The problem is equating excercize to weight loss. Muscle is heavier than fat, so for a given weight, you could have more muscle and still think you’re fat. Other metrics need to be used.
I’ll see if I can find the link, but heavy excercise actually made it HARDER to lose weight because the tendency is to feel that extra slice of pizza was earned due to all the exercise you’ve done.
Yeah, exercise makes the whole weight situation confusing. I was originally eating 1200-1400 calories a day but burning 2500 calories a week and getting nowhere. I upped my daily caloric intake to 1500-1700 calories a day and I am back to losing weight. It’s bizarre. Eat more to lose more. But not too much more!
From what I understand weight loss is always accompanied by some form of muscle loss, but if you do strength training in addition to your cardio you can prevent a great deal of the muscle loss. The strength training during weight loss, then, is not to build muscle, but to prevent its loss. Though honestly I’m not sure what the difference is in terms of actual exercises you are supposed to do.
One thing I was also told is that after you lose a lot of weight your rate of weight loss is going to slow down. Where you once tried to create a 500 calorie daily deficit you should now shoot for a 250 calorie daily deficit because 500 calories is now too large relative to your smaller base metabolic rate. It’s more realistic to lose an average of one half pound a week vs. one pound as you get closer to your goal.
I definitely have too much body fat according to my measuring tape and the Army Body Fat Calculator, but I also have a lot of muscle and gain strength very quickly. According to the BMI I should weigh between 115 and 140 pounds to be a healthy weight. I figure if I shoot for the high end of that it will account for all of my muscle. But honestly if I can just get to a healthy body fat percentage I really don’t care what I weigh.
I think I finally broke my plateau - three pounds down today! I did the same thing as you, Olives - I actually boosted my calories up to the 1500-1700 range and exercised every day. Doing all this exercise, I’m reminded that I gain strength fairly quickly, too - I actually embarrassed myself with my not-very-feminine strength a couple of times as a teenager. I had forgotten that about myself.
Then we went to the zoo and walked for four and a half hours, and went out for Jim’s birthday dinner and pigged right the hell out. 
I still have no luck getting to a scale, so I have no idea how much I am losing (or gaining).
Enquiring mind would like more information on ratio of calories eaten to calories burnt in order for weigh loss. Is there a friendly online calculator somewhere?
I just realized that I really do need to find out more about what I am eating/drinking. I used to drink this (Mogu Mogu Lychee Drink. Heh, it’s Japanese) on my way home for my 15mins walk and was mortified that it has 200 calories! I was looking for something light to eat for lunch and had a bowl of Korean Ginseng Chicken Soup and only when doing the counting online discovers it’s 700 calories. Maybe I should be planning my meals.
Those are exactly the kinds of things that calorie counting helps with. “Hey, it’s a fruit smoothie, it’s healthy, right?” Maybe, but it also has 400 calories, most of them from sugar. For women who really don’t get a large calorie allowance for the day, you can use up half your calorie allowance just drinking soft drinks in a big damned hurry (guys get more calories, but wasting them on soft drinks isn’t a great idea for them, either). Jim is a huge Blizzard fan; before we started counting calories, and when we lived within walking distance of a Dairy Queen, you can imagine how many Blizzards he had every month. They’re insane - 500-900 calories depending on the type and size. A small chocolate cone is 240 - still not a great healthy choice, but if you’re going to eat a treat at Dairy Queen, you’re digging a much smaller hole with that choice.
Calorie counting is having a psychological benefit that I hadn’t anticipated, too - I feel much more in control of my eating now, and more accountable. I can have whatever I want, I just can’t always have it now - maybe I have to wait for tomorrow because I’m over for today. Then tomorrow I’ll budget for that piece of chocolate cake that’s calling me from the kitchen (or go for an extra long walk).
The Stars and Stripes Starkiss bar at DQ is only 80 calories. They’re pretty good, too. No chocolate, but I can live without that.
According to my Eat This Not That iPhone app, that or a DQ Fudge Bar-No Sugar at 50 calories are the best choices.
I weighed myself on Thursday and I was down to 237.0, then on Saturday I went to La Crosse, Wi, which is the home of a really good steak buffet house. I rarely get down that way and I gorged myself. And then I didn’t work out at all that day. So, today’s weigh in was 239.0. A 0.2 loss from last week, I’m glad that at least I didn’t gain.
On the plus side, I did some shopping on the way back from La Crosse and bought 5 pairs of pants with a size 38 waist, so I’m down from where I was getting uncomfortable in my tight fitting 40s.
You…
can…
live without chocolate???
Each of these words by itself is understandable, but the usage in a single sentence makes no sense whatsoever! 
I’m a tad too fond of the stuff, myself! That was very hard when I was on very strict restrictions through late December / all of January. I used to periodically “splurge” on a single Reese’s cup miniature from a bowl here in the office. I felt so naughty
Those Blizzards are deadly though. I think I did the WW points-calc one time and it was either a medium or a large that was 20 points (about 1000 calories). I’ve got to find some calories freed up to fit them into my budget on occasion, even if it’s a very rare treat.
Yesterday I had an appointment with my sport dietitian. I want to get as lean as I can while while still being healthy, and I want to do it in a way that doesn’t affect my sports performance. This was my second appointment and she said that everything is going well. I started at around 59kg - after my first week I dropped to about 58.5kg and now I’m at 57.5kg. In those two weeks haven’t gained in any of my big lifts (60kg squat, 62.5kg deadlift, 40kg bench) though I haven’t dropped in any either. I just tell myself that I’m lifting more relative to my bodyweight now, which is still a gain. I used to crash after my afternoon workout but now that I know to eat proper recovery food (banana and yoghurt immediately after, plus a carbier than usual lunch) my energy levels are much better throughout the day.
We talked about some stuff in the first session that really changed my relationship with food. The dietitian said to think about food in terms of nutrition and energy (calories). Some food gets a tick in both columns (apple); some food gets two crosses (Big Mac meal); some food is good for you in terms of nutrition, but has a really high number of calories (avocado, nuts). She said a lot of people assume that anything that’s healthy for you is automatically low in calories, but that isn’t the case. So people will think they’re being good by snacking on a bag of almonds instead of eating a bowl of ice cream - and they are nutrition-wise; but calorie-wise they may as well have pigged out on junk food.
Two other common culprits she identified were oil (especially the nut based ones - I almost fell off my chair when I found out that 1 TBSP of peanut oil is something like 150 calories. Holy crap, I used to drench my stir fries in that stuff), and sport drink (most people don’t need it, and sometimes it can negate the calories burned by your workout right there).
For the first time in my life I’m completely aware of what I’m eating. Four slices of wholegrain bread is around 450 calories - if I omit the top slice of bread from each sandwich, that’s a tub of yoghurt, a banana, apple, and some blueberries. Sometimes I do want those two top slices of bread for my sandwich, but it’s about making informed choices, and I’m finding that kind of awesome. I’d always avoided calorie counting and weighing food because I saw it as needlessly anal - but it’s so easy with online counters and nutritional information right on the pack, and weighing food takes next to no time, and after awhile you can accurately eyeball portion sizes.
Oil is pretty much oil when it comes to calories. They’re all fat, so the calorie counts don’t vary much wither it’s peanut, corn, canola, or sesame. The differences are in saturated vs unsaturated vs monosaturated but they all have the same number of grams of fat and the same number of calories.
Sorry, awkward phrasing on my part! I was referring to the fact that people think of nut-based oils as healthier alternatives, and gloss over the fact that they contain a pretty significant number of calories.
I just came back from my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class and had a banana and two open sandwiches for lunch. Breakfast was fruit yoghurt and an apple. I’ll have a plum and a muesli bar before I head off to the gym, and a banana directly afterwards. Dinner is pan fried salmon with quinoa and salad (dressed with a squeeze of lemon), and I’ll have some tiramisu-flavoured yoghurt for dessert.
I’m also on week 2 of the 100 push-ups program. I start fatiguing at about 10 and I want to get to 30 so that when my instructor tells everyone to do 20 push-ups I can knock them out pretty easily. Warm-up today was 10 push-ups, 10 crunches, 10 star jumps, 10 burpees, 10 squats multiplied by 3.
I also bought a tiny frying pan so I can make single serve eggs. An egg and a bit of milk, scrambled with some chives from my garden … yum!
All right, just did a weighing - 155 pounds, shed 5. About 10 to go.
I know!
Yeah. Our daughter feels the same way. She still gives me a puzzled look when I turn down chocolate. And our son just shakes his head and says, “You’re not my mom.” I haven’t given it up completely, but I don’t eat it at every opportunity like I used to.
I was up .2 lbs this week, but I knew it wasn’t going to be a loss this week due to overeating at the Chinese New Year banquet I went to on Sunday night. Back on track come Monday, eating well again and getting my exercise.
Well, tonight I’m more relieved, than scared, to learn that the stuff I poured on my cereal is “nonfatal” milk :p.
For those of you using Sparkpeople, who also have used Weight Watchers in the past:
What sort of advantages / disadvantages do you see with one vs. the other?
WW of course has the manual tracking while SP requires access to a computer.
WW has more “generic” stuff - e.g. a slice of pie is 6 points (or whatever) whereas SP you have to do your level best to figure out the calories/fat, and enter it as a manual food…
SP you often find that someone else has entered the food you need… of course you never quite know if they’ve done it right…
SP adjusts your calorie allowance based on your current weight and your target weight - I played around with some different numbers today and my calorie allowance went up (I guess because I’m closer to my May 5 target than I’d have expected to be)… That’s kind of neat.
Unless they’ve added a lot of features to the WW e-tools, SP is much better at pointing out nutritional issues - overdoing / underdoing vitamins and/or minerals, too little fiber, etc.
You can “earn” extra calories with WW by exercising… ice cream for lunch? Hit the treadmill for an hour and you’re still within your points limit. SP doesn’t have anything like that (though their calorie allowances are based on your self-assessed fitness level, you don’t get extra calories for activity on a specific day).
And of course SP is free where WW costs money.
Other comparisons?
Sorry, Mama Zappa, I can’t help. I’ve not done WW, although I’ve seriously considered it. I even know when and where the local group meets.
I was down .6 of a pound, making my total right now 66.6 down. I love that. Most of my fellow weight loss group were either stagnant or gained. I was happy with my little .6, because I know everyone has a bad week here and there. It’s not the fact that you get down: it’s how long you stay down. And I was still going in the right direction. Nothing to be ashamed of at all.
Mmf. 208, a pound in the wrong direction again. Wish the weather would ease up or I was having less of my free time eaten up, what with taking the boys to TKD two evenings last week and then one of them to see Percy Jackson on Friday I’ve only managed about one long walk all week. Eating’s been pretty much under control, which makes the non-losing harder to bear. Oh well, another month starts tomorrow.