blackNBUK Member

Since you've been travelling did you use the same set of scales both times? That could easily explain the change that you've seen. To be blunt however you need to choose a sensible target weight before you start worrying about what the scales say. Your target weight seems to be crazily low and I really think you need to…

I feeling a lot more confident about my prospects now. I had some free time today so I decided to bring my long run forward and have a proper go at running more slowly. It wasn't exactly exciting but it really worked, I managed to do about 9 miles in a bit under 1 hour 25 minutes and I felt like I could have carried on if…

It strikes me as nicely ironic that the measure that almost everyone cares about, body fat percentage, is so difficult to get! As far as I can see all the ways of measuring body fat are some combination of expensive, impractical and inaccurate.

I probably should have explained a bit more about the walk. I'm on the committee of a local ramblers club and the weekend walk is with them. Numbers are a little light at the moment so I really should get along most weeks. Plus I like meeting up with them. I've been walking long enough now that that sort of distance isn't…

I've signed up for my first half today! There are a bunch of groups for runners on here. I posted to the Long Distance Runners group (http://www.myfitnesspal.com/groups/home/94-long-distance-runners) asking for advice and got a load of good suggestions.

My suggestion is to be a little careful with what advice you listen to. A lot of the time people don't have experience with being seriously overweight and what worked for them might not work for you. For example, walking and running are great exercise for most people but, as has already been said, you might be better off…

Thanks for the encouragement everyone, I've now signed up! I tend to be a bit cautious about things like this and I just wanted to know that it was do-able. Looking at Hal Higdon's programmes I'm probably doing the runs laid out in week 4 or 5 of the novice programmes so should be OK there. Fitting everything in around the…

You could see if there are any trail walking or rambling groups near to you. They are great for finding a crowd of people to walk with. The group that I belong to regularly goes out for 10 to 15 mile walks at the weekend.

I read on here that the MFP target for sugar is based on the recommendations for added sugar but the nutrition labels on most products only give the total amount of sugar which means that the sugar target is unrealistically low. I've just ignored it and concentrate on calories and the 3 macronutrients, carbs, fats and…

Probably not, indoors GPS isn't going to be accurate enough to record the same small movements as a pedometer. And, yes, if you leave the tracking going all day it will kill the battery. The latest iPhone, the 5s, has a special chip that records motion without turning the whole phone on. This does allow you to use special…

Generally I've found the apps I've tried to be pretty reliable for distance and speed and I've used RunMeter, Motion X GPS and Runkeeper in the last few months. I don't normally use the calorie figure, instead I enter the time and pace into MFP. A couple of times something has gone wrong and I've got really screwed up…

Good point. However I think you might be going too far in the other direction. The Katch-McCardle formula uses body fat percentage to work out a better estimate for BMR and you have to put in a pretty extreme value to get down to 1400 calories. 1600 calories seems like a reasonable estimate overall. In any case my advice…

Somatotype are at the very least a subjective judgement and in many people's opinions largely a myth. Have a read through of the following for a discussion: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/817668-somatotypes-are-a-myth Using them to determine what your macro ratios should be seems a little nutty. Better to figure…

1270 calories does seem on the low side given your figures. If you put them into the BMR calculator you get a figure of 1810 calories. That is the amount of energy your body will use if you were in a coma; even with a desk job the amount you're going to actually use will probably be nearer 2100 or 2200, more if you include…

There is a lot of good information on this topic in this thread: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/97228-fit-vs-unfit-calories-burned-doing-identical-exercise The summary seems to be that if you take two runners who are the same age, height and weight and only differ in fitness level then, yes, the energy they use to…

Generally I agree with what everyone is saying, that you'll be fine running in the rain, but it's worth keeping a bit of common sense about you. The combination of rain, cold weather and light clothing mean that you can get cold pretty quickly, especially if you stop. Normally this is just uncomfortable but if you can't…

That interview was surprisingly and refreshingly open and unbiased. Despite being on a Paleo website the interviewer let Alan say his piece. Definitely worth a read!

I would also have another look at how consistent you are with your logging. Are you really logging absolutely everything that passes your lips? What you think is just a little bit here and there can mount up quickly and could explain why you aren't hungry. If you really are being accurate with your logging the only…

The net calorie and TDEE approaches are really two sides of the same coin. In both cases the idea is to estimate now many calories you use per day and then eat fewer than that. With TDEE you have to say how much exercise you intend to do and your estimate includes that while with net calories you add on your exercise…

When I discovered that you could get data out through the XML graphs I did wonder about writing a browser extension to do the TDEE calculation. Of course I didn't do anything about it! A browser extension should be able to present a nice UI without needing to store any data anywhere. It might also be able to use the…

Guildford checking in!

Not to confuse the issue, but your calculation assumes that XianC is of average body composition which at 370lbs seems pretty unlikely. To get an accurate BMR or TDEE for someone significantly outside the norm you really need a body fat percentage. If body fat is 40% then BMR falls to 2550 calories. If anybody is…

The problem with having a big deficit is that it is much harder to sustain over the long term. It makes 'falling off the wagon' much more likely. It also doesn't get you into the habit of eating a normal amount of food which we need to maintain a weight loss. Finally it makes getting the nutrition you need more difficult…

I've only dipped into the Chi Running site but one thing I have noticed is that they recommend running at a constant rate of 180 steps per minute or 90 strides per minute. If you want to run more slowly you shorten your stride and if you want run faster you lengthen your stride. Apparently most people run with too few…

I would have guessed the difference is tactics. Most of the track races I've seen haven't been run flat out; instead they run at a comfortable pace for most of it, jockey for position and then run flat out for the last lap or so.

A great lazy way of having your cheese and eating it too (!) is to buy pre-sliced cheese. A slice of proper Gouda or Emmental is only about 100 calories and you don't need to bother weighting it. Wanting to eat veg is great but to make this sustainable for the long term you've got to have a little of what you fancy too.…

I really wouldn't worry about your pace at this early stage of C25K. The programme is mostly about getting you on your feet and building up your stamina so you can run the longer distances. You're better off completing all the running sections than trying to go faster and having to stop more often. With experience you'll…

That's some seriously impressive progress! I'd have thought that you're getting close to the front of your age group with low 23 minute times. I'd be overjoyed (and amazed) if I could drop my times down from 26 to 21 minutes in 5 months.

The age grading system makes a lot of sense to me. There is just too much variety in abilities for comparing raw times to make sense. But the age grading system means that a 20 year and a 50 year old can compare their performances and how well they are doing. For the record, my best 5K time is 26:04 which gives me an age…

I read recently that Ibuprofen interferes with the rebuilding of your muscle tissue and hence you won't get stronger as quickly. It sounds like the OP is sore enough for Ibuprofen to be worth it but if someone needs to take it regularly they are probably overdoing their training.