[UpDownAround]

160.4 this morning. I am very happy with that. I had another piece of fruit before bed last night that I logged for today. I might change that back to yesterday and log a little more of the walking. Not that it really matters; lots of people go over and just press on. I rarely go over more than a very small amount.

[Tucson]

Originally Posted by UpDownAround

160.4 this morning. I am very happy with that. I had another piece of fruit before bed last night that I logged for today. I might change that back to yesterday and log a little more of the walking. Not that it really matters; lots of people go over and just press on. I rarely go over more than a very small amount.

Good going! You have the discapline of a rock who is unyielding to temptation. Rock solid discapline. You certainly put yourself through allot to manage your weight, sometimes to the point of being extreme. But this has been working for you.

[Tucson]

I weigh 176 today. Interesting. I have been hanging between 176 and 177. My fitness watch tells me I am in poor health. This is probably why the calories burned is on the high side. As this improves over time, both in accuracy and magnitude, my calories burned should decrease for the same work. What is interesting is that these activity monitors challenge me to do better. I want to increase the numbers by exersixing more.

With this new one, the distance and heart rate are right on. Pushing myself makes me feel that I really am exerting myself on walks. My previous watch gave me heart bpm that was not reflective of my efforts. Now with this watch, it is. I have been hitting as high as 150, where my older watch would show it as being in the 130s. I will check the accuracy of the steps taken.

Enough about my little toy. Blah blah blah blah blah.

I am starting to feel better. My depression is not as severe due to my exersizing. Doing a quarter of a mile around the condo complex used to be enough for me. Now I am walking four miles. My weight has been remaining stable so far. So this is good. My next goal is walking four miles without stopping when half way over. Eight miles with a stop is my next distance goal That will be about at least 16,000 steps. There is a Denny’s restaurant there where for $2 I can eat a stack of pancakes. This will be a nice reward for me.

[UpDownAround]

Originally Posted by Tucson

Good going! You have the discapline of a rock who is unyielding to temptation. Rock solid discapline. You certainly put yourself through allot to manage your weight, sometimes to the point of being extreme. But this has been working for you.

I feel like I sort of gave in a little bit. I went ahead and logged a little more of my walking yesterday and moved the pear back to yesterday. That is legitimate; I didn't claim more exercise than I did, just closer to claiming all of it (4.5 of 6.35 miles). The pear is only 86 calories; that's not much in the grand scheme of things and I really did eat the pear last night, before I weighed this morning. Without it I might have been 160.2, which would have been a new low. Oh well...

[99fairies]

I feel like my meds are hurting my organs, So I try to fast once in a while. But my sister said that since I am on meds, I should just do a fast with fruits and veggies. So I'm going to the shop tomorrow to buy some fresh produce.

[Tucson]

I have walked 10,552 steps, and burned 750 calories. This is the total steps for the day. The watch starts with the BMR calories needed, which is about 1800, which are the calories needed just to be alive, and then adds on what calories are burned by walking activities during the day. I did it this way because I cannot find the steps for each exersize. I actually burned 503 calories during my exersizing for 4.5 miles of walking. This is what is included on MFP. I am going to try to walk everyday from two to four miles depending how tired I am feeling. I hope what I wrote above makes sense. It took me some time to figure all of this out, and I still do not entirely understand the figures from this confounded watch.

Let’s see, about 1800 for BMR, and 750 calories through activities during the day, including exersize. This makes for about 2550 calories I need to consume to offset this and retain my weight. I am at about 2400 right now. So I will come in short by about 100 calories. The calorie count burned for each step taken will start dropping as the watch figures out how fit I am.

Does this make sense? UpDownAround, does this make sense to you?

Whew! Next time I will leave most of this out of my posting since I have explained what is going on here. I am posting my food diary below that includes what I will eat for dinner.

[UpDownAround]

13108 steps. I logged 80 minutes of 3 mph for 320 calories, well shy of the 531 my watch thinks I burned. 1895 calories. Not positive portions are right at dinner. I ate an amazing amount of fresh pineapple and I scrambled eggs with cheese to share and I think I got about 3 eggs.

@Tucson - I am not sure what makes the most sense. I am not using math; more like voodoo.

I need to put some time in on my SUP once it warms up. There is a creek with a canoe launch about 5 minutes from my office; during the summer I plan to hit it some days; you can paddle upstream a few miles before it shallows out, then turn around and paddle back. That will give me more core and upper body work and burn more calories than walking for the same amount of time.

[Tucson]

Your watch is using 133 calories per mile. You have adjusted it to 80 calories per mile. Mine is using 110 calories per mile. This includes large stretches of 3.5 to sometimes 4 mph for the first two miles. You are in better health than I am. So your calories per mile should be lower than mine for the same speed. However, I do think what you have adjusted it to is very very conservative. Furthermore, if you have been working hard going up and down hills, then you have burned even more calories. I can see where your watch is too high. But there must be a better way. Maybe you should use that calculator that computes calories burned during a walk. I think this figure would be more accurate for you.

Here, I will do this for you. I put in your age, which I made up as 45. I put in your height as 5 foot 10 inches. I think that I remember something like this. I entered 160 for your weight. I used a met value lower than the norm 3.5 for walking 3 mph since I think you are in better shape compared to the average person. I chose the much lower value for this activity of 3.0. This should make the calculated value conservative despite what may be erroneous data that I entered. The calculator comes up with 415 calories, which is a value between your estimation and your fitness band. I suspect the actual value is even more. Your value that you chose as 320 calories is 30% lower than this.

Food for thought. FWIW

[Tucson]

I weigh 176. One scale shows 175. I do not know why. I will keep with the calories my watch shows that I have burned. I want to see if my wrist monitor is doing its job. For the price, it should be able to operate my TV set, dim the lights, set a temperature for the house, and everything else that I can think of. It does control the music on my iPhone. Big deal.

[UpDownAround]

@Tucson, I am 59 (have a big birthday coming later this year) and 5'8". I am not confident that I know what my base calories are and I am not confident in exercise calories over and above that. So I am guessing very conservatively on both. I will only change that once I see definite movement toward a lower weight. I am pretty sure I will see that soon. Yesterday I tied my lowest weigh in and I am fairly sure it wasn't a low spike. Then I will work on getting exercise calories right, or at least close to right. Only when I do that can I hope to figure out my base. When it warms up it will be especially tough to track exercise. I go fishing on my kayak or (starting this year) my paddleboard. Sometimes I might go on a float trip where we drift down a river, other times I might go to a lake or the sound and maybe fish right by where we put in or maybe paddle a lot to get to the spot or try different spots or troll... I could end up paddling lazily for a few minutes here and there and I could paddle hard for hours.

EDIT - as of now, my watch says 16476, 7.37 miles,668 calories in 155 minutes. Minutes are always screwy because some of those steps are just normal walking around slow with stopping. The bulk of it was 3+ mph brisk walking.

[UpDownAround]

23152 steps. the watch says that is 10.35 miles and 938 calories in 215 minutes. I logged it as 100 minutes of 3 mph for 400 calories.
1983 calories. I pigged out at dinner and had 3 slices of pizza, but they were from a medium pie. Still, that was 720 calories. I forgot my lunch and had two protein bars. Not the most well rounded day ever. Went slightly over on sodium, so weighing tomorrow could spike up slightly even though I am fairly sure I am in deficit today.

[Tucson]

I walked 19,424 steps for 1313 calories burned. This includes my walking exersize. On my exersizes, eight miles for about 900 calories burned. So this works out to 113 calories per mile. This first started out as about 160 per mile, then about 140 calories per mile, and now 113. The watch is figuring out my physical fitness level. Also, this is the first day I could walk as fast as I can for about two miles straight. From then on, it was a brisk pace. I have walked well over four miles without stopping. Nice! My heart rate touched 155, with average heart rate of 140. This is well into the cardio range. Amazing. My heart is recovering from exersize much more quickly now. I am becoming healthier! I am so pleased with myself right now!

Ok, now the calories. 1800 BMR plus 1313 is a target of about 3113. I have about 1038 remaining. This is with a full days menu. Now what do I do? Maybe an extra sandwich, like a PBJ or two? Maybe add soup to today’s menu? I can always eat a nice slice of banana cream pie? I like this the best. I will figure this out. I want to get close to my target. Maybe at least 2800 or 2900 calories. All I know right now is that I am very hungry.

Since I can edit this post for a couple hours, I will have by then completed any meals. So I will then update this post with today’s food diary.

PS This exersize is lifting me out of my depression.

Update: I have consumed about 2865 calories with the help of two tuna fish sandwiches. I have about 538 calories to go. So I will eat a couple slices of honey dew melon, and some Coca Cola. So I will come within about 300 calories of my target. This is the best I can do right now. I am full, and it is not possible for me to eat more today. Another low protein day. Not good. Yogurt smoothie with protein powder tomorrow.

I have just realized that the digestion system is not in sync with the calories consumed on a particular day. There is at least a three day lag or more. So maybe I should be calculating all of this also on a weekly basis?

[Tucson]

Originally Posted by UpDownAround

@Tucson, I am 59 (have a big birthday coming later this year) and 5'8". I am not confident that I know what my base calories are and I am not confident in exercise calories over and above that. So I am guessing very conservatively on both. I will only change that once I see definite movement toward a lower weight. I am pretty sure I will see that soon. Yesterday I tied my lowest weigh in and I am fairly sure it wasn't a low spike. Then I will work on getting exercise calories right, or at least close to right. Only when I do that can I hope to figure out my base. When it warms up it will be especially tough to track exercise. I go fishing on my kayak or (starting this year) my paddleboard. Sometimes I might go on a float trip where we drift down a river, other times I might go to a lake or the sound and maybe fish right by where we put in or maybe paddle a lot to get to the spot or try different spots or troll... I could end up paddling lazily for a few minutes here and there and I could paddle hard for hours.

EDIT - as of now, my watch says 16476, 7.37 miles,668 calories in 155 minutes. Minutes are always screwy because some of those steps are just normal walking around slow with stopping. The bulk of it was 3+ mph brisk walking.

You appear to have a logical approach to this. As you know, it will take some time to figure it out since you will be strictly using your weight scale to determine if you ate too little or too much. You mentioned not being able to gauge the caliries burned on a given day due to for example paddling. I think your weight scale will be the final word. I do think you need to keep everything consistent in order for your plan to work. This means exersizing every day the same amount of calories burned, and eating the same amount of calories every day. IMO you need to stabilize these factors for the time being.

[UpDownAround]

Originally Posted by Tucson

I have just realized that the digestion system is not in sync with the calories consumed on a particular day. There is at least a three day lag or more. So maybe I should be calculating all of this also on a weekly basis?

You're overthinking it. You are right; they are not in sync. So what? Over the course of a week or month or whatever, it works out. Besides, you would have to be eating roday for what you do tomorrow and/or the next day. How long it takes for food to become energy varies by food also, so it would get really complex to make energy available from what you ate sync up perfectly with energy expenditure. Every night we make a little fat and every day we burn a little fat.

Now back to what I need to think more about - getting my numbers right. I woke up feeling dehydrated rather than bloated and sure enough, I did not see a spike up; it was down to 159.0, the lowest I have seen by 1.4 pounds.

So it is pretty clear to me that I have been in a deficit. So I will log more of my exercise. I am planning to go paddling this afternoon, which could make that difficult. I am going to turn my HRM back on and see if that helps. The problem with that is I expect to have a high reading when I pump up my board (I have an inflatable, AKA iSUP). It takes high pressure to be hard enough to stand on without bending more than a tiny amount. Getting the last few pounds of pressure in is hard work.

EDIT - I found this resource to help me determine calorie burn but the range is huge:
https://www.islesurfandsup.com/sup-f...arding-burn-2/

[Tucson]

I weigh 175 now. Interesting. My goal for exersizes today is a at a least two mile walk.

I have two ways to calculate calories. Actually three. One way is to take the calories for maintaining ones weight, which is about 2090 for me, and add on calories burned through exersize. This is what MFP does. Another way is to take ones BMR, which is 1700 for me, and add on all the calories related to steps taken for the *entire* day. BMR is the calories needed to just sit there and breathe. This can work for me since I do little else. Still, my activity monitor app does something different. It adds in all the calories burned by walking for the entire day, including calories burned by walking for exersize, onto the calorie quota needed to maintain my weight. This yields an unrealistically high value. It appears to be confusing the maintenance level of calories with BMR. I do not think this applies to me. So my choice is between the former two methods.

I think I will go back with the MFP method until the calories burned from walking through the day, apart from exersize, becomes much more significant than it is. Then I will reevaluate. Right now the calories burned walking apart from exersizing only comes to about 100 to 150 a day, which is probably already factored into the calculation for the calories needed to maintain weight. If this part were to go up significantly, then I will need to adjust for this, perhaps by choosing a different activity level for the calculation of a new maintanence level of calories. What is inreeesting to me is that it still comes down to the weight scale determining whether I am eating properly. My watch only will at best provide me a ballpark figure.

PS I just realized that I have been making my efforts into an entertaining game for myself with, for instance, finding more accurate ways in determining the calories burned through the day, so I can try to keep my weight stable. Also I challenge myself to cut down on my time for each mile, and to try to keep my heart rate up improving the average for that exersize. I guess what works is what works. One of my next goals is to walk ten miles in one day.

BTW here is a straightforward BMR and maintenance calories calculator. What is different here is you select your activity level by how active you are, and not by the amount of exersize you do daily. This is good because my watch will provide the calories burned from my exersizing.

https://manytools.org/handy/bmr-calculator/

[Tucson]

I decided to be easier on myself today. I have walked for exersize only 4.4 miles burning 451 calories in 83 minutes. I averaged about 3 to 3.5 mph, compared to yesterday of 4 mph or more. I have walked in total over 10,000 steps so far, and will be a bit more, perhaps another thousand or two, by the end of the day.

My calories per mile was about 100 in the first leg, and 105 on the second leg. This shows a reduction from yesterday of 113 because I was not pushing myself much at all this time. Even though I reached a peak 140 bpm heart rate, my average is much lower than yesterday at about 125. Yesterday’s average heart rate was about 140. This means to me that there was a comparatively small period of cardio workout. So all of this makes sense. As far as calories go, I have a calorie target of 2541 due to my exersize. I have completed my menu for today that adds up to about this amount. I have already ate breakfast so far. What I may do is skip exersize for tomorrow.

Update: I ended up eating more Kung Pao then I thought I would. I did not think there were four cups in the bag it came in. I should of measured like I normally do. It was very good. So I changed the attached food diary for this reason. I will split the overage between today and tomorrow.

[UpDownAround]

My watch says 7845 steps, which is interesting because I did not go for a walk, other than around to a couple of stores. But I went paddling for a couple of hours and paddled pretty hard much of the time. I used 300 an hour, which is at the low end of recreational SUP paddling according to the article I linked earlier. mfp lacks math skills; 90 minutes logged as 446 (should be 450). I am not counting pumping, which is one of the most intense 10 or 15 minute exercises I get.
I also upped base calories to 1700. I ate 2132 calories today, which seems like way too much, But i will see how it goes.

[Cocosurviving]

MFP calories 1,012. Apple Watch steps 2,878. Water intake 50.7 oz. It rained the whole day so I was not able to really walk much.

[Tucson]

Originally Posted by UpDownAround

My watch says 7845 steps, which is interesting because I did not go for a walk, other than around to a couple of stores. But I went paddling for a couple of hours and paddled pretty hard much of the time. I used 300 an hour, which is at the low end of recreational SUP paddling according to the article I linked earlier. mfp lacks math skills; 90 minutes logged as 446 (should be 450). I am not counting pumping, which is one of the most intense 10 or 15 minute exercises I get.
I also upped base calories to 1700. I ate 2132 calories today, which seems like way too much, But i will see how it goes.

You ate 2132 calories today? Amazing. I did not know you had it in you. You are catching up with me. This is good to see. I bet one of your concerns is falling back into old habits. This is mine too. We both need to be careful to not let this happen. It will be more of a challenge to me than to yourself.

[UpDownAround]

Originally Posted by Tucson

You ate 2132 calories today? Amazing. I did not know you had it in you. You are catching up with me. This is good to see. I bet one of your concerns is falling back into old habits. This is mine too. We both need to be careful to not let this happen. It will be more of a challenge to me than to yourself.

That is a huge concern. Sometimes intense exercise, like paddling, seems counterproductive because it makes me so hungry. I usually weigh every other day, but made a little schedule adjustment to see what I am a day later having eaten more food than usual. 159.4 - less than half a pound higher. I did eat some calories dense foods yesterday.

I am going to do some walking today; I thought about going paddling again, but I am sore; I may have set calories on the low side. The range in that article was 305 to 480 and I did 300 since it was mfp calories. By that I mean I need to exclude about 65 an hour because that's about what it takes for me to be alive and doing little or nothing, which is already in my calorie total. So I wasn't setting it to mid range, but not all that far below. When I get in good enough shape, I want to paddle more in the touring range. SUP paddling is a really good exercise; you don't just paddle with your arms. Lots of core involved.

I will weigh next on Tuesday.

[Tucson]

I weigh 174 today. I am getting a bit concerned now. I will not exersize and actually eat more than my target for today. I also will not carry over the excess of calories from yesterday to today regarding the large Kung Pao meal that I had.

From now on, I will no longer allow myself to be short my target by more than 100 calories as long as I am exersizing. I had an irrational fear that by following my watch, particularity when it is having me eat substantially more, I would end up gaining weight. This is why I have ended up with a couple hundred calories or more short of my targets. My watch may actually be working. It is about time. Time will tell.

[UpDownAround]

I am still leery of exercise calories. My watch says I burned over 1000 today. Logging about 3/4 of the miles as 3 mph walking on mfp was over 700 and I have eaten about half of that. I will still have something else, but I will probably be over 250 short. I am still not convinced that they aren't fantasy numbers.

I turned my HRM back off. It seems worthless when I look across days. It shows the same numbers every day.

[UpDownAround]

I did come closer than I thought I would; I realized I had not logged the canned fruit with dinner earlier and I had a glass of almond milk with ovaltine in it.

25815 steps, 11.54 miles and 1047 calories according to my watch. Logged as 180 minutes of 3 mph walking for 713 calories.
2272 calories consumed out of 2413 alloted, leaving 141, which seems like a reasonable margin for error. I think the grapes we have are bigger than average and my count is likely off. And I am still not sure I trust exercise calories. Going to see how it goes on Tuesday if I try to get close again tomorrow.

[Tucson]

I am at 174 pounds. I have walked 10,634 steps so far, and perhaps another thousand before the end of the day. I walked 4.5 miles for a total amount of 468 calories burned. This comes out to about 105 calories a mile, which has been the case recently. So I cannot expect below 100 values until I am more fit. My speed was from about 3 to 3.5 mph. My average heart rate was 140 bpm with a peak of 154. Despite the slower speed for today, I still ended up with a good cardio workout. This is probably since I was already tired with my legs still hurting before I started walking. I still pressed on. MFP has my target calories at 2558 due to my walks today. My food diary will come out to be 2567 calories. So I am meeting the entire calorie goal this time. I shall see as I continue this what happens to my weight. I am eating as much as I can. I will have to find more calorie rich food items without resorting to desserts if at all possible.

@UpDownAround: I can see why you call the calories burned from your watch as fantasy calories. However, I think you need to find out what the actual value is for calories burned. IMO in order to do this, you need to stabilize both your exersize steps taken, and your intake of food. I suspect you will have to periodically do this to keep the calories burned figure usable. In the end, I will end up having to do the same thing.

[Tucson]

Originally Posted by UpDownAround

I did come closer than I thought I would; I realized I had not logged the canned fruit with dinner earlier and I had a glass of almond milk with ovaltine in it.

25815 steps, 11.54 miles and 1047 calories according to my watch. Logged as 180 minutes of 3 mph walking for 713 calories.
2272 calories consumed out of 2413 alloted, leaving 141, which seems like a reasonable margin for error. I think the grapes we have are bigger than average and my count is likely off. And I am still not sure I trust exercise calories. Going to see how it goes on Tuesday if I try to get close again tomorrow.

For 11.54 miles, this is about 1154 calories using the 100 calories per mile rule of thumb. For me this would be 1208 calories. Your watch is calculating at 91 calories a mile, with mine at 105 calories a mile. However, you are in much better shape than I am. You have been exersizing much longer than I have. I would not be surprised if the actual value for you is closer to the 80 number you came up with.

I walk between 3 mph, and if pushing myself, close to 4.2 mph. Is this what you do? I am not walking up any hills, yet. I am thinking that these parameters that describe my situation and the rate I burn calories as a consequence may be helpful to you. Of course you have a different BMI than I do, probably also a different BMR.