At Goal & Successfully Maintaining. So Why Am I Doing This All Over Again?

I empathize. My current level of activity is because I enjoy being active, but also because I enjoy the quantity of food I can eat now.

I've worried about the same issue, whether I could eat less if I had an injury. I was overtraining a while back and forced myself to slow down a little and I'll admit, it was hard... I don't have a magical solution for that issue 🤷🏻 I think it's a very frequent issue too, judging by how many elite athletes become overweight when they stop competing. So at least you're not alone? 🙂 For myself, I think I'd go back to skipping breakfast to stick to my calorie goal (I started eating breakfast to increase my protein intake while losing weight).

@Lietchi So true.

@springlering62 I see what you’re saying. I’m pretty sure it’s overestimating though, going by all the data including my as-accurate-as-possible intake data and my rate of loss. I would expect to be losing a full two pounds a week if it were accurate, but I’m hanging out around 1.15-1.25.

I’ve had my resting metabolic rate tested quite a few times over the years, courtesy of my profession and my hubby’s. When I was in college it was far lower than expected for my age, height, and weight. (I had very little muscle.) More recently it was closer to what MFP predicts it should be, I believe thanks to my years of building strength. I’m guessing my lower metabolic rate is at least partially genetic. It’s not crazy low, just on the lower side of normal variation.

springlering62 wrote: »

@EliseTK1
>” However my watch has also been overestimating my "resting energy" by a couple hundred kcal, always has. I basically just ignore it and go by my weight trends.”<

But is it? I think there’s studies that if you do a challenging workout, you’ll continue to burn extra calories for a long period afterwards.

So if you e upped your exercise, maybe it’s recognizing that during rest periods.

Again, my own N=1, but if I do a stand-alone class I get far fewer calories than if I’ve done another class immediately before. I’ve noticed this with both yoga and aquafit.

For example, I’ve got a couple of instructors who repeat power yoga classes during the week, and then change them up the following week.

I can do a Wednesday class and Apple gives me low to mid 200’s. I can do a power class Saturday morning, immediately followed by repeating the near identical class I did Wednesday, and because my heart rate etc is already up, even with half an hour break between classes, I’ll typically pick up another 50-100 calories than same class I did Wednesday.

Ditto for aquafit, which is pretty standard. I often do spin/hiit or a cardio class, strip my shirt and shorts down to the suit hidden underneath and run to join my husband in the pool. I’ll get far more calories for that aquafit than I would have for a similar aquafit that didn’t have a class beforehand.

So, if you’re exercising more, it seems logical that Apple’s magic whatever is recognizing that you’re burning extra during rest periods as well.

Did that make sense?

@AnnPT77 ?

Err, um, maybe. Or maybe not.

EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption - "afterburn") is real, but any research I've seen suggests it's numerically underwhelming.

It's usually expressed as a percentage of the base calories from the exercise. About the highest I've seen reported is around 15%. IOW, for each 100 calories burned during the exercise, 15 calories of EPOC . . . at the high-ish end. That's usually non huge.

It varies by exercise type - research still ongoing, but loosely what I've seen looks like high intensity or high strength challenge exercise tends to have higher EPOC. If higher intensity work has a higher EPOC, that's in a context where higher intensity work is more duration-limited, kind of by definition. The implication is that we may get more EPOC calories from long easy cardio than from necessarily-shorter very hard cardio, even though the hard cardio has "much higher EPOC" (in percentage terms).

When taking 2 classes back to back, I think there's a misleading aspect. There's a thing called "cardiac drift".

Simplistically, if we do a constant intensity but slightly (or more) challenging thing, heart rate increases, maybe a little faster at first (kind of a warm-up effect). Assume we keep going - exact same intensity (such as jogging pace on level surface), so same work (in the physics sense), so same rate of calorie burn. That's where one tends to see "cardiac drift" most clearly.

Eventually the rate of HR increase levels off a bit, but it will tend to continue to slowly creep upward as long as that intensity of exercise continues. (How far, how fast - loosely a function of fitness level with respect to that activity/intensity.)

Bottom line: Workload isn't increasing, so calorie burn isn't increasing for real. But heart rate is increasing, so a heart-rate-based calorie estimate will typically estimate an increasing rate of calorie burn.

You can see this pretty clearly in this HR chart from a recent workout, where I did 3 x 2k with short easier 2 minutes bits in between (including a drink of water) and a cool down at the end. (Each 2k took just under 10 minutes, and I was very close to the same pace during each of the 2k pieces, so very close to constant workload. I don't have a good graph of it, but my watt output is pretty level throughout the 2k pieces, so calorie burn rate is also pretty consistent.) You can see the warm up in the first piece, a big drop during the easy/drink phases, but each 2k piece gradually climbs higher in heart rate. That's pretty much just cardiac drift, not extra calorie burn.



With back to back classes, you'd get a variant on the heart rate drift eject, making it look like the 2nd class burned more calories than the device would estimate if you'd started the same activity from a rested state. It won't show as clearly on a HR chart from something like the classes, because the exertion tends to be somewhat variable during the session. However, the general effect, that once you elevate heart rate and keep going, you'll see some cardiac drift effect - that's going to be happening invisible-hand fashion. At least that's how I understand it.

Whether either estimate (class starting from rested, vs. right after another class) is accurate is a whole other question (based on what HRM are good/bad at estimating, how fit you are vs. what the algorithm thinks, how close your HRmax is to age estimates (if the device doesn't know a measured value), etc.

Probably close enough to be useful.

So, yes, EPOC is real. I don't know whether your HRM will see it, because it's a relatively small and gradual thing, over (potentially) a long-ish time period. The effect on calorie estimates from back-to-back classes, or longer duration activities, isn't mostly about EPOC, but cardiac drift will distort pure HR calorie estimates in those scenarios.

HRM estimates are close enough to be useful for calorie estimating many exercises, but the further one gets (in any dimension) from moderate steady state cardio without a large strength/strain/heat component, the less likely they are to being accurate, and it's tenuous to read into small differences IMO. (I see people thinking something like hot yoga burns more calories than the same work done in cooler rooms, but . . . not really. Heat on its own tends to raise heart rate, and yeah, there's possibly a tiny bump in calorie burn from body-temp-controlling functions, but most of the higher estimate is just that HR speeds up to increase blood flow to facilitate cooling. The extra heartbeats burn a couple of calories, but the increased HR doesn't signal higher oxygen uptake, and it's oxygen utilization that correlates better with calorie burn. HR is just a proxy for oxygen utilization, not an exact correlate.)

Even some fitness trackers these day are deciding not to use HR as an exercise eatimator for things like strength training (METS, the MFP method, is likely to be closer, especially if corrected for the MFP "activity factor x BMR" theoretical flaw), or distance (and related measures) for things like walking/running. AFAIK, they still use HR from so-called HIIT, which - as with any interval training - likely to cause an over-estimate if HR is the basis (loosely, because HR stays high during easy/rest intervals for a while, making it appear that intense work has gone on longer than it has).

I feel ya. I just came back from a trip myself and I ate aaaallll the foods... Between 2500 and 3500 calories a day (very coarse estimate, nothing weighed!), and being less active than usually.
Breakfast buffets, dinner buffets, family party with several courses and a gigantic dessert buffet... My only 'salvation' was 3 days in between the two weekends when we weren't in a hotel or with family, which meant it was purely home-cooked meals (plus hiking). The scale was remarkably unperturbed by all of this.

PS: chili with beans on the side 'for those who want them'? Blasphemy, chili without beans isn't chili 😎

springlering62 wrote: »

(snipsies of good stuff)

This is all on me. I did it one day, and BL is managing very well. I don’t know why travel does this to me.

FOMO?

I tend to do that when traveling, and FOMO is a big part of the "why", for me.

(more snip)

Trying to be very low key and not discuss food choices.

She has a friend coming over for lunch who is vegetarian Keto, and has been surprised I know about Keto, and a basic knowledge of what are Keto friendly foods.

Yah, thanks MFP!

I’m making a vegan Keto chili for lunch for everyone. Have never tasted Beyond Beef, so am very very interested to see how this turns out. Beans on the side for those who want them. 👍🏻

I'll be interested to hear what you think. When I tried some (sampled a little at a store), I thought it tasted like meh beef.

In my personal world, tasting like beef at all is a bad thing, but that's definitely not the case for all veg people - possibly especially not all strong ethical vegans or non-WF health-motivated veg*ans of all types.

I know, I'm weird. Let it go, eh? More beef, real or faux, for the rest of you.

Lietchi wrote: »

I feel ya. I just came back from a trip myself and I ate aaaallll the foods... Between 2500 and 3500 calories a day (very coarse estimate, nothing weighed!), and being less active than usually.
Breakfast buffets, dinner buffets, family party with several courses and a gigantic dessert buffet... My only 'salvation' was 3 days in between the two weekends when we weren't in a hotel or with family, which meant it was purely home-cooked meals (plus hiking). The scale was remarkably unperturbed by all of this.

PS: chili with beans on the side 'for those who want them'? Blasphemy, chili without beans isn't chili 😎

That, I'm in sympathy with. Beans are kind of a carb bomb, though. It's one (among many) reasons I wouldn't remotely consider veg keto (or even veg low-carb) a good choice, for me. Lummesome beans.

Sadly (?), my "aaaallll the foods" can be 5000+. If it doesn't go on and on and on (time-wise), sticks to a normal vacation trip length of a week or two, things seem to sort out, long term . . . especially if there's rowing camp or some other pretty-active trip in the cards.