Weight Loss and exercise

I think I meant to say over estimated.

MFP calories 1,005. Apple Watch Steps 7,775

I went absolutely bonkers yesterday! No exercise and over 3000 calories. Going light today but not starving myself. I will weigh tomorrow (Saturday) morning. To some degree, this is an experiment. A day way over, a day on the light side of normal (assuming I don't go nuts again; the day is young) and then a weigh in. There is a good chance I will paddle tomorrow.

173 pounds. Normal wiggle I suppose. I am going to exercise today. This will also help make my body odor intolerable enough to take a shower. You see, strenuous exercise has other benefits too.

Update: After doing a number 2 in the bathroom, I now find myself weighing 172. Apparently this can make a noticeable difference.

I didn’t weigh myself today. I plan on weighing on Sunday.

They had chocolate chip muffins at work today. I had brought in some cheese and crackers but the muffins looked so good. They were not big ones. Kind of on the smallish side. I picked one without too many chocolate chips on the top. I put it at 200 calories. For lunch I had an Italian beef sandwich that had 420 calories and a small thing of fries for 300 calories. I’m having a lean cuisine for dinner.

According to my calculations I’ll be at 1,180 calories. I don’t know about the muffin. So it might be a little more or a little less.

Does anyone feel like their weight is higher on a particular day? My weight always seems to be 2-4 pounds heavier on Sundays no matter what I’ve eaten the day before. Then the next day its back down. Maybe it’s just in my head. It does seem like it happens though.

MFP calories 1,152. Apple Watch Steps 4,527
Lost 8lbs

The following is for yesterday.

15,920 steps. I ran intervals for only 1.78 miles burning 190 calories, and walked for approximately one mile burning 64 calories. I walked in a very brisk pace up a steep hill for over a mile with a few short stops along the way. I calculated 92.5 calories for this through METs, considering BMR and it’s related adjustment value, and the slope of the hill. Too bad MET calculations cannot take into account fitness level. All of this totals 348 calories. This is definitely a conservative estimate. I may adjust this approach in the future to further stabilize my weight.

This makes for a target of 2648 calories. I have consumed 3241 calories. So this is a significant overage of about 600 calories. That quart of Pepsi did me in this time. I guess back to water. Still I do not think I have had an overage like this before. I will spread this over two days. So I will perform 300 calories of exercise each day watching more carefully what I eat those particular days. So it means more running for me today. Argh!

Interesting. Calculating daily calorie intake to maintain weight usually involves basically BMI and activity level. However, a more accurate calculation such as the Cunningham Equation includes additional factors like the percentage of body fat, and the crazy term “Thermic Effect of Food”, which is basically the amount of protien consumed per kg of body weight. This formula also has its own approach to determine two other factors, using such exotic terms as “Activity Thermogenisis”, and “Exercise Related Activity Thermogenisis”. All this means is that general daily activity level is considered along with calories due to exercise itself. No big deal here. Leave it to scientists to use rediculously opaque terms. One calculator that uses this information provides me with 2500 calories of daily intake to maintain weight excluding exercise. I think this is a bit high.

I went over again yesterday, but only by 50.

I swam for 75 minutes and logged 450 of the 518 mfp gave me. I don't cut much from "leisurely swimming" because even though I swim slow, it is non stop.

Consumed 2100 calories.

I weighed twice this morning. I weighed 169.4! Then without eating breakfast first, I went out and paddled ~11 miles. I weighed again and I was 166.6. Strava gave me 1434 calories for the paddling. I haven't edited it yet. I plan to come up way short of 1600 plus that anyway. Breakfast (protein bar and a couple of plums after I got back), lunch (chicken sausage on a piece of whole grain bread and a peach) and a snack (unsweetened applesauce) and right now I am at 665 for the day at 2:15.

Yesterday's food:

I found this ted talk pretty motivating (and humorous) to get healthier -

I weigh a whole lotta pounds, at 170. I do not want to be this low, but I am slowly losing more weight. Am I underestimating my calories burned? Maybe I should not adjust down as much what my watch is telling me? I am much more active now than I used to be, so maybe I should move up my daily maintenance calories to about 2500 from 2300? Both can accomplish the same purpose, but which one would be the best explanation of my weight loss. I am thinking of increasing my maintenance calorie level to 2500 calories to see what happens. This would make for the biggest difference.

So far 10,261 steps. I have both run intervals for 2.76 miles and walked briskly for about 1.41 miles, burning a total of 396.5 calories. I do think this is conservative. However, let’s see what happens with the maintenance calories increase. So I definitely have made up for half of yesterday’s overage with some to spare. No soda for me today. What a waste of calories! Water is healthier anyways.

I would adjust the base calories; easier to fiddle with one number than a bunch.

Having said that, I adjusted Strava's gift of 1434 calories down to 1000 for my ~11 mile paddle. Not that it matters as I plan to stay under 2000 total today.

@UpDownAround: How would you calculate your daily maintenance calorie requirements using those online calculators? Since you are counting exercise calories, would you use the “sedentary” setting for the daily activity level? Would you attempt to choose the activity level that strictly pertains to your normal daily activity aside from exercise? For instance, the difference between sitting at the desk all day long compared to walking around constantly and doing errands after work. The problem here is on many if not most calorie calculators, they use the number of times you exercise every weak to determine your activity level for its calculation. At best it would s a WAG. I guess it ultimately comes down to trial and error. All this can do is give one a starting point. I would like to determine the best starting point.

I made the mistake of saying in a previous post that BMR relies on both BMI and activity level. Of course this is not correct. But a more accurate calculation would use percent body fat. For shits and giggles, I am thinking of spending a couple dollars on body fat calipers. My OCD is compelling me to calculate my actual percent body fat. Knowing this will help me sleep better at night.

PS I have always looked to large rich desserts for calories. I may change this to more frequent smaller meals and snacks. BTW What is a higher calorie fruit?

I use sedentary plus exercise. That is the one place I miss a fitness watch. I have a lot of uncounted steps on days I am more active but not enough to monitor as a walk with mmw. I carry my phone pretty much all the time. I could try a step tracker on it. I play with the numbers a lot without depending much on calculations. I have suffered some Adaptive Thermogenesis so I burn less than most calculators compute. They come up with around 1900 for sedentary and 1700 seems more accurate. I have been using 1600 as I have been more active largely because I think the computed exercise amounts are off. Also I am good with creeping down a few more pounds into the low 150s.

Raisins are probably the most calorie dense fruits. As far as "wet" fruits go, pineapple and mango can add up fairly quickly. The thing about fruit is that I could eat some every few minutes all day long. If you aren't a purist, sweetened applesauce has a fair amount. Preserves instead of fresh fruit in your yogurt gives you many more calories. Canned fruit in heavy syrup has a lot more calories than fresh. But I do it with fresh fruits in bulk. A whole pineapple lasts me maybe two days. Sometimes I eat 3 or 4 peaches at a time. I eat whole mangoes. I can polish of a pound of melon pieces at one sitting. Fruit is mostly water with some fiber and sugar. So if I stuff myself with fruit I don' stay full long. Yesterday I had 8 servings of fruit; today I have had 6 and will probably have some grapes before bed.

There are two types of sedentary with this one equation that I am working with. One is basically bed or chair ridden individual. I find that the value of maintenance calories obtained this way equals to about 2060 for me. This is 30 under which I was originally using a while back. This is an extreme version of “sedentary”. Realistically, I can choose a sedentary occupation without daily movement. Now there may be room for a few errands. This amounts to about 2400 calories. Next, if I add in the effect of the nutrient makeup of my average (too) low of protien day, this adds an additional about 90 calories. So we are up to about 2500 calories. If I went on a high protien diet, then my maintenance calories for a “sedentary” lifestyle would be about 2,650 calories. I do think these results are a bit high, but still provides a more realistic combination of variables to consider.

Allot of this depends on how ones RMR is calculated. This approach uses the more accurate percentage body fat. This assumes my guess for my own body is correct. Another is what one means by “sedentary”. This part I find interesting and can yield a noticeably different result. Then the nutrient makeup, specifically the grams of protien per pound of body weight, fine tunes this figure. This amount can be significant for a high protien diet. I find this part also interesting.

So if there is any truth to this, this means that the calculators found online work only if “sedentary” means virtually “immobile”, and there is a low protien diet involved. We are talking about a “bare bones” minimal interpretation of maintenance calories. I think this is a bit unrealistic. No wonder some online calculators can provide values noticeably above the average calculator. They are interpreting “sedentary” differently. This actually now makes sense to me.

So I will use the 2500 figure as my new amount for maintenance calories just to see what happens. Then I will adjust accordingly.

I have a target of now 2,896 calories. I have consumed 2,655 calories. This is about 250 calories short. I added a meatball to my spaghetti dish. So I have 350 calories to make up for yet. I will run again tomorrow. I will eat only 2400 calories tomorrow to help make up this difference.

Today my best run was during the second mile. I ran at a higher speed and paced myself really well. I was exhausted as I walked into the restaurant at the end of my run. I ran a mile in 14 minutes with an average heart rate of 160 which in itself is above my 145 to 155 range. Here I go again pushing myself allot, perhaps too much. I burned 114 net calories a mile which is allot. I hope to replicate this again tomorrow without going into tachycardia. Perhaps this time a mile in about 15 minutes. I am quickly walking up a very steep hill late in the evening.

PS There is a number on my watch called Training Effect. This tells me in one number the approximation of the actual effect of my exercise on my cardiovascular system. The value I ended up with of “3” is very good.

I weigh 173 now. After a trip to the bathroom, I weighed myself again. I looked at yesterday’s sodium intake, and compared to some days, it is only moderately over the target by 1,245 mg compared to what is specified by MFP. This is frequently the case for me. Several days in recent history, it was in excess by about 3,000 mg. So my sodium intake yesterday was not out of the norm for me.

I think I panicked when I increased my maintenance calories to 2,500. For several weeks I have been going between 172 and 170. This is during the time I was using 2300 calories as a base. I have been going between 173 and 172 and very slowly losing weight for a couple weeks before then at a base of 2200 calories. Still, I will keep it at 2,500 calories to see what happens. I need to gain a few pounds anyways. I think I will be back to 2,300 for my maintenance calories soon enough.

Sodium isn't the only thing that causes water weight. Anything bulky that will stay bulky (examples - leafy vegetables don't, popcorn does) going through your gut will keep some water with it. You didn't go 7000 over burn and actually gain 2 pounds.

I think of sedentary as an office job, walking to/from the parking lot, around a little at work and some around the house. The calculators are for most people. Lightly active includes some exercise or a job that has you on your feet and moving around a lot.

I am going to try Pacer Pedometer on my phone. It syncs with mfp.

Yesterday.

Paddles ~11 miles, did some digging in the yard. Logged 1000 calories.

Consumed 1637 calories. Yeah that ends up with a really low net, but I went way over a couple of days earlier. A really high or really low day here and there is okay; it only gets unhealthy when you do it too often and/or too many days in a row.

I think at the very least one needs a reasonably accurate pedometer, preferably one that can interface with the phone. I can use one that also provides distance and average pace, since I do both walking and runing intervals. These types of statistics and more are now provided by Strava. Since I have been really pushing myself at my age, an accurate heart rate comes in handy. I really need to not go much over 160. Besides, exercising by zones can be helpful. Anything beyond that I do not really need to use. Perhaps a good fitness watch is all that I needed due to my heart rate concerns.

Assessing calories by the watch is not necessary and is fraught with variables that can effect accuracy, which was the primary reason I went to a sports watch. I am not so sure now. I am beginning to think that sport watches are necessary only for accurately evaluating performance, which I do not need. Leave these things to the competitive runner.

Interesting info so far on Pacer. I counted about 100 steps just walking around inside the house for normal activities and it seems accurate (checked it before taking the steps and again after). I did go to the grocery store but only for a couple of specific items and didn't wander the aisles. I am up to 1683 since I installed it around 10 am. I would have guessed lower. I am not sure when it "checks in" with mfp or how it is used. I will just let it continue to run and see what happens. If I am tracking every step and letting it post automatically, I will probably have to adjust my base. Not by much; incidental walking is probably only 20 calories per 1000 but I suspect I will get more logged. I would rather adjust the base than keep editing the burn. One concern I have is if it posts late at night, how do you deal with long walks? Hopefully it does something practical.

I have not exercised today. Pacer says 2452 steps so far.

Consumed 1600 calories, but I rolled forward 190.

I found a bunch of info about Pacer and mfp. I changed my mfp settings from an absolute number I set to saying I am lightly active and want to lose 0.5 pounds a week because I felt like it was giving me too many if I said I wanted to maintain. I changed my expected exercise to 0 times per week. I enabled negative adjustments. mfp gave me 1630 calories with these settings. I had been setting 1600 lately and adding anything more than incidental exercise. this actually is pretty close to what Pacer is showing; it says my current basal is 1683 and that I have burned an extra 83 for an allowance of 1766. I think those numbers are a little on the high side but not terribly so. I will let it run with current settings for a few days and maybe set mfp back to maintenance if I am getting numbers I think are below what I should see. Will still use Strava for paddling.

This morning I had trouble getting a consistent weight, but the numbers were on either side of 157, so 157.

I made an adjustment to how I am tracking food to be more accurate about what I actually consume each day. Below is yesterday's log. It has a different target because of the adjustments I made to let it be automatically computed. It's only 30 calories higher. I added two new meal categories - Adjustments from prior day and Adjustments for next day. I moved the turkey burger back to Dinner for yesterday as that is actually when I ate it and instead of logging food on the next day, I made a negative calorie adjustment for the amount I will move forward. On today's I made a corresponding positive adjustment. If I come up short some days, I will make a positive to get up to goal and a negative adjustment on the next day to give me more calories.

I weigh 172 once again. My legs ache a little, but I will exercise anyways at least for two miles.

Now for yesterday, I did not exercise. Then my target is 2500 calories. I ate 2,465 calories. I am probably underestimating the calories from the icecream that I ate. Next time I will need to be more careful. I probably ate closer to two cups instead of one. I do not think this blip on my calories consumed will make much of a difference as long as this does not become a pattern. I still have about 150 calories to burn off from the overage of a few days ago. I may reduce my calorie intake accordingly to take care of this.

@UpDownAround: You are not letting MFP make those adjustments for you? Or is this in addition to the change made by MFP? 1683 too high? IMO If you adjust down from there, you will likely end up close to your BMR. As you lose body fat, your BMR goes up, not down. But apparently you know what you are doing. You have had good success so far. I could not be successful with your approach. So IMO I do not think you should mess with an approach that has been working for you. We are both OCD in this way.

For example, I probably should of stayed with 2300 as my base calories. Furthermore, I also hope my adjustment down to the calories burned given by my watch is not being overestimated. The watch may know better than I about my fitness level. If I remember correctly, I do not think I gained weight using the figures that I used from the watch, but I may be wrong here. My downward adjustments have been a relatively recent approach of mine. So this particular change of adjusting down may be another example of my OCD. Then I now use a new method to calculate my base calories. When will this end? I had a system that for the most part appeared to be working.