Phoebe jumps on the bandwagon

No good timer other than the minute-counting feature on the pedometer, today.

Start: 3 min
Jogged a mile: 14 min, so 11-12 minutes
ITSP* for a mile: 26 min, so 12-13 minutes
Walked a mile: 42 min, so 14-15 minutes

Nice weather we had today!

*ITSP = Interval Training for Stupid People. No distance markers to do "run a distance, walk a distance." No stopwatch to do "run a time, walk a time." So I was doing what I did when I wanted to move from a fast walk to a slow jog: go as far as I could at a pace I could sustain for a short distance, and when I couldn't do it anymore, walk until I wanted to go fast again. And just as then, when I couldn't sustain a slow jog for more than a few hundred feet, I can't run for more than a few hundred feet. But now I can jog a mile without needing to stop at the end, especially when the weather is nice. (Cold weather makes me run out of air faster.) So eventually I think this will make me faster, too. Right now, my kid can outrun me in a sprint, both in speed and in distance, and I want to be able to keep up with her.

Calories burned per FitDay: 133. Exercise is a particularly worthless way to achieve caloric balance. Good for other things, though.
 
Last night, I ran to Sonic very very late to get my partner a "SuperSonic cheeseburger with mayo on Texas Toast." We'd just seen a commercial for their new coffee drinks, and I'd been curious about the caramel latte.

So I looked it up. And I had enough calories for one (they're only about 210 for a 14oz cup). And it fit in the spaces I had left - mostly carb, some fat. And I did not buy one. Because if I drink caffeinated sugar at 11pm (and it would have taken me at least until midnight to drink the whole thing), I will not go to bed anytime soon. I ended up with a peanut butter and banana sandwich, instead.

One day the calories and the timing will work out right, and I'll have a coffee.
 
Nothing exciting going on here. Working away. I get a bonus if I hit a certain billable hours target, and my spreadsheet says I have to average 7.48 billable hours a day, every day, between now and April 15th. Between travel (driving around isn't billable, and some days I'll spend 8 hours on the road and only get about 2 billable hours out of it) and business lunches and the unavoidable administrative stuff (like putting in my timesheets), that means a whole heck of a lot of at-work hours.

Tomorrow is an "in" day (no meetings or appointments), and I have a big snarly project and a handful of little easy projects (for when my brain won't take any more big snarls), so if I don't walk, I could probably bill 9 of the 10 hours I can work without missing bedtime. Which means I will move my average for the remaining days down a smidgen. The noontime forecast is sunny, 35 degrees, and 13mph winds (feels like 26), which is cold enough that I'd just as soon get my pacing done in the evening.

Down 0.4 more (by trend) for the last 2 weeks in excess of what I was down the hormonally analogous 2 weeks in last month. Was thinking that my calories were up, but I see that they're about the same (down by 20 cal/day, which is noise). They're just more variable (larger range), and I tend to remember the high days more.

Caffeine is my friend, as far as any addiction is really anyone's friend. It actually does sharpen your mind a bit, but oh, the habituation is so, so fast. At least for the mind-sharpening bit. The keeping-me-awake-at-night bit tends to persist quite a bit longer.
 
Sonic here does not have coffee drinks, maybe it is a pilot trial in your area?

I hear you on caffeine. I need it severely limited or it wreaks havoc on me after a while.
 
It's a new thing, the coffee drinks. Their nutritional information says "*Coffee products not currently available in all markets." so maybe they'll come to you soon?

Sonic is headquartered in OKC, so I think the Oklahoma Sonics get stuff first. QuikTrip is headquartered in Tulsa, and I know they trial a bunch of stuff here that may or may not make it to farther-flung stores.
 
Yeah, now I know why I never gain weight in tax season. Down about 1.2 pounds more than I "ought" to be - and that's just for the last 3 weeks. (This by trend, so not as susceptible to random scale noise.) And I haven't been keeping up with my walking if the weather is bad or I have a particularly full day, so I'm not burning as many calories through exercise. Thinking is hard work.
 
allyphoe said:
02/14 133.0
02/15 131.2
02/16 130.8
02/17 130.6
02/18 130.8
02/19 130.4
02/20 130.8
02/21 129.6
Click to expand...

Congratulations Phoebe! You are into the 120s!

And only 2.6 pounds away from goal!

:party: :party: :party:

I am surprised that you havent updated your ticker - or do you keep it linked to your trend weight which I know that you use a lot?
 
Thanks, Margaret! Back to 130 today, but 129 will come back soon. :)

I actually update my ticker every day, but I tie it to trend, as you guessed.

I don't know what I'm going to do when I'm at goal by the scale, but the trend hasn't caught up. It could take as long as 10-20 days to catch up to me!
 
You have regained the territory though. We all wiggle up a little. I am up a fifth of a pound today too!

From what I have read elsewhere in your diary you are uncertain exactly which weight will be perfect and plan on trying this one out for size. It would therefore not be the end of the world if you went down one or two pounds from goal during that period.

It might be worth adding a few more calories at scale goal and seeing how you go. If it stabilises there then that is fine - if you go down slightly then it would not be a problem either. It is not like I imagine that you are going to put your calories straight up to a calculated maintenance level overnight - I definitely plan on a staged approach - but will probably start changing things about before I get to goal. I know that you have been adding bits - so I suggest more of the same at scale goal.

The odd thing about goal weight is that we have spent ages looking at how our weight wiggles on a daily basis. We know better than most people about changes due to water retention etc. When we get to goal we will not see our weight flatly associated with the same value - so really we are aspiring towards having a two to three pound goal range that we wiggle about in as water retention dictates.

Take care
Love
Margaret
 
Yep yep yep. My tentative plan is to wait until I see a 127 on the scale, and start reducing my deficit gradually at that point. (I've been adding calories recently, but my deficit has managed to stay about the same.) I'd guess my maintenance calories to be somewhere between 2,000 and 2,200. So I plan to go up gradually to 2,000, and see how that works, then fine-tune.
 
Congratulations!

I couldnt help but notice that you have got to Scale Goal.

Now is the time to put all that maintenance theory into practice. I hope that it goes well for you.

Take care
Love
Margaret
 
Awesome job on getting into the 120's...it must feel wonderful! Congrats! :party:
 
Thanks, y'all! I actually find myself kind of wishing I still had another 10-15 pounds to go. I lose pretty easily, once I get started, and I'm good at it. Trying to get the kinks worked out of something different while working crazy hours is no fun!
 
I don't think I have a particularly high / fast metabolism. Until recently, when I've been doing a lot of exhausting mental work (which does burn calories, but there's no Fitday entry for it), I've been losing about as fast as you'd predict, based on my Fitday calorie count and their "how many calories do you burn" calculation.

I have a lot of positive mental associations (see Steve's pleasure / pain posts) with controlling food and losing weight. Unfortunately, I have zero mental associations with maintaining a healthy weight, and a lot of positive mental associations with overeating and gaining weight. Which makes me a really good yo-yo dieter, and a lousy maintainer.

But better luck this time, I hope.
 
You have lost a lot of weight. Just keep in mind that you were strong enough to LOSE weight...despite the mental associations with gaining weight. You will be able to do it!!! Just try as hard as you did to lose.
 
But see, I didn't try hard to lose. Other than some emotional stuff that came up around the transition from overweight to normal weight, losing is *easy* for me. Physically not hard, emotionally very comfortable. I've done it a lot, I know what works for me, I don't plateau so I have constant positive feedback. Maintaining is unfamiliar to me, and I have no experience with eating what my body needs, as opposed to much less or much more.

I hear what y'all are saying, and I appreciate the support. And I'm not trying to be contradictory or anything. Just trying to work through why bringing my calories up is freaking me out. I know darn well that I have at least a 500 calorie deficit at the moment, and that even if I end up guesstimating maintenance too high, a few weeks of a very modest deficit would wipe that out. But "eat enough, not too little or too much" is not a concept I'm very happy with at the moment.
 
So I bumped my calories up to around maintenance, and the combination of increased carb water weight and increased digestive tract volume, along with some hormonal water retention, pushed me back up over 130. Which isn't bad, in and of itself, but I'd rather be under 130 while eating normally, even if I'm retaining water.

Back to losing I go. It's making me grumpy as all get out, though. I'd like to see a 125.something on the scale before I switch back to maintenance this time. The highest I got was 130.8, so being a pound lighter ought to do it.
 
Hi! Judging by the stats you aren't the only person who'd say maintaining is more difficult than losing. If it wasn't then there'd be a lot more people who've achieved it! It's more difficult but just as important.

It's great to see you post now. I think it will be important for many of us to learn how to do this tricky, important thing and to see how others, like you, have managed it. Maybe maintaining has to be a thing we value and celebrate in the same way that we do the initial loss of weight.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top