The Month the Scale Stood Still
I had this really fucking bright idea that I would start working out more to help knock out those last 20 lbs.
I had hit 150 (photo update to follow soon) and I was very proud of myself.
So I started hula hooping every day (nearly) and I stopped counting my cleaning and cooking as exercise so as to encourage myself to workout every day so that I would have enough calories to eat to not feel like I'm friggin starving.
See, this is how MFP works. You sign up, give your weight, age, height, and goal weight. They ask you your activity level (sedentary, lightly active, really active, etc.) and how much you want to work out. From there, based on your weight, height, age, goal weight, and activity level, the program spits a daily calorie amount at you.
How much you said you wanted to work out does not affect this number. As you track food you've eaten, it goes down. As you track calories you've burned, it goes up. The idea is to end the day around zero cals left or just a few.
I initially set my activity level at sedentary and tracked everything I did. All my cooking, cleaning, walking, hooping, etc, was tracked and accounted for.
But then I got my big idea about changing that. So as a result I had to work out more in order to eat the same. PUFF PUFF PUFF! Ahhh!!! Hungry!!!
So I did. I exercised more and ate the same amount of food, basically. You would think this would really work out for me (no pun intended), but instead my weight-loss ground to a halt.
A month went by with no changes on the scale, but inches coming off my body. WHUH? So I took it to the streets and started asking my MFP buddies what they thought. One of them suggested, heyy, you're not tracking your cooking and cleaning anymore, but you're still set at SEDENTARY? Bitch, you ain't sedentary. (That's not how she said it, but she might as well have because that's what my brain said to me after reading her advice.)
HOLY CARP. I'm not sedentary. I MOVE. I'm at least "lightly active".
So I decided to change that, after doing A LITTLE MATH. You know me, I like to math.
Before I stopped tracking my housework, I was "working out" on average over 2 hours a day and burning over 350 calories a day.
After I stopped tracking housework, I was working out on average over 50 min a day and burning over 250 calories a day, that I was keeping track of.
But, I was still doing housework... so... let's make that roughly 3 hours a day of exercise, and 600 calories a day burned IN ACTUALITY, and only part of that getting tracked.
Well, crap. Turns out, due to this little month long experiment, I have discovered that if I burn it, I have to eat it. The housework I was doing and not tracking was putting me way WAY under my calories for each day and as a result, my body stopped losing weight.
There is a sweet spot, a range of caloric intake, that I must stay within to lose weight. Eat too much, and I stop. Eat too little, and I also stop.
Now there are tons of people on that site that will tell you that they never eat their exercise. That's great and fine and dandy and this ain't their blog.
This is my blog, and if I don't want to track housework, I have to set myself as LIGHTLY ACTIVE. Because otherwise I'm not fueling myself enough for success.
And how I'm down to 148. Wake up, lil scale! Vacation's over!
(Forgive all the caps and stuff. I've had so little sleep. This is how I type without rest apparently. And that is another blog post.)
Well, I say that. Honestly, I'm still just experimenting. If I can't maintain a loss of 1 lb/wk, then I may increase my activity level (which increases my daily recommended caloric intake) again. I will give this a month and see what happens.
For now I'm enjoying having more food. HAHAHA. I'm not even kidding about that. I'm still hula hooping regularly, and I've started doing zumba once a week. I LOVE IT.
I realized after looking at my numbers for 4 consecutive weeks that I workout 6 days a week. WOW. That's crazy. Originally I planned on working out 3 times a week for 30 min. I actually work out more like 6 days a week for an hour. I have to force myself to take a rest day. I've just gotten so used to eating more calories than I'm allotted by throwing a workout in during the day.
I didn't realize I was doing that almost every day. I'm worried that I've over doing it, but I don't see how I can be. And I don't plan on eating any less any time soon. It's hard enough to keep it under 1500. And when exercise is fun, you can easily make it a part of your daily routine.
My sedentary daily was 1240. My new lightly active daily is 1350. Ooooh! Don't mind if I do!
The only cleaning I track now is anything that I do that is out of the ordinary, extra, above and beyond the call of duty, and over the top, like cleaning out and reorganizing the garage. If it's something I do daily, or even weekly, it's just a part of me being active.
It actually was a bit of a hassle to try and keep track of the cooking and cleaning because they were often done noncontinuously, sporadically, or simultaneously.
I think this is a much better plan for me. I'm happy to have lost a little more, and I hope that keeps happening. I'd like to have those last 20 knocked out by my birthday in September.