The body you want

There are is a saying that I have heard a million times, but now that I have started this weight loss/derby journey are really starting to click for me:

Eat and train for the body you want, not the body you have.

Duh, right? If you want to be thin, eat less. If you want to be big, eat more. Right? Kind of, but it's so much more complicated than that.

First, which version of thin and "in shape" do you want to be?

If you picked the one on the left, please promptly click the x on this tab and move along. If you picked the one on the right, I like you, you can stay.

Now, I'm not putting down runners or marathoners and I know they don't all look like this. I'm just trying to make a point here. The body on the left is a result of a lot of cardiovascular training and far too few calories to sustain a healthy (imo) musculature. She might be able to run for hours straight, but how much strength does she have? Do you think she could counter-block you on the track? Oh, hell no.

What are your goals for your new body? Do you want to be able to get lower (need quads and hammies for that)? Do you want to take a hit (need lots of core and lower body strength)? Do you want to be able to juke around the pack (need strong legs and power)? Or do you just want to look good in DerbySkinz? If so, go ahead and set your calorie goals to 1200 and hop on the treadmill.

While I was trolling the interwebz earlier, I came across an article titled "What I Wish I Knew As A Female Athlete" and while I don't necessarily agree with needing the 5-6 small meals (I say eat whatever, whenever for the most part), the rest of her advice is sound:

3. Eat better foods more often and don’t eat less. As a female athlete in our current society, there is pressure to be “thin” instead of “healthy.” Many females do this by restricting calories and working out more. This hinders athletic and overall performance and can actually slow any weight loss (if it is needed at all). Female athletes need to focus on developing and maintaining lean muscle and fueling their bodies for competition. This is done by eating 5–6 small meals and snacks per day and drinking plenty of water. (What I Wish I Knew As A Female Athlete)

Yes, ladies you need muscle and fuel for that muscle. Let's not be a breed of skinny "fat" girls schlepping around the track getting knocked over by women with real strength. Losing weight shouldn't be starvation stacked on endless cardio. In fact, I've lost more weight since I stopped doing so much cardio.

Ok, enough of my ranting, but before I sign off on this post please read give yourself this self evaluation of your fitness plan:

1. Are you eating a healthy number of calories based on a proven calculation for your body weight/height?
2. Are you making sure that you are consuming at least 200 calories above your BMR, including exercise?
3. Are you lifting weights?

If you said no to any of these, I would really do some homework and make sure you're doing the right things for your body. Beware who you take advice from (even me, though I am only giving it based on my personal experience and those couple classes I took in college) and do your own research before putting anything into action.

p.s. Remember that fat guy who set the record for the number of Olympic medals won ever? He eats 12,000 calories a day. There's some perspective for ya.

Update on eating more

I don't even know if I do it consciously, but Mondays always seem like a good time to check in with my body, weight loss, and nutrition goals. In my last post about re-evaluating my calorie goals I decided that I wasn't eating enough and so I upped my calories by about 400 over what I had been eating, but still only 200 above my BMR.

Here were my net (food - exercise) calories from the last week:

Monday: 1445 (355 remaining)
Tuesday: 1952 (152 over)
Wednesday: 1635 (165 remaining)
Thursday: 1890 (90 over)
Friday: 2722 (922 over ... yeah... that's what happens when you need Ledo pizza in your life or you will die)
Saturday: 1510 (290 remaining)
Sunday: 1799 (1 remaining)

My goal was to consume 12,600 calories over 7 days.
I ended up consuming 12,953 calories over 7 days.

According to the interwebz, if I am lightly active, my maintenance calories (to stay at this weight) are around 2500 per day. It takes a daily deficit of 500 calories to lose 1lb per week and 1000 to lose 2. By this math, I am on target to lose about 1.5lbs a week. Of course, my body does whatever it wants so we shall see.

As far as my weight this week, I have been "up" since the last time I had a loss but since TOM is right around the corner and I feel really bloaty (sorry one random guy who found this blog on accident thinking there might be fishnet booty shots). This morning I was down that "up" weight so my ticker is correct at 23 lbs lost despite the fact that I ate blue crabs slathered in salt yesterday.

My final analysis for this week is that I am going to keep going at the 1800 level for another week, then maybe drop it down to so my body doesn't get complacent? We'll see.

Eat more, weigh less

Beware: This is one of those posts with a whole lotta calorie math and pseudo diet experimentation below. You've been warned.

I kind of feel like an idiot. I never hesitate on MyFitnessPal to tell someone they are not eating enough and that is why they're not losing weight. Yet, I'm still struggling with the whole eat more thing myself and have caused myself to plateau twice because of it.

When I first started this whole thing, MFP told me that I needed to eat 1570 calories per day to lose 2lbs per week and everything was going great. In fact, I was averaging 3lbs per week. As they say though, everything works for 6 weeks. I believe this is the main reason people quit their diets - they stop working. This is because your body gets acclimated to what you're doing. The bigger problem comes because most people (like me) think 'well obviously I need to eat less/exercise more to keep losing weight'. Fast forward and now you're one of those crazies eating 1200 calories per day, starving, angry, and not losing anything.

As I wrote in this post, I started eating back my exercise calories and had an immediate drop. I felt great and kept going. Well, I plateaued again almost immediately, even going up a pound or two despite never going over my calories. Keeping in mind the Diet Math post from a few days ago, I'm obviously not gaining real weight so what's up?

Once again I'm pretty certain the culprit is not eating enough and I was basically convinced after reading this post on the MFP boards that broke down how to calculate your body fat, basal metabolic rate or BMR (this how many calories your body burns in 24 hours just existing), and then your daily net calorie goal. If you're interested:

1. Visit http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/ 
2. Do the Military Body Fat Calc first (the Military BF calculator is accurate up to about 2%)
3. Use the body fat percentage to input into the BMR tool
4. Use the Katch McGardle BMR number to know your BMR
5. Add 200 calories to the BMR number and that is your net daily calorie goal
6. Never eat at or below BMR. 

When I plug my information in, I get 1597 calories as my BMR, add 200 and I'm around 1800, a good 400 more than I had been eating (which by the way was because MFP recalculated my calories to be 1300 at my weight for 2lbs of weight loss per day and I thought that sounded crazy). 

Because I hadn't lost anything after the 2lb drop early last week, I decided it was time to up my calories again to 1500 - yes, even though I had already calculated the numbers above. This was Sunday and shortly after making this decision we went on a 5 mile hike which according to several sources, burned approximately 1000 calories. That day I ate 2379 calories, a net of 1454 for the day and I was down .7lbs the next morning. 

Monday I had practice so I ate 1985 calories with a net of 1445 and lost almost 2lbs, .4lbs being "new" weight lost. 

Yesterday was a rest day and for some reason I was starving all day so I ended up going 153 calories over the projected 1800 to end up with 1952 for the day, and this morning I was exactly the same weight. My plan is to stick it out for this whole week at 1800 just to see how it goes and adjust next week if necessary. 

People who think losing weight is as easy as eating less have probably never needed to lose more than a few vanity pounds. It really takes dedication to work hard, eat less, and keep going even when the scale betrays you. As with anything worthwhile, it's a marathon, not a sprint and I don't plan on giving up.

Diet Math or Why I'm Not Upset That I Was Up This Morning

Yesterday would have been my 7th gym and/or practice day in row and I was totally game to go despite being sore everywhere. However, I'm baking a cake for 100 people due Saturday and needed to make a trip to the cake supply and grocery store. Then, I had a board meeting in the city. On top of all of that I need to bake brownies for Saturday's bout and get up super early to skate in the parade. Whew.

In light of the fact that I didn't have practice and I wasn't going to the gym, I figured it was ok if I was pretty light on the eating and would actually help me. I drank a ton of water and by the time I left at 6 o'clock for my meeting, had only eaten around 1000 calories. I left myself this ~400 calorie leeway because we have our meetings at a little pizza place and I wasn't sure if I would be hungry or not.

Fast forward and I didn't eat at the pizza place, but indulged in a few spoonfuls of cake batter and nibbles of extra cake. Since I didn't really know how to track this little cake spree, I just wrote off most of my remaining calories for the day.

This morning when I woke up, I was up around 2 lbs. Once upon a time ago, I would have flipped out and said 'f*ck this diet', but here is why I didn't:

My daily calories goal is 1400
Until 6pm I only ate 1000 calories and drank a ton of water
While I was baking, I ate (what I thought was) about 400 calories

First, it takes 3500 calories to gain one pound (and I "gained" 2). I'm fairly confident in my pre-cake calorie counting, but according to MFP, one Betty Crocker - French Vanilla Cupcake with no frosting is 120 calories. I would have had to eat about 30 cupcakes worth of cake mix just to reach 3500 calories, plus additional cupcakes to cover the deficit that is already included in my calories goal. The chances that this happened are slim to none.

So what did happen? Well I have two hypotheses. The first is that I've been a really crappy water drinker for the last two weeks (with the exception of practices and even then not so great) and yesterday I drank the hell out of some water. The second goes back to not eating enough. After considering how much cake batter/pieces I might have ate, I would say that it was no more than a cupcake and a half (approx 180 calories) and only put me at about 1180 for the day which put my body went into freakout mode again. Who knows, maybe it was a little of both. Either way, it is impossible that this is real weight.

I wrote this post because I know it can be so easy to get discouraged when the scale does not show all the effort you've been putting into losing weight and sometimes it's nice to see things in black or white. Weight loss is a numbers game so if you get discouraged, make sure you really look at your calories and habits to figure out what's going on. Listen to your body!