Posts by themcmaster

I just finished a post about how much time & effort I put into weight loss when I saw your thread - ha! 

The time - lately it feels like a lot. Especially the thinking about it part. I probably spend well over 30 mins a day thinking about weight loss. Probably closer to 60. What a waste of brain space! 

And now that I've been using CC and trying to get to my "happy place" weight-wise for two years... it feels like it just never ends. 

How's that for a goal - learn everything I can about weight loss and proper health while losing 'the weight,' so I never have to think about it again? Gah. 

Thanks for letting me complain a bit! ;D

It's pretty negative, but I think for many people the "aha" moment comes when they realize they finally can't stand the state of their bodies any more, when the level of tolerance has been surpassed.

That's what happened to me. I got on the scale, realized how far up I'd gone and said, "I can't stand being this weight." I was disgusted with myself. And so The Time of Losing began.

That was Christmas 2009. Now it's Christmas 2011, and I've regained some of the weight I lost. But I'm not back where I started, and I'm in MUCH better shape now than I was then, and thanks to CC, I know how to re-find success. 

Maybe I'll have another "aha" moment that will make me focus completely on getting back to my "happy weight" and never regain again. !

Gear your workouts toward your fitness test. If you have to run for a certain length of time or complete a certain distance within a set time, focus on running. You don't necessarily need to do anything else if that's all your test calls for. And you can run every day, technically. 

If you need to be able to do X pushups, do X pushups.

As far as low intensity/long vs. high intensity/short, mix it up! Doing the same exercise all the time will lead your body to "remember" the exercise, causing it to do it more efficiently, therefore burning fewer calories doing the same thing, as time goes on.

There's a lot of good info out there about HIIT. You could try that, too.

If you want to be FIT, not just smaller, lift heavy weights, and do cardio, preferably on separate days. I agree with the camp that says women cannot "bulk up," especially on a calorie deficit.

Original Post by toesinarow:

Here's an example:

On a day I don't exercise at all, my burn meter is set to 2775.

If I go to boxing for 2.5 hours (including high intensity conditioning drills and sparring), I find it hard to believe I only burn 2775 calories that day.  I would normally log my workout and bring my burn meter up to about 3400+ calories (and typically eat about 2300-2400 calories that day).

Does this seem reasonable, or am I totally out to lunch??

Well that depends on your current size, body type, age and gender, whether 2775 is accurate for you before exercise.

Have you used healthcalc? I think it's a better tool than the CC burn meter, and much faster/easier to use on a daily basis. 

Anyway, on a typical day for me without official exercise, I burn a little over 2000 cals/day. I'm 5'3", female, large frame, 26 years old, 143 lbs (at the moment, ha ha).

Yesterday, when I exercised for about an hour, I added that to my Activity Log and my burn rate was almost 2700, which makes sense to me. Just offering this as an example for reference.

In short, I think you're fine to put that you are Moderately Active, because you are not sedentary all day, even when you don't officially exercise.

Absolutely any activity other than sleeping/sitting on your duff puts you above sedentary/lightly active, because all these activities require additional calories.

Put yourself as Moderately Active, and log your exercise separately. Your time spent exercising will displace the time spent being "generally moderately active," to give you  an accurate picture of what you burn on a workout day.

This is what I do. I know what my basic daily activities are, and I set my burn rate to reflect this. Then if I go above and beyond with exercise, I add it in with the Activity Log.

If you want to be very accurate, log everything you do for 3 typical days, without exercise. Whatever the average burn is for those days, set your Burn Rate to reflect that amount.

Then, add in your exercise for each day. This way you can get an accurate burn rate without logging every single activity every day.

For me, every work day I walk the dog 4 or 5x a day, cook my food, do chores, etc. So my burn rate is set to reflect all those activities automatically.

Then when I exercise, like last night I spent an hour at the gym, I log that activity but nothing else, and my burn for the day comes out accurately.

Does this answer your question? Hope so!

-Maddy

Thanks for the response, cellophane_star!

I put a coffee/spice grinder on my Christmas list, so hopefully I'll be grinding my own beans in the new year.

I'll try the salt trick, too. Alton Brown is amazing! I often use his recipes so I know the exact right way to do things, and then dumb it down a bit so I still enjoy cooking. :p Sis and I made his fruit cake to give as gifts this year - can't wait to try it!

I'm also working on getting weight loss started again after a big stall.

Looking back over my data from previous periods when I lost weight successfully, what worked well for me was calorie cycling - big deficits 4 to 5 days a week, and eating at maintenance or above 2 to 3 days a week.

I also exercised like a fiend 4 or 5 days a week (often 90 mins+ at higher weights). My deficits were big on workout days, but because of the regular maintenance and surplus days, my average deficit was about -1000, then -700, then -300, until I got down to goal weight.

The farther you are from goal, the higher your deficit should be. The closer you get, reduce the deficit. I wasn't doing this consciously, but that's what the data shows worked.

I started at 142 lbs and got down to 131 lbs. Err, twice. I'm 5'3", large frame, 26-yo F.

I think weighing in frequently becomes more useful the closer you get to your goal weight.

The farther you are from goal, the higher chance you have of consistent, significant losses, so weighing once or twice a month will almost always show a positive result.

But the closer you get to goal, the smaller the weight changes are, so it's helpful to collect data every day and generate a trend (which the Weight Log does for you).

The more data the better is my rule, and I try hard not to attach any emotion to the scale fluctuations.

It can be just as demoralizing to weigh once a week and think you haven't lost any weight (even though you have but are having an unusually high day for whatever reason) than to weigh daily and see a jump on the scale that could dissipate by as early as the next day.

Hi Emma,

Urgh I've been trying to lose my vacation weight for the past 6 weeks! It's tough. I can't believe how much "permanent" weight I put on in 2 weeks! But, just gotta work to get rid of it again.

I hope you have an easy time losing the vacation weight. Once you get back to your healthy routines it shouldn't be bad.

I've been having trouble, so I looked at my numbers from previous successful weight loss periods. What worked for me was starting with big calorie deficits (around 1000/day) 5 days a week, with maintenance or overage days twice a week.

After losing a few lbs, I went with smaller deficits (closer to 500/day), again with the maintenance days. Once I got within a few lbs of my goal I had 250 cal/day deficits.

I didn't do it this way consciously, but I realize this is what CC recommends, and it worked for me! Just gotta work on getting those big deficits again, since I'm back at the top ...

I got my deficits through long gym sessions, running, or exercise videos, and eating on average 1800 cals/day (much more on overage/maintenance days). I've never been big on eating 1400-1600 cals/day. I starve!

Right now I'm trying to eat about 2000/day and burn 2600-2800/day. I'm 5/3" currently 145 lbs, large frame... lowest weight was 131 lbs (oh how I miss that #!).

Original Post by minda_spk:

My biggest problem is that when I get busy, paying attention to what I eat is the easiest thing to cut out of my day (and I do love cookies)

Cooooookiiiiiieeeeeessss....

I have been FIGHTING the temptation to eat tons of cake and goodies this week. My fridge/freezer died over the weekend, so all the wedding cake I had in deep freeze suddenly became readily available. (my new fridge is a mini one and doesn't have a real freezer.)

On top of that, my mom sent me home with pie and b-day cake from T-giving weekend. Gaaaah!

I managed it by a) bringing most of it to work, b) telling myself I'd bring the rest of the wedding cake to my hubs, and c) eating one piece of pie or cake for my last meal of the day. Oh, and d) not going in the work kitchen at all to avoid eating the cake!

I dun good so far. The only thing keeping me honest? Constantly reminding myself how long it's going to take to get back to my happy place, and that my pants are too tight. Blurp.