Weight Loss and exercise

Steady as she goes - I weighed in at 157.4 this morning. Kind of a surprise because I drank a lot of water, ate a lot of wet fruit (watermelon, pineapple, nectarine) and had an ice cream sandwich last night and didn't eliminate much of it; I usually get up a couple of time a night to pee, but not last night.

170 pounds. I will power walk to Cocos two miles away.

I had some chips around 10 today. At 2 I still hadn’t eaten an actual meal and I didn’t really feel like eating a lot of little things to reach my calorie goals. So I got the bread bowl. Tonight I’ll have a piece of fish. So it will be about 1,200 for the day.

Are you Bozdickens with a new name?

No exercise logged. Did some walking around shopping.

2023 calories. A bit over again but manageable with a light day tomorrow.

This is a great thread. I might join you. Stayed at about 1600 calories today and walked three miles.

10,348 steps. Power walked for 4.23 miles. Burned 696 calories. Together with a 2300 base makes for a target of 2,996 calories. Consumed about 3,023 calories as my best estimate. I ate spaghetti that my ex girlfriend had made yesterday. Probably over estimated the calories of the sauce. I also estimated the amount of trail mix that I ate. Probably ate less. I think the total is within a 100 calories of being correct.

My exercise took allot out of me this time. I tried to do as much as I have done in the past, but this took allot more effort than it did in the past. Apparently I am a little out of shape. A few days without exercise can make a big difference. I am so tired! My heart rate reached 171 bpm by accident. I try to keep it between 145 and 155 with a max of about 160. I am an old man. I need to be careful to keep my heart from going into tachycardia.

@Tucson - not sure I would risk eating something made by an ex...

Yes, I need to consider that I need to be more careful with my ex’s cooking. So far she yells at her boyfriend calling him stupid, and then turns toward me with a smile on her face. I think this is a good sign that so far she has not been spiking my food.

I weigh 170 pounds. I will exercise today, but not as rigorous as as I did yesterday. Maybe at a moderate to brisk pace, but not power walking. I may walk only to McDonalds a mile away. Their water tastes better over there.

Yes I am.

I was really hungry this morning. I was at work and couldn’t eat. I have discovered that if I let my hunger go on for a few hours it will eventually die out. Total it will be about 1,125 calories. I would still like to keep it at that amount for awhile.

I was really active at work today.

7731 steps. I met my goal of 7500 steps. I overate today. Those Circle K hotdogs are much more in calories than I remember. Also I drank allot of soda instead of water when I exercised. Big mistake. I was not thinking. I walked three miles for 505 calories. So this makes for a target of 2300 + 505 = 2805 calories. I have consumed 3300 calories. This is an excess of about 500 calories. So I will exercise tomorrow to take most of this away. I will only eat my base calories of 2300 calories. I will have to watch what I eat. I ate homemade maccaroni and cheese using medium cheddar that was aged more than cheddar usually is. Nice.

I weighed 159.0 this morning! Not a surprise as I went way over the last couple of days. Last night it was pizza, fruit and junk. Lots of water weight; I know rationally that the excesses of the past couple of days would cause a gain of less than half a pound if not addressed But I really want to get below 155. Hopefully will paddle sometime this weekend.

I weighed 173. No way two pounds in one day. Water weight? Food in my intestines? I walked fast for three miles. This amounted to abut 500 calories burned. So I wiped out the excess of yesterday. I just have to stay with my plan of 2300 calories of food today. Oh yes, there was a half a mile where my pace was 14:00. If I can keep this up for one mile, I will be going fourteen minutes a mile. This would break my record of fourteen and a half mintes a mile.

I got a raspberry iced tea with Splenda. That had 25 calories. I had some cheese balls for a snack. Then I had a lean cuisine for lunch. I plan on having a box of macaroni and cheese for dinner. It’s the shapes kind so it only has 560 per box. It will be around 1,125 calories today. I did a lot of back and forth walking at my pointless shift at work today. I’m hoping to see decent progress on the scale tomorrow.

I paddled 10.82 SUP miles today. Strava logged close to 1500, I found another source that calculated a little under 1400 and I edited it down to 1200. Probably low; one of the factors that could throw off the calculations is that my SUP doesn't glide well. I have tried several other SUPs at group paddles and mine takes substantially more effort than the longer touring boards to go the same distance.

mfp is having some odd trouble and I can't bring up today's diary on the PC. I can on the phone and I can see a multi day summary on the PC. I consumed 1559 calories, so my net calories is a crazy low number but adding it in with the previous two days when I went way over I get 1516 net calories as an average. I am pretty sure logging was off a bit on some estimated portions, so the real average is probably very close to goal.

I weigh next on Monday. Unless I have a lot of sodium and/or pig out tomorrow, I kind of expect to be back around 157 again.

I was really curious and went ahead and weighed this morning, knowing I am probably still a little dehydrated. 155.4, which is a drop of 3.6 pounds in a day. Not that surprising; pizza on Friday night was loaded with sodium and I did a lot of late snacking so yesterday morning I had a lot of water weight and rich food in the pipeline. Yesterday was the opposite; very little sodium all day and only a couple of reasonable snacks after dinner.

Once more I will try to get back on track with a "normal" day of eating very near goal calories.

mfp on the web is still acting up. It has my goal as 0 so it shows my total as a negative number. It gets an error if I try to look at yesterday. The odd thing is that on my phone it is working fine. I am able to view reports. I attached a couple that I arranged as one to see total calories and net calories for the last several days. Some spikes, but they average out fine.

EDIT - It isn't just me on mfp...
Home page not loading & other fun issues — MyFitnessPal.com

I weigh 172 pounds, so I may have gained some weight. I will exercise before it gets too hot outside.

I am finding that using a watch to estimate calorie burn is fraught with obstacles. There is some important information to understand that only comes through significant research on the Internet. Most all calculators provide crude estimates that may be way off. Most who purchase these watches either do not understand this, or do not want to go through the effort in determining what is and what is not relevant in order to verify what their watch is telling them. There is allot of misunderstanding, incomplete information, and even BS on the Internet. This is even true with some sites that set themselves up as an authority on the subject.

Here is a biggie that helps make this much more complicated than it needs to be. There are the manufacturers of the watch that do not tell you enough in order to set the watch up correctly. They also do not help you interpret the results properly. If it were not for this, a user would be able to have much more confidence in the watch itself making most of this research not necessary.

No wonder users of these types of watches find calories burned on their watches to be very inaccurate and then ignore this figure as a consequence. I guess they can always use allot of trial and error. I believe when a good watch is set up appropriately, I think the results can be surprisingly accurate, like maybe as good as 80 percent or better accuracy depending on the sport, the use of sensors, and the watch. This is not bad at all being out of the laboratory.

My primary exercises are walking and paddling SUP. I am going with 50 calories a mile for walking and 120 for paddling. Sometimes I swim and I am using the mfp entry for casual breast stroke and then editing it down a little. I will worry about more accuracy when I get into the low 150s. I am not sure I really need high accuracy. If I get toward the high end of the range, I will decrease my base and trend lower, if I get to the bottom, I will up my , base calorie goal. I don't think it will ever be "set it and forget it" but trending in one direction or the other is slow enough to give me plenty of time to respond.

I am trying to find a way to “set it and forget it” even if weight may still change at a very slow rate. This still would be manageable to me. I see my weight as still being stable. The advantage of this approach in using the watch will help me adapt to significantly changing and at times unpredictable exercise loads.

For instance, I power walk several miles for a couple days. Then I want to walk up a steep hill as quickly as I can, who knows how steep this time. The next day, I do walk and run power intervals on the track, adjusting my intervals from time to time. I then go for endurance and walk at a slower brisk pace for ten miles. I find a new trail in the park that goes up and down and around , so I take it. I like to mix this stuff up, or I will get really bored and stop exercising. I can always just walk up that steep hill for an entire week. I think this approach would provide me more flexibility. I will not get into here the possibility of bicycling or just maybe even some weight training.

@UpDownAround: I imagine by adjusting you calories consumed or exercise when your weight is at the upper or bottom end of your chosen range will be successful. I can see where you can develop an awareness of your proper daily calorie consumption. Doing the same exercises in the same way through the week can help. I think consistency would be the key here to make this much easier. If there is a change in intensity from one day to the next, I see you successfully adjusting for this. I think your approach of working out a constant most used calories burned value for each exercise will help allot. So I see you being really successful in this way. I think they key to your success has been accurately gauging the intensity of an exercise and then making the appropriate adjustments to calories burned.

I have a question for you. If I manage to get my calories burned stated by my watch accurate enough, like 80% or possibly even a better accuracy rate, do you think this would be adequate? Looking at various calorie calculators, a difference of a hundred calories or even a bit more should not make a difference. In order to mitigate what difference this can actually make, I will need to continue to record my calorie intake as accurately as possible.

FWIW I figured out how to configure my watch better. Calories per mile on my power walks went from 170 to 180 down to 140, which I think is more accurate. Apparently, when others try to make sense of this, they also find that these are likely gross calories reported. So net calories when BMR is considered will be closer to 120. Why couldn’t of Garmin document something like this??? What a real PITA! Anyways, more adjustments may need to be made.

@Tucson, Yeah 80% seems good enough to me. I doubt I am much more accurate than that, if I am even that accurate. But I adjust my base goal up and down to account for it. Lately it has been at 1600 and my weight has been pretty stable. I think this indicates that I may be giving myself too many calories for exercise. A few times I have accepted Strava's calories even though I am pretty sure they are high.

Today my only logged exercise was walking about 3 miles and logged 140 calories.

I will end up with close to 1750 calories consumed, balancing out to around 1600. My logging wasn't real tight today. I estimated melon snacks and potatoes (air fried hash browns) at dinner.

mfp is still not working right on the web. No report.

I will weigh in the morning. Not sure what to expect but I will guess another 157.x that I had a few of before the spikes up and down.

I always thought you were logging not enough calories for exercise, but apparently I am wrong. I think your adjusting the base is something for me to keep in mind. I may need to set a new constant base in this way to dial in the accuracy of my watch. Base calories from a worded description of activity level is not the most accurate way in doing this.

Based on what I have been seeing over time with your posts, you must be in excellent shape. My watch lists me in “fair” shape, but I do not think I am that good yet. Stating “fair” or “good” shape are only qualitative terms anyway. I cannot run more than one minute, and pushing myself at that. Paddling nine miles maintaining high intensity? Not possible for me at all. Maybe never. Swimming for one hour straight? Not right now. In the future. So the calories you burn for the same exercise, intensity, and time will be much lower than for me. That is if I could keep up with you. Not likely. So in part this may explain what you log for calories and what I log can be noticeable different.

My watch is using a BMR of about 2000 calories. This is high. Calculators on the Net place me at about 1800 using BMI. Now percentage weight of body fat does make a big difference. After looking at hundreds of pictures online with body fat percentage attached to them, I estimate mine to be about 20%, and now a little bit less. This makes for a BMR of 1,450 calories. Interesting, eh? So this means your BMR calculator on the Net is accurate only for those with lean bodies, IOW those in good physical shape.

I think my metabolism is a little low. "Starvation mode" is a myth. Your body can't hang on to fat when you eat very few calories. But adaptive thermogenesis is real (Google it and you will find a lot of peer reviewed papers and studies); people who lose a lot to get down to a healthy weight burn less calories than people who were always that weight. It's only 10% or so, but if base + exercise is around 2000, that's 200 calories. Not everyone is exactly 10%; that's an example. I am pretty fit now. I don't look like a body builder or a linebacker but it is obvious I have been exercising.

I have taken 10,427 steps. I performed walk/run intervals for 3.7 miles, which is not including some additional walking. For each minute, I ran for 15 seconds and then walked for 45 seconds for entire miles. I have burned 546 calories making for a target of 2,846. I have consumed 2,794 calories. This makes for a shortage of 52 calories. Good enough.

The graph of my pace, and heart rate were perfect. Toward the end, my heart rate was over 160, and at one point in time 172, which is too high for my age. My average heart rate was consistently around 150 bpm. For one mile, I made it in 14 minutes 30 seconds. I am learning to pace myself. I am getting better. Also my watch will be more accurate with calories burned in the future. I am going to take off tomorrow. Boy do I feel tired!

155.8 this morning. Maybe I actually have come down a little. Hoping to swim this afternoon. Rolled about 100 calories forward and ate a lot this morning. I already pre-logged lunch, which is pretty light, but will need some exercise to have much left tonight.

EDIT - This will likely be a "voodoo" adjustment to exercise tonight, accepting a little more because I know I have had a couple of low weigh ins in a row. I may also move the 100 calorie overage back to yesterday and just let it stand. Or not; if I can manage not to eat much more outside of meals today I can record about what I think is the right amount for swimming and maybe see if the trend of slow loss holds. I would rather be maintaining between 150 and 155.

My weight is 172 bordering on 173. Now that my watch will be more accurate, this weight gain should slow down allot. Calories burned will be variable per mile but should be 30% less compared to the past. No exercise for me today except some casual walking around the complex. So my target is 2300 calories.