Husky Marathoner needs a consistent lifestyle

HuskyMarathoner

HuskyMarathoner

New member
I've been back to counting calories for a week or so now. But I have a confession. I've been drinking coffee in the morning and not eating breakfast.:angel:

I don't consider this a lifestyle change so much as cheating my weight loss. It's a trick that I use to lose weight. And years of experience tells me that if I keep it up, I'll go down but I'll bounce up. It's like when I used to smoke and not eat till lunch. Then I could eat McDonald's once a day and stay thin.

That was nice to confess. I ate cereal for breakfast today.
 
^An example of how useful this section can become... helping to keep yourself accountable. You've already identified that what you really want to be doing is making permanent, lasting changes to your diet rather than these things we do that lead to yoyoing, indeed. Good luck in 2011!
 
I hit the gym at lunch yesterday for the first time as a member. It was actually super convenient. I work in center city Philly and just had to walk 5 blocks there.

I've been such a failure at the gym before. My first gym experience was about 7 years ago with a personal trainer. I think I ended up paying $2200 over 2 months for almost daily workouts. I did end up having a rock hard core, it was just under fat. I was still smoking too! In retrospect, the gym really intimidated me and I wanted someone to hold my hand when I went there.

My second bout with the gym happened 2 1/2 years ago and I got a little better results. I was able to go a lot, if only to run on the treadmill. I did a lot of treadmill running. That's really when I turned into a runner. But I was intimidated to do any weight training.

It's a total self esteem thing. I really hear a voice in my head saying I don't belong there. It's funny, because it's the same voice in my head that I heard when I started using Philly's running trails. I would be slow and jiggly and when I saw the real runners going really fast, I would tell myself they're all laughing at me. Getting passed would be humiliating.

Flash forward three years and I'm pretty quick and confident as a runner. But it's the same pattern with the gym. I've learned from my marathon experiences and my past gym experiences. The couple things that are different this time is that this gym is cheaper. I can go at lunch if I want, and I did yesterday which was awesome. I'm more confident as an athlete than I ever was before.

But I'm still pretty pessimistic. I can go in there for 6 weeks and get my bench press up to 160 but if my bench press goes up, I want it to stay up a year from now. Still working on that.
 
Totally blew apart my diet last night. Everything was going groovy till about 7:30ish last night. I had maintained good caloric intake through the day. My wife and I both had hectic days at work and today was going to be stressful for both of us as well. I decided I wanted some beer and stopped to get a six pack, so I got some salt and vinegar fries too. And wifey was hungry when I got back into the car so we decided to get food at the local super convienience store. I was totally mindful that I was about to comfort eat. Got a blue ranch turkey bacon chiabatta melt. Like 800 calories. Got a cherry cheese danish. 450 calories. Got home drank a couple beers gobbled up my food, the danish went nice with some milk. Finished at 3000 calories for the day. I woke up at 2 am with a sugar hangover.

My weight is still trending down, my weighted average is down 2.1 pounds from two weeks ago.

I'm not really beating myself up for it. I think the trick is to time my gorging with when my wife wants to also. She doesn't crave these events as much as me. And there were times when I would splurge at work, then come home and splurge with her.

If I do this two more times in the next week, this will really be my MO. I don't really see this happening though. I did treat myself once every ten days or so when I continuously lost weight over six months. It was when I did it too often that I started gaining my weight back.
 
Woke up at 183.7 this morning. I was 190 12 days ago. That was a surprising treat since I haven't been making the best food choices over the last couple days. What might be saving me is that I've been good during the day, and collapsing around 6 at night.

After reading all about nutrition habits on the board, I did a little audit of my nutrition makeup. Turns out I eat about 90% carbs. Oops. I've been trying to cut out all carbs after around 3pm and just do protein/fat for dinner. It seems to keep me fuller overall too. So we'll see.
 
Hi Husky Marathoner. At least it sounds like you are learning more and more what works for you and you want to improve your eating habits. Congrats on losing 7 pounds. At 183 you don't have as much to lose as others on this forum so you could be at your goal in a relatively short amount of time. We have to remember that activity is as important eating right. Well this is sounding like a lecture. I just wanted to say welcome to the forum and its good to see you posting.
 
Happychubette said:
Hi Husky Marathoner. At least it sounds like you are learning more and more what works for you and you want to improve your eating habits. Congrats on losing 7 pounds. At 183 you don't have as much to lose as others on this forum so you could be at your goal in a relatively short amount of time. We have to remember that activity is as important eating right. Well this is sounding like a lecture. I just wanted to say welcome to the forum and its good to see you posting.
Click to expand...

The 7 pounds is pretty easy, I've always struggled to keep it off.
 
HuskyMarathoner said:
Totally blew apart my diet last night. Got a blue ranch turkey bacon chiabatta melt. Like 800 calories. Got a cherry cheese danish. 450 calories. Got home drank a couple beers gobbled up my food, the danish went nice with some milk. Finished at 3000 calories for the day. I woke up at 2 am with a sugar hangover.
Click to expand...
3000 calories is HARDLY blowing apart your diet.
3000 is actually a maintenance caloric intake for a 5'10" 30 year old at 250 lbs.
(with exercise, check online for more info)
My biggest problem when losing is usually NOT eating enough at the right times of the day, or the right stuff, and then binging on food later.
You probably need to up your daily amount of calories.
OR at least take some time to reevaluate how much you should be eating in a day.
FYI>.... on a really bad day of eating I can eat 6k-8k of calories.
I usually shoot for 2500.
 
Monster said:
3000 calories is HARDLY blowing apart your diet.
3000 is actually a maintenance caloric intake for a 5'10" 30 year old at 250 lbs.
(with exercise, check online for more info)
My biggest problem when losing is usually NOT eating enough at the right times of the day, or the right stuff, and then binging on food later.
You probably need to up your daily amount of calories.
OR at least take some time to reevaluate how much you should be eating in a day.
FYI>.... on a really bad day of eating I can eat 6k-8k of calories.
I usually shoot for 2500.
Click to expand...

Yeah even though I do it, I'm not really confident that I'm calorie counting correctly. Check my math:

I'm 5'9", 185 pounds and 32 years old, and a manly man. The internet says my BMR is 1877ish. I have a very sedentary job. I could not get up for 8 hours a day. Not figuring in any exercise, I figure I need 2200 calories a day.

I recorded weight/calorie intake for six months, assuming I accurately measured my calories, I was able to calculate my maintenance weight calorie intake should be about 2250 so the data kinda backed up the internet.

Anything less, and I loss weight.
 
That's about right for no exercise, but with exercise, it makes a huge difference
Maintenance:
2917 Calories/day
Fat Loss:
2333 Calories/day
I used the calculator at www dot freedieting dot com (don't want to insert link, since I'm not sure it's a legal link.
 
Monster said:
That's about right for no exercise, but with exercise, it makes a huge difference
Maintenance:
2917 Calories/day
Fat Loss:
2333 Calories/day
I used the calculator at www dot freedieting dot com (don't want to insert link, since I'm not sure it's a legal link.
Click to expand...

With my calorie counting over the last year, almost all of my exercise has come from running. I've been adding 125 calories for every mile that I run. My garmin GPS watch, treadmills, and the internet kinda confirm that.

So the days I don't run, I try to stay under 1800. I've never tried, but if I wanted to drop 2 pounds a week, I just can't fathom dropping to 1200 calories for a non workout day. But maybe that's not safe at my 183 pound weight.

As it stands now, I'm down 3 pounds over the last two weeks. I'm pretty satisfied.
 
Well... this sort of brings up a very good question. If you exercise 5 days a week or whatever, should you be eating more on the days that you exercise, or should you eat equal calories on all days?
 
Monster said:
Well... this sort of brings up a very good question. If you exercise 5 days a week or whatever, should you be eating more on the days that you exercise, or should you eat equal calories on all days?
Click to expand...

I'm convinced that I personally shouldn't use excersice for weight loss. After getting fatter while training for a marathon, I figure the very attempt is pointless and that I really need to find a diet that 100% controls my weight. So if I never exercise again, I shouldn't get bigger.

To that effect, if I run 5 miles in a day, it costs me 625 calories, I add those calories to my intake, so I'll go 2400 or so that day.

Incidentally, over the last year, I've had a few negative calorie intake days because of long runs and under eating.
 
Monster said:
FYI>.... on a really bad day of eating I can eat 6k-8k of calories.
Click to expand...

This comment really got me thinking this morning, wondering what's the most I've ever eaten in a day. Over the last year, it looks like I've eaten 4500 calories or so maybe 10 times.

However, there are A LOT of days where I've eaten ~3000. And they tend to get strung together. I think that may be my real weakness. My equilibrium comes at 3200 calories and I gain a pound a week if I'm not paying attention. That's frustrating.
 
I hit the gym yesterday at lunch. I hadn't been there for a week, 3rd time total. That doesn't make me feel like I've made it part of my lifestyle.

My gym confidence is just pathetic. I compare myself constantly to the other guys there and just know I have a long way to go. I'm soooo weak. On the curl machine, I can only curl ten pounds. It's almost humiliating.

I don't know what they do with the mirrors, but they seem to make me look huger than I thought I was. Half of me just wants to run out of their. The good thing that I've noticed, is the other half of me just uses that as motivation to change, and that never used to happen.

I kept my calories at 2000 for the day. Without thinking about it, I don't think I would be able to keep it that low. In general, I feel like my body tells me I need 3500. I don't think I'll ever be able to stop counting calories until my body can feel good with ~2300 a day. It actually makes sense when I think about what I eat when I'm not mindful of it. I still go to Subway, I just get the 6-inch as opposed to the footlong and now I drink water instead of soda. And there goes my extra calories. I feel like I'm gaining further insight into my weight issues though.
 
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I have to say that I feel spoiled having a wife who is so into fitness. It's almost like I'm cheating. And it's funny because I actually fight the direction of her healthier lifestyle.

We both screwed up our bodies during our marathon training. She developed a Baker's cyst and patella farmalo-whatever. I have runner's knee which means my kneecap is being pulled out of position. Our running mileage has drastically dropped lately. She started getting it into her head that she should maintain high intensity workouts and not run as much and so started looking around for pools.

Well she found an gym with an Olympic sized pool and so we both joined on Saturday morning. So now I'm a member of two gyms, one in downtown Philly near where I work, and another up near where we live.

I'm still ambivalent about it all. Right now, my running is taking a dive, hopefully just because it's cold as balls out. I'm kinda less fat since I've started counting calories again but I've averaged 3260 calories over the last three days with no exercise. If I keep this up, I'll be gaining weight in a couple of days.

The one thing I stopped doing was calculating my calories during the day. I've just been adding them up at the end of the day. It kinda lets me forget my mission until it's time to pay up.

I'm either platueauing, self destructing, or getting ready to explode into a Brad Pitt from Troy or Fight Club. It's gotta be one of those three.

We're about to head to the gym now.
 
Still hanging in there, still losing weight. My maxim is to keep my weighted average pounds less than they were two weeks ago, no matter how small. Just keep going down. Of course with that in mind, I've really been pigging out. Last night I finished off a box of girl scout cookies, it's like 2000 calories. I'm only one pound lighter than I was two weeks ago but I'll take it. As long as I keep going in the right direction.

I've been diagnosed with Runner's Knee, so I've slashed my running. We've started talking about the Chicago Marathon in October though. I have to strengthen my quads.

We blew off the gym last night and enjoyed sushi. Tonight I'm going to happy hour, good times as long as I stay mindful of my weight.
 
Been a about 10 days since I've checked in. Still kinda losing weight but I've been hitting the weights pretty hard lately so it really hasn't been my emphasis. I've actually started to get solid arms. I'm seeing results, my wife is seeing my results so I'm pretty happy.
 
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