Does teaching burn calories?

Since you're currently at 1200 calories, I'm guessing you have your activity level at sedentary? That should definitely change to reflect your actual daily activity with the new job. That will give you more calories to work with.

I used to work VERY long and hard hours (14 hours/day) and lost a lot of weight. You just have to plan in advance and don't put yourself in bad situations where you are starving and/or making bad decisions.

So wake up a bit earlier if you need the time to eat and prepare meals for the day, or do it the night before. I brought my lunch and snacks with me to work and kept them in a thermal lunch sack with an ice pack (I eventually upgraded to a very small fridge for like $80). So if I got too busy or had no time to eat I always had food and snacks on me that fit into my goal.

Just plan it out ahead of time, even pre-make your meals for the week if you have to. Once you get into the habit it'll be easy.

Good luck!

With just 30lbs to go, a huge calorie deficit might be too big for you. Considering MFP has given you 1200 calories this seems to be the case. Do you teach your kids to be patient when it comes to learning, waiting for the bell and everything else? Please apply this to yourself as well. Eat enough, chose a calorie deficit that fits your current weight and an activity level that fits your movement throughout the day. Again, eat enough to feel good and energetic. And then: Patience.

I am not teaching this year, but teach at an elementary school (grade one).

Yes! Teaching burns a heck of a lot of calories and the opportunity to eat anything once I was there sometimes hard to fit in.

Always walking - always on your feet - the stress - supervision, etc.,

I too would have an hour commute each direction. I would be there sometimes until 5 pm so wouldn't get home until late. On the weekend I would prep out all my dinners and portion them out for easy prep. Such a chore each weekend...ugh😖

I would take commuting time to nibble on portioned-out protein/fiber-rich foods (hard-boiled egg(s)/nuts/fruit/grainy crackers, vegetables).
Most days I would pack 'bento style' lunches. Again, portioned out individual items that were easy to just snack on.

Congratulations on your first (?) year of teaching! It'll be great:) Good luck🙂

EssePi117 wrote: »

You could also get a FitBit, Garmin, or Apple Watch to estimate your activity level. (I use Garmin.)

Thanks for the suggestion! I also suspected that the hunger is due to me standing and talking for 5 hours every morning. My doctor told me not to trust fit watches because they tend to overestimate the burnt calories, is it true in your experience? [/quote]

Garmin works pretty well for me (an average-sized man) for incidental calorie burn (walking around at work). It also gives calorie estimates for workouts. It's great for running and walking, OK for cycling, and a bit low for swimming. Mowing the lawn (with all the vibration) completely confuses it. I hear good things about Apple watch, which has a lot more features, but requires more frequent charging. In general, I've had a very good experience with my Garmin watches.

Your routine sounds too punishing for it to last long enough for you to make it to your goal.
Long term adherence is much more important than speed of loss.

AND you are not necessarily learning much about your maintenance as you're separating weight loss from maintenance, yet it sounds like you do have a substantial amount of weight to lose. i.e. you're a person who might benefit from using the time that you're using to lose weight to explore how you will operate in the future.

CALORIES are what counts for your weight loss. Healthy food, of course, is probably healthier than unhealthy food. Just because something is health--an apple for our teacher--doesn't mean that it has no calories and it should not be logged. You are depriving yourself of knowledge.

Knowledge of how many calories you actually need and knowledge of which foods help you feel more satiated/satisfied/happy/better to be eating at any particular point of time and the caloric costs associated with each of your choices.

Weight loss is followed by maintenance and if you were the perfect intuitive eater who never over-eats you wouldn't be on MFP trying to lose weight (and neither would I, just to be on the up and up here!)

You've mentioned a couple of "triggers" issues. That you don't lose when you eat 1300 Cal and that your watch may overestimate the calories.

Weight fluctuates and fluctuates for many reasons. Weight loss that is at a reasonable rate (and by that I mean in the 0.5 to 1lb a week range) can EASILY be overshadowed by daily weight fluctuations. Unless you are using a weight trend app or web site (and even then), you really need much more than a few days or weeks in order to determine whether you are losing at 1300 or 1500 or 1700 Calories.

In fact, if you are losing visibly at 1200 chances chances are very low that you're not losing anything at all at 1450 calories as that would represent a slow down of only 0.5 lbs a week But, of course, having items missing from the logs makes 'precise" calibrating harder and this is NOT the end of the world as the precision is not even necessary in order to lose weight.

What IS necessary is to be doing something that is sustainable and starving to the point of distraction isn't.

Some of the suggestions could be modified for you to have a pre-measured/pre-logged amount of veggies and or fruit that you consume during your car ride on the way back home. This may give you a couple of hours to go home and relax and prepare dinner and stave off the setup of going into dinner ready to fall down.

A device may over estimate your calories. The beauty is that you don't actually have to do any adjustments in order to run the experiment. Within four to six weeks you will already have a good approximation of how close your watch is tracking your calories given your consistent logging habits.

Maybe you can eat 100% of the adjustment your watch will give you or maybe you can only eat 10% of it. But it all probability you will be able to comfortably continue to lose while eating more than 0% of it and long term your goal should probably be to eat the "most and best" you can while losing what you want to lose.