At Goal & Successfully Maintaining. So Why Am I Doing This All Over Again?
Replies
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@wunderkindking @AnnPT77 @springlering62 This is so much excellent information- thank you for sharing!
@Lietchi Yep, you're right- I'm basing this on my reported calorie burns during exercise from my Apple Watch. My heart rate has absolutely decreased as I've gotten fitter. Over the last month or so I have been eating slightly more on average and losing weight at the same rate. I am in the same boat as many of you that as my fitness improves, movement becomes even easier and more fun, so I am naturally more active and pushing harder during workouts. I get restless on days when I'm doing office work and have to sit for several hours, and I tend to compensate for it at the gym.
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.
I have been fairly active for many years, but since Jan 1 I've stuck to a regimen of highly varied cardio 6-7 days/week plus weight training 2-3 days/week with the goal of maintaining my lean body mass as I lose weight. (I love weight training. It's my zen.) My plan is to continue this process until I get to my goal weight range, then switch to maintenance calories and change up my lifting routine with the intent to do a slow recomp.
Part of me is just paranoid that if something happens and I end up unable to do the kind of activity I do now, I will have to drop my calories considerably lower than I'm comfortable with. I know this is not a thing I can control beyond doing what I can to stay healthy/active and avoiding injury. I had a bad experience last year with unexpectedly needing foot surgery and being unable to exercise normally for two months. I gained a considerable amount of weight in a short period of time. This is a mental thing- I KNOW that my habits are different now, and I am actively working every day to maintain those habits and be flexible when needed. I just don't have the confidence in my ability to deal with those issues yet because I have never successfully done it. After a lifetime of reverting to bad habits anytime something unexpected happens, I am anticipating every possibility so that I can be ready to tackle it, just in case.1 -
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).1 -
@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 ?1 -
@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.1 -
@wunderkindking @AnnPT77 @springlering62 This is so much excellent information- thank you for sharing!
@Lietchi Yep, you're right- I'm basing this on my reported calorie burns during exercise from my Apple Watch. My heart rate has absolutely decreased as I've gotten fitter. Over the last month or so I have been eating slightly more on average and losing weight at the same rate. I am in the same boat as many of you that as my fitness improves, movement becomes even easier and more fun, so I am naturally more active and pushing harder during workouts. I get restless on days when I'm doing office work and have to sit for several hours, and I tend to compensate for it at the gym.
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.
I have been fairly active for many years, but since Jan 1 I've stuck to a regimen of highly varied cardio 6-7 days/week plus weight training 2-3 days/week with the goal of maintaining my lean body mass as I lose weight. (I love weight training. It's my zen.) My plan is to continue this process until I get to my goal weight range, then switch to maintenance calories and change up my lifting routine with the intent to do a slow recomp.
Part of me is just paranoid that if something happens and I end up unable to do the kind of activity I do now, I will have to drop my calories considerably lower than I'm comfortable with. I know this is not a thing I can control beyond doing what I can to stay healthy/active and avoiding injury. I had a bad experience last year with unexpectedly needing foot surgery and being unable to exercise normally for two months. I gained a considerable amount of weight in a short period of time. This is a mental thing- I KNOW that my habits are different now, and I am actively working every day to maintain those habits and be flexible when needed. I just don't have the confidence in my ability to deal with those issues yet because I have never successfully done it. After a lifetime of reverting to bad habits anytime something unexpected happens, I am anticipating every possibility so that I can be ready to tackle it, just in case.
I empathize, but at the same time some time in maintenance has taught me that maintenance isn't... static? For me, anyway.
For me it's kind of a slow rolling repeated gain/loss cycle. Forget my hormones and the changes brought about by those. Actual LIFE isn't static and so seasonally, at least, if not weekly or monthly my energy output and calorie intake change.
For me maintenance has been basically very slowly gaining and losing the same several pounds over and over again. EXPECTING that and knowing that's just what it's going to be has helped me not throw in the towel and revert to worse habits.
I have NO DOUBT that I'd gain 10 pounds if I was forced back to inactivity as I was last summer (broke my ankle) but I also have NO DOUBT I'd lose it again. Not sure I'd consider either one of those coming out of maintenance, much less failure. It's a wider swing in my weight than I regularly have due to muscle soreness and sodium intake spikes by all of about 3 pounds.
My weight REGULARLY spikes 5-7 pounds after a very active weekend, OR a weekend that's heavy on carbs/salt just because. Then disappears over the following week. I couldn't even give you an exact weight I actually am absent water retention due to various factors. I could tell you what I weighed this morning but not a 'real' weight.
My pants get tight, I eat less.1 -
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).3 -
@wunderkindking @AnnPT77 @springlering62 This is so much excellent information- thank you for sharing!
@Lietchi Yep, you're right- I'm basing this on my reported calorie burns during exercise from my Apple Watch. My heart rate has absolutely decreased as I've gotten fitter. Over the last month or so I have been eating slightly more on average and losing weight at the same rate. I am in the same boat as many of you that as my fitness improves, movement becomes even easier and more fun, so I am naturally more active and pushing harder during workouts. I get restless on days when I'm doing office work and have to sit for several hours, and I tend to compensate for it at the gym.
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.
I have been fairly active for many years, but since Jan 1 I've stuck to a regimen of highly varied cardio 6-7 days/week plus weight training 2-3 days/week with the goal of maintaining my lean body mass as I lose weight. (I love weight training. It's my zen.) My plan is to continue this process until I get to my goal weight range, then switch to maintenance calories and change up my lifting routine with the intent to do a slow recomp.
Part of me is just paranoid that if something happens and I end up unable to do the kind of activity I do now, I will have to drop my calories considerably lower than I'm comfortable with. I know this is not a thing I can control beyond doing what I can to stay healthy/active and avoiding injury. I had a bad experience last year with unexpectedly needing foot surgery and being unable to exercise normally for two months. I gained a considerable amount of weight in a short period of time. This is a mental thing- I KNOW that my habits are different now, and I am actively working every day to maintain those habits and be flexible when needed. I just don't have the confidence in my ability to deal with those issues yet because I have never successfully done it. After a lifetime of reverting to bad habits anytime something unexpected happens, I am anticipating every possibility so that I can be ready to tackle it, just in case.
For me, using the MFP method of adding exercise calories separately has been pretty effective in getting me through those times of reduced activity (like post-surgery or during injury recovery). There are pros and cons of each, but for me, that's one of the pros of MFP method over TDEE method. I have a decent idea of how to eat with or without normal exercise.
I'd endorse what @wunderkindking is saying about maintenance being a range of weights, not a single weight, and that there can be some cycling to it. (Personally, I'm less active, in terms of incidental movement, in cold seasons vs. warmer ones, for example. Some of that shows up in steps, or tracker calorie burn estimates, but I think not all.)
I think you'll do fine. Even if 100 calories daily over true maintenance, it'll take over a month to gain a pound, y'know? And you clearly know how how to lose a pound. I think the common place where people go wrong is either a "diet then go back to normal" eating/exercise pattern (a recipe for yo-yo!), or just stopping being vigilant about scale creep, just letting gradual weight regain go on too long without acting on it. Either of those are actionable patterns, can be avoided or corrected.
You mention new habits: The easier those habits are, the more they can and will continue on autopilot (or close) if life gets complicated. Revamped habits that require a lot of the near-mythical "motivation" or "will power" to sustain . . . are going to make things more difficult.2 -
I just don't have the confidence in my ability to deal with those issues yet because I have never successfully done it. After a lifetime of reverting to bad habits anytime something unexpected happens, I am anticipating every possibility so that I can be ready to tackle it, just in case.
Bit late to reply to this but I was traveling for work and just catching up on threads today...
To me this is a totally normal thing to worry about but I'd suggest trying to take solace in two factors:
- If something happens and you have some weight setbacks, you are now better at structuring an environment conducive to losing weight than previously and you can "get back on track" and lose any regained weight again. Not ideal, but better than the alternative.
- Don't think about this potential so much as being your fault or consider this hypothetical a weakness. If you have an injury or other circumstance where you have to go from 60 to 0 you're fighting against the current in terms of hormone levels just as much as habit and what you've come accustomed to eating. When you adjust activity like that it takes some time for gherelin and leptin to acclimate and your body will try to keep telling you to eat at levels requisite to that higher level of activity. So, not only has your TDEE dropped, you're biologically hungrier than you really need to be, combined with likely increase in cortisol from anxiety over inactivity or even physical inflammation depending on severity of injury and you're in a really disadvantageous spot because of factors well beyond your control. In my opinion, this has to be a significant factor behind the failure rate of those who solely rely on exercise to manage their energy balance.
*that's at least my cursory understanding of the hormonal impacts at play in that scenario. Not a doctor or is this medical device, still just some dude rambling on the internet.
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@wunderkindking @AnnPT77 @steveko89
Thank you for the thoughtful replies. It is reassuring, the idea that even at maintenance nothing is static and the skills I’m using now are the same ones I’ll be calling on to get me through whatever comes my way. My “new” habits are pretty ingrained at this point, so even though there are times when I have to consciously remember them (ex. I’m out with friends who are eating and drinking All The Things, I have to remind myself to moderate,) generally I just eat what I eat and do what I do, and it works.
@AnnPT77 I like the MFP method of adding exercise separately as well, makes it fairly easy to adjust based on how much I do. To @steveko89’s point, I have become accustomed to using exercise for a large chunk of my weight loss as I do it every day, so on the rare day that I don’t work out, I get extra hungry. I get that this is just the nature of the beast, and I’ve been up to the task of dealing with it for the last four months, so I need to trust in myself and the process to keep dealing with it long term, come what may.
It really does help tremendously to talk to folks like all of you who are in it. I’ve started and stopped so many times throughout my life, but this is the first time I’ve actively focused on changing my habits in a permanent way and reached out for support from others. This is also the first time I’ve started exploring what maintenance will look like at the same time as losing weight. I used to have the false belief that I shouldn’t even consider what to do in maintenance because I wasn’t there yet, so it didn’t matter. Now I’m living by beginning with the end in mind, even thought that “end” isn’t really an end at all.
Thanks again @springlering62 for starting this thread!10 -
Wow.....did any of you ever think that one day you'd be discussing things like afterburn, cardiac drift, etc? And that you'd actually be interested in it?!
I just thought I'd express my admiration; here's a group of people who have gone from a place of obesity, wavering on the brink of ill-health because of it, to this place where subjects like TDEE, HRmax, EPOC, etc. are discussed. Don't you agree that that's pretty amazing?
And for those of you who aren't interested in such things, most of the time I just "do" and never give this stuff a thought. But for me, learning is an important part of my weight-loss journey so I love reading all types of information. Some of the information I discard as irrelavent to my situation. Some of it I don't need at this point in time but I file it away and pull it out when needed. And some of it is like "Why didn't I think of doing it that way? It makes so much more sense!!". These MFP threads have been a major piece of artillery in my weight-loss battle. Thank you to everyone who contributes!11 -
Some awesome, insightful comments. Agree with @ridiculous59 the other users here on MFP are fabulous. I appreciate so much that I have a place to discuss - without glazed looks from others - the stuff that’s become so integral to my life. And most of all, with considered replies and no judgment.
BL and I are on the west coast right now, visiting the sweeeeeet little wee grandbaby.
He’s stuck to his calories pretty well. For me, it’s been a bloodbath. I’ve been under one day out of the past six, otherwise it’s all been in the distant rear view mirror. There’s a lot of temptation, and can I just say, the Hello Fresh meals have been good, but my word! The oils, sour cream, mayo and Marzetti that have been in every. single. recipe. are making me fume. And puh-lease!!!!! Just four ounces of chicken per meal?!!!! I’m ravenous. I’m watching and learning. I could get similar results for a fraction of the calories with some tweaks.
The kids are also relying on Grub Hub, and there’s been trips to the farmers market here which had some killer high cal treats. The pizza last night was just swell. And I’m swollen this morning, lol.
I’m trying to be low maintenance. Nobody wants a PITA mother critiquing everything they eat, or whipping out the scale.
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.
Daughter is beating herself up over pregnancy weight gain, which adds an additional layer of angst. She’s managed to get in some yoga classes with us watching le baby, and we’ve done a couple together, which has been fun. She’s a very knowledgeable yoga instructor with a beautiful, challenging practice, but hasn’t done any in months. I’ve improved a lot since the last time she did yoga with me, so right now we are kind of on par, which both surprises her and I can tell it’s adding to her frustration.
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. 👍🏻7 -
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 😎1 -
PS: chili with beans on the side 'for those who want them'? Blasphemy, chili without beans isn't chili 😎
I know, right? I’m trying to be mindful of the Keto friend who is coming for lunch.
Chili with just a small can of diced tomatoes, onion, celery and beyond beef sounds like tomato sauce to me. And this recipe claims to be six servings. 🤔
I suggested we also rice a cauliflower to put it over to add some bulk. It seems to still be low carb? I also got some Parmesan whisps from Trader Joe’s to crumble on top. Zero carbs. Daughter was most impressed. 😎
I have no idea what’s “in range” for Keto but this is coming up to about 22. I usually eat several hundred carbs per day so this seems low?
I feel ya on the travel feasting. I get a bit, err, plugged up when I travel and I dehydrate because my county has one of the “best tasting” water systems in the country and when I go elsewhere, especially coastal areas, the water is just disgusting. And I balk at buying bottled water. I’m so bloated and swollen, my muffin top has a muffin top, and my digestive tract sounds like a pipe organ for days now, especially with the rich foods. Ugh. TMI. Ha!!!!
However, the local strawberries here offset any complaints. Wowsa!!!!!!5 -
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.
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.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.3 -
I feel ya…I don’t know what it is but when we visit dd I can’t seem to stop eating and forget the water, too.0
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For me travel is a thing I associate with... being an extended EVENT I guess, not just life in a new place. So if I'm traveling it gets classed as 'a special occasion' with my head and I eat accordingly.
Also I've been at an agility trial 6 out of the past 14 days. Everything I have hurts, I have eaten more sugar than I have in the previous 3 months and I don't wanna talk about sodium, and just plain eaten a lot. ...I'm up 5lbs. We'll see how it shakes out but tbf I don't even care right now. I just want sleep.5 -
@AnnPT77
I’ll let BL sum it up. When asked what he thought of Impossible Meat he said, “Why? When we can have the real stuff?”
It gave a nice texture to the chili, but didn’t lend any flavor whatsoever. Like undercover tofu. Not satiating to me, either.3 -
One of my friends posed a great question on her feed. “Do you ever feel like an imposter?”
Wow. That one word just made me hit the brakes.
A lot of us have mentioned Body Dysmorphia here. That’s when you still see the “old you” in the mirror, even after you’ve accomplished substantial weight loss.
But….Imposter?
Yes. I do feel like an imposter. Even though I was underweight into my mid twenties, and “only” spent 30 years overweight and obese, I do feel like an imposter returning to slimness.
I feel like people who knew me obese are clicking their tongues and knowingly asking one another “wonder how long before she puts it back on?” I think strangers look at me, and notice the wrinkles on arms and face and easily identify me as a fat person in a skinny body.
I even have great difficulty using the term “skinny body”, because I feel like I haven’t earned it. Shouldn’t I have been punished more somehow, or is the mental anxiety punishment enough? The constant need to stand sideways in front of a mirror to make sure I didn’t get fat again in the last few hours. Recent yoga classes visiting a gym with mirrored walls have been……awful.
When I plank and my “stomach-teats” (aka extra skin on abdomen) hang down, I feel like everyone knows. And laughs silently. (TBH, it is pretty damn funny looking.) When I shop, part of me is torn between pride at heading directly to the XS rack, and the feeling that people are judging me as phony and silently pushing me back to the XXLs. I don’t know how they’d know, but I’m certain in the moment they do.
I even worry that people here think I’m an imposter, a fat person posting someone else’s pictures and pretending to dish advice I have no experience with. “How does she eat that much and claim to stay thin?” (another very fraught word).
Visiting the kids, and trying not to be a dietary diva while they cope with an infant, I’ve fallen easily back into bad habits, and while my inner voice says “it’s OK, you’ll fall back into those good habits when you get back home”, it’s also silently screaming, “See?! I told you so! You big fake! Where’s the chocolate?”
Ironically, BL has coped magnificently, and I swear has lost two sizes while we’ve been here. Dare I say, I’m jealous of and angry with him, when really it’s me I’m angry at?
Have you ever unpacked a memory foam anything and had it practically explode out of the box? I feel like Fat Me is my shadow, waiting to catch up with me, explode my body back again, and expose me as the fraud I am.
For some reason, my friend’s simple question just really hit me on the raw.
I do absolutely love that she said, for her, the imposter feeling came about when her four year old was telling someone “Mommy loves vegetables. Mommy loves to exercise”. Her daughter has no memory of her being bigger.
Imposter or no, what a terrific, admirable, inspiring example she’s setting for her daughter.
Am I alone? What’s your experience? Why are we (or, just me) so wrapped up in this? Is it culture? Upbringing? Self doubt? self hate? Why oh why is our weight so important to us when, really, it’s just a matter of fueling our body? With delicious, delicious food. *sigh*18 -
Your post gave me shivers, Spring. I do always feel like the other ball is going to drop.
I'm 75 pounds down and have been working at this for about a year. I look in the mirror and am excited to see that I look taller and thinner, but there is still so far to go. I've been at the same weight now for a month and am just leaving on my first big trip since COVID. I'm a bit scared about what's going to happen and feel like I need to pack some bigger clothes just in case. Instead, I'm making sure the clothes I pack aren't tight, but comfortable at my current size.
My plan is to eat what I want, but in smaller portions than I used to. I'm heading to Botswana with my son and sister and they've never been before. I get to see it through their eyes and I'm so excited. When I get back, it will be time to lose what I gained on the trip and focus on the last 34 pounds. I'll definitely be checking in to get some added support.
The good news? I'm traveling at a smaller size and in so much better shape than I've been in for decades. I'm stronger and have way more energy.
Why am I so wrapped up in all of this? Because I care and know that I've managed to gain weight back before. I'm really proud of myself and what I've accomplished, but recognize that this journey isn't over and I need constant vigilance to stay healthy.8 -
Hm, imposter... I recently changed jobs, so all the people at work have no idea I used to be obese, no idea I used to be a couch potato.
And I am hyperaware of the fact that when I talk about my exercise, they think I'm innately a sporty/athletic person. If only they knew... But in my mind as well, this is all still so recent (1000 day streak on MFP recently, and it did take that long to arrive at my current activity level) so I do wonder if this is a long term thing, if I will keep it up when hurdles get thrown my way.
So I do feel like a bit of an imposter, because I see myself as someone who does a lot of exercise, not someone who is athletic or sporty or active. I still have trouble saying I'm a runner, I 'just' do a lot of running.7
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