Weight Loss and exercise

OK. I made 6069 steps so far today, including my walk exercise. I walked two miles around my townhome complex. I did not push myself. All considered, I burned *approximately* 191 calories. This made for a target of 2496 calories. This is my base calories of about 2090 added to the calories that I have burned. I ate 3000 calories. I am trying to gain some weight for I lost too much weight. I am now 175 pounds. I want to be about 180.

This exerszing has made me feel better. I am getting myself in better shape. Even though I still have periods of depression, overall, I am finding myself emotionally better off. I think exersize is an important element of coping with depression. Endorphins. Now I need that ignoramous of a doctor of mine to place me back on a neuroleptic (AP). My food diary for today follows.

@Amazonmom: Sounds like you are making the right choices. Protein is good.

MFP calories 1,150. Apple Watch steps 3,479
Water intake 50.7oz.

I was bad today had McDonald’s for breakfast. However I ate light the rest of the day.

@Tucson - I find that walking and paddling help me mentally/emotionally quite a bit. It helps that there are some really scenic places to do it nearby, but even a walk around the neighborhood can be good for my spirits.

EDIT - Almost noon and have 12475 steps already. Walked about 4 miles and mowed the grass. Logged 3 miles of walking. Might not log any more exercise today.

My weight now is 177. Two pound difference in one day? I will see about this over the next couple days. I am going to walk up hill for over three quarters of a mile, followed by a quarter of a mile of relatively level terrain. It will be interesting to see what my calories burned are after the walk. For sh*ts and giggles, I am thinking about temporarily reducing my calorie intake to what MFP states as my target. This would include exersize along with calories from daily activity. Then I can see what happens. I suspect I will continue to gain weight. I am in no hurry. I can always adjust it back to 3000 calories a day.

@Tucson - you are as bad as me about fiddling with the knobs. Why not stay the course and keep gaining for a while longer?

We are having crab legs, which I eat without butter, and asparagus tonight. Pretty low cal, but there is Publix chocolate cake for dessert that is 410 calories for a 4.4 oz slice. I have 884 calories left right now so I should be fine. I don't necessarily need a 4.4 oz slice either.

EDIT - and another picture from yesterday's paddle. This is a good "after" picture.

MFP calories 1804. Apple Watch steps 4,329.
Water intake 50.7oz. Well I went over my calories (1280) that’s because I went out to eat for Mother’s Day with both of my daughters. Afterwards me and my youngest daughter walked around indoors.

I am having problems maintaining 3000 calories a day. I may have to resort to calorie expensive desserts which costs extra money. Well, I will try to stick with the plan. However, I will have some days just matching the calories burned. I do not know what else to do.

Perhaps trail mix? Just a half a cup is at least 300 calories, probably more the way I make it. I can get some hearty Progresso tomatoe soup, reduce it by at least a third, and then add in some heavy whipping cream. This would come to at least 580 calories for two cups. I guess I can always eat a calorie expensive TJs dish. $13 purchases two. I can make chicken etouffée. This has an incredible, outrageously so, amount of calories, very well over 1000 calories a serving. Papa Johns pizza. Two slices are 660 calories with six slices to go.

I may have to resort to my ultimate weapon. This is Cocos Banana Cream pie. $13 gets me eight slices. Each slice is 750 calories. These are about the only things that I can think of, in addition to my regular menu, such as french toast and pancakes. I would rather focus on foods than desserts.

Any ideas for other high calorie but less expensive foods?

@Tucson - My really calorie rich foods are mostly desserts also. I got over 500 calories in a slice of cake that was big but not enormous but it was a pricey cake. Nuts are really dense. Cheese can be really high fat and dense but too much of that can back up the system. One of my bad habits when I gained weight was melting lots of cheese on chips after drinking some nasty high sugar malt liquor. I don't recommend that. Tempura vegetables are very high in calories but nearly all from fat.

13294 steps. I logged about 5600 of walking and I logged 30 minutes of lawn mowing, which mfp gave me only 107 calories for. For once, I think the number is wrong by being low.

Consumed 2037 calories, but there are approximations in there - the crabmeat and asparagus. The crabmeat was from legs and claws, boiled and unbuttered and picked out as I ate it. Hard to say for sure it was a cup. Also didn't really measure asparagus. Weighed the cake and most other stuff was prepackaged or weighed. Pretty sure it was a deficit day.

I have walked 13,189 steps. I did not intend to walk this much. I walked all over the place trying to get working a feature of my watch. I did exersize by walking 4.5 miles burning 482 calories. My exersize stats are not worth writing home about. I decided to pass on the hill. This together with the day’s activities amounts to 835 calories. WOW I wonder how accurate MFP is on this. The calories from daily activities come from MFP, while the calories burned through actual exercise comes from my watch. So my target set by MFP became 2,925 calories. I ate 3,058 calories. The trail mix helped allot. Tomorrow I will take it easy and walk around my townhome complex at a fair walking pace instead of pushing myself.

Anyone want to guess what my weight will be over the next couple days? I am thinking it will end up at 176.

I still weigh 177. I decided for something different by eating Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheats. Two bowls for 720 calories. I forgot how good this tastes for a cereal. I did purchase that banana cream pie. So I think I will be OK regarding calories for the time being.

7449 steps. In a break from my usual form with exercise, i logged almost all of it.

1977 calories. Probably a pretty even day. I will weigh in the morning. I won't be shocked if it is over 160 because of all the fiber and sodium.

MFP calories 1,142. Apple Watch steps 7,508.
Water intake 50.7oz.

Today was really good. I reached 7,508 steps!!!!!
I did as much walking as I could. I ate at a fast food place but I had a turkey sandwich on wheat.
I need to go to the grocery store but I will have to wait until Wednesday to go.

I have walked a total of 7230 steps. In an odd result due to the logging of my calories burned just before midnight, the exersize I have done this last evening is logged for today. But MFP took the total steps last evening, which happens to include this exersize, and handled them as calories burned during yesterday.

I exercised today walking at a moderate pace for one mile. This burned approximately 107 calories according to my watch. This together with the IMO too big of an adjustment made by MFP, for calories expended during my daily activities, gave me a target of 2627. I have consumed 2,699 calories. So even though I did not eat 3000 calories of food yesterday to gain weight, I at least made this target. I even had to eat a slice of apple pie just to get up to this many calories. There was no way I was going to be able to eat 3000 calories for yesterday.

Tomorrow I will walk up that big hill I have described previously. This should provide me allot of work, which is a good thing. I do not think I will make any personal records, but I just may be able to reach a heart rate close to 170 bpm. I am finding out my health is improving. In the past, I was only able to walk slowly twice around my townhome complex, and sometimes just only once. There are a couple mild slants up by the road which I dreaded. This took allot out of me. Now I can easily walk five times around, and if I do choose to, I can even do much more than this before I am tired.

PS I have been under counting the calories from my trail mix. Eating one cup of trail mix equates to 700 calories. The problem is that it is tastey and easy to eat a cup. Three pounds of trail mix. Should last me at least about a week.

This morning I weigh 160.8. That's a bump up of almost 2 pounds since the last weigh in, but not really a surprise because of all the fiber and sodium I had yesterday.

I weigh a surprising 178 pounds. I am getting close to 180, the paranoid part of me is thinking. So I am going to scale back my calories. I am very curious how accurate MFP together with my watch is with respect to the calories burned. I think this value is too high, however, I will see soon enough. So I will use this figure as my daily target. I probably will keep gaining weight, but at a slower pace. I think I will make myself a few potatoe pancakes, maybe with some apple sauce as a topping. I usually add a stick of butter to the batter.

By the way, due to a humongous brain fart, I said that I have purchased a banana cream pie. In actuality it is an apple pie. The calories per slice of the apple pie are more manageable.

10507 steps. I didn't log any of it. I logged nearly all my steps yesterday; kind of evening it out. It never seems to work right if I trust the numbers and log all of it.

1627 calories consumed, so I went over by 27. Actually by more than that but I logged a few pita chips as part of breakfast tomorrow (only 52 calories).

I have walked 5944 steps. I walked up a hill for over 3/4 of a mile with some parts steep. Total distance for the walk was about 2 1/4 miles burning 251 calories. My walking stats are rather mediocre, but IMO good considering that hiking hills like this are new to me. Due to the hill, there were parts where I had a hard time maintaining 3.5 mph. This together with adjustment to daily walking activity from MFP gave me a target of 2642 calories. I had 2672 calories. That trail mix together with the apple pie was a double whammy to the total calories I had to burn off. See below.

I had to change my previously planned menu. The average calories per one slice of pie I am finding out to be 250, with one I saw at about 450 calories. So I planned accordingly. Later I ldecided to search the Internet for this answer. It turns out that one slice of Cocos apple pie is 730 calories. How is this possible? How did Cocos get all of those calories in their slice of pie? They must of used allot of butter. So I had to reduce my portion of dinner. Tomorrow I need to go grocery shopping. This means more meals from TJs.

PS The potato pancakes turned out well. I used applesauce like syrup on each pancake. Next time I need to make the batter a little thinner. They will taste even better tomorrow.

Great work!

You need to find an entry with the weight and make sure you are eating the same amount or adjust it. Yes, butter in the filling can make a difference as can butter/oil/Crisco in the crust.

I hope to go paddling tonight if the weather cooperates. Looks dicey though.

I looked up the total calorie count for a complete pie. I also checked this with CoCos. When I purchased it, they cut it up in five equal slices. They have a pie cutter that does this. So with this information, I calculated the calories to be 730 a slice.

I still find this hard to believe. Years ago I have made an apple pie with a true delicate pastry crust. I used allot of butter for the crust. I did not use Crisco or anything else. The top of the pie barely held together when I placed it on the pie. I also made the filling to be rich. This pie turned out to be rich and very tastey. Now Cocos version of this pie is good, but does not taste anything close to the pie that I had made. I can understand a slice of my pie would be up there in calories, but Cocos pie? I do think they used something like Crisco with just some butter added for flavor. They need to keep their costs down.

I still weigh 178 pounds. For exersize, I will just walk around the townhome complex at a moderate pace. No personal records to be broken here. I will try to motivate myself to do some grocery shopping. Those TJs meals are good.