azalais7 Member

I was just going to say, if you're not eating many grains any more, it's probably the bread that's the problem. Just skip it (or most of it) and enjoy the rest!

1700-1900 might be a bit low if you're exercising that intensely. If you can, I would try to swap out three of those cardio workouts for strength training, first off; this will help raise your metabolism over time. As far as getting enough calories, two things: make sure you're eating enough protein, especially if you do…

Folks on here generally recommend 40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fat, which is reasonable. If you're doing much strength training, though, you want to aim for more protein--about 1 gram per lb. of body weight. You might find the paleo/primal eating plan helpful as a former low-carber, and especially if you're trying to get…

You might not be eating enough, *especially* if you're doing strength training. Check out the Eat More, Weigh Less group forum.

Yes, thanks! I can do partial deadlifts, so that will definitely work, and I'll try the plié squats.

^^This. And what's been said about water retention. Are you in the Eat More Weigh Less group? There's fantastic info about this issue there.

This is pretty fabulous: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Lemon-Scented-Quinoa-240587 If you're using a brand of quinoa that is presoaked (Bob's Red Mill, for example), you can skip the first step. I upped the lemon zest (pretty much a whole lemon), used at most a tablespoon of olive oil, and skipped the added…

This doesn't mean that you don't need to be more moderate on the weekends, of course, but I suspect a lot of that weight gain on Mondays is water retention--I'm guessing that you probably eat more sodium over the weekend. Alcohol might make you retain a bit of water, too, I'm not sure. It does sound like you're stalling…

^^This. Juggling 3 lbs. or so isn't abnormal, especially if you're doing strength training--muscles retain fluid for a bit after working out, from what I understand. But what someone above said about minimizing the weekend splurge is a good idea. If you can plan ahead, you might be more successful at working this within…

Joanne, what percentage are you allowing yourself for fat right now? Fat isn't necessarily bad for you--we need it, including saturated fats--so I don't know that you need to worry to much about finding low-fat ways to up your protein unless you're already consuming a lot.

That does clear things up--thanks! Looking back over the last month, which is about when I started "dieting," it looks like I netted below my 1490 BMR for about 13 days (not all in a row, but still not good). I'm adjusting my calories upward in stages--have set my net goal up from the MFP preset of 1360 to 1800 for now,…

One other possible way to jerry-rig the MFP calculations that occurs to me is that I could set my goals as my TDEE cut minus the 160 calories I currently burn on that half hour daily walk (this is the exercise that would take me into the lower end of the moderate activity level) and log that and whatever else I might do,…

Brilliant! I think I'll try that, with a note indicating burn as rebekahgo suggests. Thanks!

I think part of my issue is that I really like logging that daily light exercise--it helps keep me motivated and gives me a sense of accomplishment. But if I go with the practice advocated here, I'm not supposed to log exercise unless it's a more significant expenditure, right?

Thanks, gotcha. Keep forgetting about those breathing, etc. calorie expenditures! :wink: I'm just worried about misjudging my daily net if I'm not logging daily exercise less than 500 (maybe because I don't trust myself yet to really do it every day). There are some days when I just walk half an hour, some days when I run…

What is the rationale behind using the TDEE cut adjusted to average activity level as your calorie goal and not logging exercise less than 500 cal, rather than using appropriately-calculated BMR as the goal and logging all exercise?

Okay, just want to make sure I have all this straight. According to the scooby calculator: BMR = 1241 (this is a bit lower than other calculators I've used, which usually put me somewhere around 1400-1500) TDEE = 1923 (with 3-5 hours/week exercise) -15% = 1635 I've gone in and adjusted my goals to 40/30/30 and net calories…

What others have said about planning ahead is important. Find out ahead of time, to whatever extent possible, what your eating options might be--for example, if your hotel includes breakfast, what do they offer? Bring appropriate energy bars, etc. to eat instead of bagels, if that's all they have. If you know you'll be…

Chiming in again on the need for exercises that work your entire core (not just the muscles you hit with traditional crunches). As others have said, this won't in and of itself reduce your waistline, but it will help "hold things in."

Both. You want to consider the quality of calories you're putting in your body.

It may be largely water weight. A lot of the foods we eat when traveling are very high in sodium. If that's the case, it should come back off fairly quickly. I recently went on a five-day field trip with a bunch of high schoolers, which meant lots of pizza. When I got home, the scale was back up 4-5 pounds. A week later,…

Your coach might disagree, but everything I've read says that if you don't get enough calories, your body *will* burn muscle to compensate. When our bodies are shocked by a sudden reduction of intake/increase in output, they can go into starvation mode. If you're really struggling to eat enough calories, you might need to…

That's a *great* suggestion! I would add as well that sometimes our perception of ourselves is skewed, too; we literally can't see the difference because we have a certain perception of our appearance in our heads. It takes a while for your inner image and your outer appearance to sync up again. If your clothes are looser,…

Yep, 3 lbs/week is perhaps extreme, Biggest Loser not withstanding. My concern would be that making the very dramatic changes necessary to accomplish that would be difficult to maintain and possibly counterproductive; you can throw your body into starvation mode and actually lower your metabolism if you shock it like that.…

I don't know if this is really what you're looking for, but for me, I take inspiration from Epicurious.com. I have over 600 recipes that I've saved to my "recipe box," and find the search function, which will let you put in "chicken thighs" or what have you, pulls up at least something that gets me excited. I don't do this…