Sixers Slimmer Summer - Week 1

Yikes - there's NO way you should be striving to lose 2lbs a week so close to your goal. And honestly, if you try to lose that much a week when your body is 17lbs from your goal you won't see the scale move at all. Just because you CAN select 2lbs a week doesn't mean you SHOULD. That should only be for people who are very obese. I suspect that if you change your goal to 1lb a week and get your cals to around 1500 a day (what does MFP suggest your maintenance calories are, by the way?) then your body will believe that you're actually going to feed it. Right now I suspect your metabolism is crawling along at a snail's pace trying to conserve your resources because you're not getting enough food. Without adequate protein you're also catabolizing muscle to supplement your energy and protein needs which makes for less tissue in your body burning fat. Will you give a try to boosting your cals by, say, 275 a day for 2 weeks and if you want I can make some suggestions with your meals if you give me an idea of what you plan on eating in a day... You can ABSOLUTELY succeed. It's just not always the way you might think

Oh, and working out in the morning ... it's a personal thing but you should put SOMETHING in. If you're waking and working out pretty soon thereafter, maybe an apple because you don't want too much food in your stomach still digesting. You'll either take blood flow focus away from your stomach to your limbs and get indigestion or you'll sacrifice proper oxygen to your limbs in order to digest your food. If you're eating 60 to 90 minutes before your workout, eat a normal breakfast :happy:

Dang I've got my rant-on today! :laugh:

I have to go to the store before my bf drops her daughter off for the afternoon but I will post a cupcake recipe that is EASY, HEALTHY and skips the mountains of crap that will derail your progress. The calories themselves aren't the issue as much as WHAT you're putting in. I LOVE chocolate, cakes, cookies... but seriously, there is a really good way around the bad stuff while keeping the indulgences More to come from Rhiannon's house of Ranting! :laugh: :flowerforyou:

... this hasn't happened in a while. Could it be that all my veteran Sixers know better than to get me talking by now??? :blushing: :laugh: :glasses:

I'll dig the recipe out in a bit!

Candy, one thing I learned after a lot of trial and error is that the calories assigned by MFP really do have to be taken as a guide. There's no possible way for the site to assign accurate cals individually and the best they can go on is averages. Even person to person caloric needs really do change day to day. Mood, rest, temperature, nutrition, activity, mental work... it all factors in. You'll find your maintenance calories if you go to the goals section on the main page (in the menu bar) then on the right in "your diet profile" it will tell you the number of calories MFP is using as your maintenance (the top line, "calories burned from normal daily activity). Can you tell me what it says there? And you're right about your HRM actually. It's something too few people realize. When you work out and are going to add those workout calories back in as food you definitely need to subtract your resting calories from that number. To find out your resting calories wear your HRM for 1/2 an hour when you're just watching tv - nothing suspenseful, just boring old telly. Find out how many calories you've burned in those 30 minutes just sitting there then divide by 3. Last time I checked mine it was 19 calories in 10 minutes but I am due to check again. So every time I work out I have to then subtract 19 calories for every 10 minutes I've worked out if I'm interested in not over-eating my workout cals. Some days if I've had a longer workout (say, 90 minutes) that's just over 170 calories I have to subtract. If I ate those and did that most days of the week that would certainly be enough to slow my progress.
Your morning meal sounds WAY better. Getting that protein in there is wonderful. Not sure about where you are, but I know that I'm able to buy pure liquid egg whites (not to be confused with egg beaters or the like) which helps in not over-consuming egg yolks. There are valuable nutrients in there but I've heard that people should try to keep it to 1 to 3 yolks a week.
Let me know any time if you want me to stop my talking and talking about this stuff. I don't mind being told enough is enough