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threadwalkerto fitness blog on food:
The juggle of balancing caloric intake against burning calories and my wacky mental landscape
Technically, I'm on my lunch break, but I locked my office door just in case. muh-ha-ha...
So essentially I'm concerned about not eating enough AND eating too much. At the same time. It's driving me crazy.
Input - output = accumulation... some basic math.
I want my accumulation to equal "burns the fat off my thighs/butt and puts muscle on my butt/body".
In October the fitness trainer told me I had to eat more and she wanted it to be protein because protein builds muscle.
In November I started to do that a little bit (call it 2pts/day in WW land). But I'm terrified of putting my weight back on, so it was only 2pts/day of protein and then the holiday treats snuck in because I was exercising so much, I could enjoy those w/o reprecussion. (my current version of a treat: 1 Lindor truffle/day. Maybe 2 truffles if I was feeling racey.) Or I had pie at holiday events.. mmmm pumpkin pie...
In December, I started missing work-outs due to crazy schedule at home and I put on 6 lbs.
Unfortunately, I wasn't journaling religiously through this period, so I can't correlate calories eaten vs. calories burned.
Another unfortunate logistical issue is that because I work out so late, if I eat as though I'm going to work out but I miss my workout, I've suddenly eaten up to 40% extra food than I would need otherwise.
On the other hand, undereating starves your body and cuts off your ability to build muscle. It also messes up your metabolism and you can have a fast gain if you increase your intake to the appropriate level.
I've been reading the various WW message boards, particularly the fitness ones. Some of those people consume twice what I do and their weight is within 5 lbs of mine. I was amazed. My daily WW pts are 21 (in maintenance mode) and some of these people are consuming 50 pts a day. Holy Eat the Whole Deli Section, Batman! But they also do spinning in the morning and some other fitness thing in the evening, so they are burning a lot of calories.
Now that I'm back below my target weight, I can focus on improvement wrt fitness and body building (body building as in: exchanging fat for muscle and not as though I'm trying to compete or reach some bench mark in proportioned musculature) and I have the motivation to do it. I'm not confident that I'm making the right calorie choices, but I have a cunning plan. Well, a plan. How cunning it is will be revealed in time.
Proceeding carefully, I am back to religiously journaling every bite I eat and tracking my WW activity points. I am going to eat my daily pts allowance before my late night workouts. After my workouts I'm going to eat 4pts where at least 3 of those points are protein. Since I usually earn 7 activity points each time I work out, those 4 pts will not count against the weekly 35 pts.
The situation has me eating right before bedtime, but last time I searched the topic, there was no conclusive evidence that if you ate late you gained extra calories/weight. That's a controversial subject and everyone has their own experience and/or opinion. But I'm going to hide behind the shield of math and say: You can't create calories out of nothing. If I eat 4 pts at bed time, then my body won't invent any extra calories (points) just because of the time of day.
Personally, I suspect that most people burn a lot of calories while they sleep as their body heals itself from the previous day. If they don't eat late, then their body is using stored energy/calories and their moment of lowest weight in a day is first thing before they eat. For me, if I've just eaten before bedtime, then those "over night healing" calories will come from my new food and not stored energy. However, those food calories are replenishing the stored calories that I burned during my work out and hopefully the food calories are being put to work creating muscle to replace burned fat. That's what I'm going with for now, anyway.
And maybe I'll stop waking up really hungry.
Last night was the first night for this. I overdid it and ate more than 4pts, but that was in part because I didn't eat all of my daily points before the work out. I was not hungry enough for all of my points and still on the fence about how to juggle daily points, APs and when to eat them.
I jumped on the scale this morning and was up a pound. I'm not surprised or disappointed. I may have shifted my "low" point to later in the morning. Who knows, maybe I've been starving myself and my body will go up a few pounds, adjust and then drop back down. I just don't know.
Oh - and I'm working at not flipping into blind-panic mode and slamming down on my food intake to keep it at weight-loss mode. Ugh. I'm freaked that I might be starving myself and that I might be eating too much at the same time. ugh.
The juggle of balancing caloric intake against burning calories and my wacky mental landscape
Technically, I'm on my lunch break, but I locked my office door just in case. muh-ha-ha...
So essentially I'm concerned about not eating enough AND eating too much. At the same time. It's driving me crazy.
Input - output = accumulation... some basic math.
I want my accumulation to equal "burns the fat off my thighs/butt and puts muscle on my butt/body".
In October the fitness trainer told me I had to eat more and she wanted it to be protein because protein builds muscle.
In November I started to do that a little bit (call it 2pts/day in WW land). But I'm terrified of putting my weight back on, so it was only 2pts/day of protein and then the holiday treats snuck in because I was exercising so much, I could enjoy those w/o reprecussion. (my current version of a treat: 1 Lindor truffle/day. Maybe 2 truffles if I was feeling racey.) Or I had pie at holiday events.. mmmm pumpkin pie...
In December, I started missing work-outs due to crazy schedule at home and I put on 6 lbs.
Unfortunately, I wasn't journaling religiously through this period, so I can't correlate calories eaten vs. calories burned.
Another unfortunate logistical issue is that because I work out so late, if I eat as though I'm going to work out but I miss my workout, I've suddenly eaten up to 40% extra food than I would need otherwise.
On the other hand, undereating starves your body and cuts off your ability to build muscle. It also messes up your metabolism and you can have a fast gain if you increase your intake to the appropriate level.
I've been reading the various WW message boards, particularly the fitness ones. Some of those people consume twice what I do and their weight is within 5 lbs of mine. I was amazed. My daily WW pts are 21 (in maintenance mode) and some of these people are consuming 50 pts a day. Holy Eat the Whole Deli Section, Batman! But they also do spinning in the morning and some other fitness thing in the evening, so they are burning a lot of calories.
Now that I'm back below my target weight, I can focus on improvement wrt fitness and body building (body building as in: exchanging fat for muscle and not as though I'm trying to compete or reach some bench mark in proportioned musculature) and I have the motivation to do it. I'm not confident that I'm making the right calorie choices, but I have a cunning plan. Well, a plan. How cunning it is will be revealed in time.
Proceeding carefully, I am back to religiously journaling every bite I eat and tracking my WW activity points. I am going to eat my daily pts allowance before my late night workouts. After my workouts I'm going to eat 4pts where at least 3 of those points are protein. Since I usually earn 7 activity points each time I work out, those 4 pts will not count against the weekly 35 pts.
The situation has me eating right before bedtime, but last time I searched the topic, there was no conclusive evidence that if you ate late you gained extra calories/weight. That's a controversial subject and everyone has their own experience and/or opinion. But I'm going to hide behind the shield of math and say: You can't create calories out of nothing. If I eat 4 pts at bed time, then my body won't invent any extra calories (points) just because of the time of day.
Personally, I suspect that most people burn a lot of calories while they sleep as their body heals itself from the previous day. If they don't eat late, then their body is using stored energy/calories and their moment of lowest weight in a day is first thing before they eat. For me, if I've just eaten before bedtime, then those "over night healing" calories will come from my new food and not stored energy. However, those food calories are replenishing the stored calories that I burned during my work out and hopefully the food calories are being put to work creating muscle to replace burned fat. That's what I'm going with for now, anyway.
And maybe I'll stop waking up really hungry.
Last night was the first night for this. I overdid it and ate more than 4pts, but that was in part because I didn't eat all of my daily points before the work out. I was not hungry enough for all of my points and still on the fence about how to juggle daily points, APs and when to eat them.
I jumped on the scale this morning and was up a pound. I'm not surprised or disappointed. I may have shifted my "low" point to later in the morning. Who knows, maybe I've been starving myself and my body will go up a few pounds, adjust and then drop back down. I just don't know.
Oh - and I'm working at not flipping into blind-panic mode and slamming down on my food intake to keep it at weight-loss mode. Ugh. I'm freaked that I might be starving myself and that I might be eating too much at the same time. ugh.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 10:07 pm (UTC)Can't help it, you are inspiring me!!!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 11:43 pm (UTC)This is the best news I've had all day!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 10:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 11:42 pm (UTC)Makes sense to me.