total daily expenditure ABSENT compensation by increasing other activity?

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Be a confident olympic athlete.

For some reason I've had stuck in my head a multiplier in the 1.93 to 1.97 range for myself.

And I just confirmed it by using third year of MFP (a unique combination of both a complete and a relatively weight stable year for me while I was still logging food with extreme diligence and with a sub 3lb yearly decrease). Using lowest age and highest weight I still get a multiplier of just over 1.9 based on observed weight change results and subject to logging quality.

ONLY activity was walking, averaging 19104 steps or about 13.5 to 13.75km per day for the year. Divergence from expected TDEE was 4.77% lower than expected.

Hence Olympic athlete 😹

Note that the step to km conversion is extremely suspect and only outside would reliably count based on stride. Stride varies with speed and terrain

But averages hide a lot of non biased inaccuracies as errors offset.

And long term data are long term data and thus reflective of one's reality