Ah, I see. I don't know much about spin bikes...I didn't realise you had to manually change gear! I've been spoiled by the smart trainer, which automatically adjusts the resistance for me, making it considerably harder to pedal up virtual mountains than coast on virtual flats!

That said, an app like Zwift will still make your bike sessions much more fun! Virtual races...trying not to let a virtual jogger overtake you...trying to catch the person ahead of you up the climb...the fun never ends!

I"m still trying, even though I'm not seeing any success. I was doing well earlier in the week - had energy to do all kinds of chores including dusting! (gasp!) Made snowmen outside, swept and steam mopped the house, cleaned bathrooms, fixed my wagon's wheels, carried in pellets....It was probably a boost from the prednisone my doctor had me on for my hand I banged up back in December. As the work week wore on, my energy levels took a big dip. *sigh*

Next week, our routine is going to be all changed as hubby has finally gotten a job and will now be working 5 days a week. While its been stressful, especially for him, being out of work for 9 months and depending on my salary alone and not liking having to use the credit cards to supplement, the Lord was good to us in providing, and having him here all the time for the last 9 months did good for our fledging marriage, I think. The constant company with each other has helped us bond and given him time to adjust to the new location, new culture, new home, new church and new everything.

Still, I'm going to miss having him at hand during the day!

One very good benefit for him, though, is that it sends him to the county seat 20 miles away 5 days a week. They are finishing up the touches on an aquatic center over there which is slated to open in February. My husband has been trying to up his exercise as he is morbidly obese and knows he needs to improve his health, but walking any distance isn't easy for him and he can't find a bike seat big enough to handle him. He loves swimming, but we don't have any pools or swimming holes near us - in the summer, its over an hour's drive to get to the closest swimming hole and while there is a small pool in town 10 miles away, its always so crowded and was so limited in operation hours, it wasn't useful at all.

But now that he's going to the county seat 5 days a week, I told him we'll get a membership in the pool there that is opening up, and he can go after work and put in 45 minutes or so, then come home for dinner. Its a very good win situation for him!

The downside for me, though, is I'm working from home permanently now, so it would be out of my way to drive over there every day to take a swim That's 20 miles and a 30 minute drive, so I'm going to have to find something else.

My husband has a treadmill, but we are going to be rearranging the house this spring and its going to go into storage. He hates using it and I can't - something about my walking gait makes me very unsteady on treadmills and a fall danger whenever I get them up to speed. I do have my elliptical out, but my toes and hands go numb when I use it, and frankly, I dislike it, too.,

That's my problem int he long term - I HATE gym style, regular exercise, and every time I've tried to start it up, it fizzles out because I can't sustain it. The closest I had to regular exercise that I could sustain was the walking, but that took up so much of my time and I hated that. My job takes up so much of my time during the day that by the time I have dinner done, I want my evening hours to myself to do what I enjoy doing, so tacking on another 2 hours doing something I hate? I can't do it.

*sigh*

Comes spring and summer, things will hopefully change. I plan to get chickens this spring, and we have plans for a big garden. I want to build a concrete patio, 12 ft x 18 ft beside the house because we plan on replacing the big window there with french doors and make that the main entry into the house (2 steps in versus 5 and facing the parking area). I also want to get a retaining wall in the back and set rocks back there for a small patio as well. And we are going to put in a wood stove this year to replace the pellet stove, so we will need to cut wood this summer, and since my husband has a bad arm with a 10 lb lifting limit, I get to split the firewood and run the chainsaw (which I do actually enjoy doing anyway!)

Still, none of that is sustained, long term activity. *sigh*

I've considered getting a recumbent bike, but I'm not sure how well that would work and if I'd be any more inclined to use it than the elliptical. There is one on Amazon that can hold up to 400 lbs, which could be used by my husband, but how much exercise does one actually get from a recumbent bike? I wish we had a place we could set up a small gym, but while we plan to eventually build that new patio into a 3 seasons porch, we aren't going to be able to afford to do it all this year, so we don't have a place to set the treadmill, elliptical, and a exercise bike. I wouldn't mind a small rowing machine to work the arms, but space is an issue, especially for a machine I'm not sure I would be able to make myself use

YES!

bmeadows380 wrote: »

My job takes up so much of my time during the day that by the time I have dinner done, I want my evening hours to myself to do what I enjoy doing, so tacking on another 2 hours doing something I hate? I can't do it.

Hello Mrs Meadows!
The ladies have given very sane and immediate and actionable advice.
And I really shouldn't be tackling this right now as my hamsters are distracted.
But you present a bit of a conundrum to my hamsters!

You are quite enterprising and quite handy and quite active.
Your "puttering" around the house, gardening, homesteading if you will, is stuff that uses up energy even if it is not always done on a continuous basis. It is good for you. Can be used for energy expenditure. The results make life better. I only see wins there and this is definitely a part of NEAT maximization!

So now we get to the "I don't want to exercise" part. And to the much more basic: "The closest I had to regular exercise that I could sustain was the walking, but that took up so much of my time and I hated that. My job takes up so much of my time during the day that by the time I have dinner done, I want my evening hours to myself to do what I enjoy doing, so tacking on another 2 hours doing something I hate? I can't do it."

And you're absolutely right. No one can spend time doing something they don't enjoy and hate.

But then we get back to something that @psychod787 has mentioned a few times when discussing how far many of us push weight loss even when successful. Or as a contributor for *some* instances of regain--I stress SOME because I strongly feel that regain that more closely follows weight loss has totally different reasons and explanations. And this is the concept of settling weight. NOT set weight theory. But settling weight theory.

The settling point model postulates that there is little active regulation towards a predefined body weight, but that body weight settles based on the resultant of a number of contributors, represented by the individual’s genetic predisposition, in interaction with environmental and socioeconomic factors, such as diet and lifestyle.

diet here means not only what but also how much of it we eat. Yummy high calorie food is liked by all of us. And almost none of us who are actively participating in this forum have insurmountable trouble "gathering" way too much yummy high calorie food into our mitten paws! So... our hamsters have to control this part no matter what.

And now we get to the second part. This pesky lifestyle part. You know... all the stuff that is NOT covered by "diet". And yes. This includes work AND non work AND family time AND leisure time AND everything we do for work and play as a bundle!

This pesky lifestyle part can be helpful to the diet control hamsters. It can be, on balance, indifferent. And it can also be consciously or unconsciously detrimental to the diet control hamsters!

I can't give you answers on what is or is not worthwhile for you and where the trade-offs can take place. The whole point of logging, thinking, writing, reading is to help each of us discover what works or doesn't work for others and for ourselves. We hear and see things and they either light a "maybe" spark, or they go straight into the "never never" pile!

The other day I was reading a post from AnnPT77 in the main forums about how she went from this to that to the other to rowing (while obese), to rowing competitively (while obese), to continuing to row competitively while becoming no longer obese.

I can tell you that for many many many years I said exactly what you did about exercise and about doing things that were not sedentary. All I wanted to do for leisure was read my books and watch my favourite TV shows and kick *kitten* movies!

Any short "flashes" of more active pursuits where I had some interest (e.g. table tennis) were dashed quickly by the simple fact that progressing beyond the "oh he actually knows how to play" stage required the ability to overcome momentum... and momentum was considerable!

Sure. I took out the dog once in a while... but that was more of a chore, ya know. Not a good for me thing. But good for the dog. **kittens** I would even try to read my kindle while waiting for the dog to do his job, or while letting him roam around the dog park.

Brief attempts to lose weight were always extreme. Successful within the parameters of losing weight for a very short time period with increased exercise -- swimming and walking were the mainstays over the years. And would inevitably result in the inevitable rebound. Both because of the degree of ratcheting food restriction and because of unsustainably engaging in exercise I was engaging solely for the purpose of losing weight.

Fast forward to age 48. Here I am wearing tracks because the good old size 48 pants haven't fit for a while and I have refused to spend money on size 50s which are not that easy to find either. I want to cut my toe nails and I am having trouble reaching them. Last couple of years friends have variously asked me to go river rafting with them. Or go for a ride on a hot air balloon. And in both cases I have declined because I didn't believe I was physically able to do it. All my hobbies and work like activities are sedentary in nature and involve sitting, or lying in a chair or couch or bed. Parents are getting older and may soon need help. Wait a second. *I* may soon need help. And that's before "retirement". And what exactly will be the point of "retirement" for me if I am already unable (or unwilling because of how I feel) to do anything other than what I already do every day?

Let's fast forward a bit more...

I now spend 1,000% more time on social media than I did in 2014. Yes. MFP is time consuming! I spend about as much time as I used to spend reading a book each day walking outside and listening to audiobooks. And I spend 1,000% less time watching TV (straight trade with time on MFP) I guess.

Do I miss TV? Sure. On quite a few occasions. But nothing earth shattering has happened by my not being "in" on the latest shows. Do I miss being out of breath and feeling heavy? Not at all.

Our hamsters can be happy doing the things they've always done! Or they can slowly morph into enjoying things we didn't use to do.

We can view changes as coming from a negative place and as being forced upon us with us being dragged towards change against our will.

Or we can seek changes viewing them like an opportunity to grow and explore new things. And if some of the old things become less important in that overall context... what's wrong with that?

By the way: I am more than satisfied to aim for "indifferent" lifestyle... some aspects of my lifestyle are helpful to the diet control hamsters and others are NOT helpful at all. On balance though I have moved away from actively detrimental with 100% sedentary engagement and closer to a balanced level!

By the way: why does your walking have to be two hours every night and even more importantly "for exercise"=kiss of death?

🤔🤔🤔

Liar liar pants on fire!

PAV8888 wrote: »

On balance though I have moved away from actively detrimental with [what I now objectively know was] 100% sedentary [level] engagement and closer to [what now **feels** like a] a [fairly] balanced level [of activity even though I acknowledge that it would objectively qualify as a high level of activity given current metrics]!

fixed it for me

Absolutely! So do ants in your pants❣️😹😂🤣😇

One other note of caution I want to interject here is that activity and exercise are not always the answer. And they're never the ONLY answer. We do reach maximum burns and then the body becomes more efficient even faster. And injuries and advancing years are just waiting to pounce!

The difference between totally sedentary and fiendishly active probably doesn't exceed one BMR before we start to see accelerated down-regulation. 1*BMR... that's a lot of calories, right? As much as a day's worth of calories for many eating at a deficit!

But 1*BMR is also so very much NOT so many calories!

For myself at 1500 Cal BMR, it amounts to a normal sized package of cookies, or a single not carefully selected restaurant meal, or a momentary oops where I "accidentally" polish off the whole "tiny" frozen cheesecake once it's thawed-without cutting it in six pieces to share or eat over multiple occasions!

Sedentary is 1.25*BMR. Super active athlete for TDEE calculators is 1.9*BMR. To add 1*BMR to a 1.25 sedentary day you have to be hitting activity levels close to 2.25*BMR!

The big money won't come about by pushing a relatively effortless 1.7 to a painful 2.0. Or by sacrificing life to get a 1.9 to a 2.3

Not eating a 6 pack of donuts? That's an easy 1800 Cal NOT eaten... and almost a week's worth of walking saved, if I were to try and make up the net calories that way.

So activity and exercise good. Activity and exercise EXCELLENT for health. for hamster management, for happiness. And a contributor to the OCCASIONAL doughnut. But NOT the occasional SIX pack of donuts!

You had to write about donuts!…there was a time when we lived in Las Vegas about a mile from a large Krisspee Donut FACTORY!….it was huge, open 24/7 and always fresh including a free donut every time you walked inside to order….many, many, too many times I would make a “
“donut run” after dinner….I would buy 2 dozen assorted donuts plus 2 for me to eat on the way home plus the free one I got for ordering…. Then John,Amanda and her husband and I would divide the 24 donuts!….and I wondered why I couldn’t lose weight!

Why can't 1 donut ever feel like enough?

Donuts have “ crack “ in them…I am convinced!