Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Aha!

So it took 30 minutes of re-installing My Fitness Pal, adding in the day's calories in/out and comparing to exactly one year ago to figure out the culprit(s).

1) Snacks throughout the workday.

I ate (I can't believe I'm revealing this to the world) 1000 calories between 10:00am-4:30 pm. The snacks I was bringing, to avoid mid-day hungry/hangry just kept creeping up.
June 16, 2014: Breakfast, Salad lunch with a peach, pineapple at 3pm
June 16, 2015: Breakfast, 10am: 2 lite string cheese sticks, 12:30 pm: Salad lunch + full-fat yogurt with berries + pineapple. 2-4:30pm: pistachios and rice crackers, celery/bell pepper mix, grapes

Today I brought my lunch and a container of blueberries and the celery/bell pepper mix. I only ate the wrap I made for lunch and the blueberries so far, and I'm leaving in 5 minutes. I'm hungry  now, but walking outside will cure that (its too hot to be hungry).

I am trying (and liking) OMDG's trick of waiting as long as possible to have lunch. That leaves no time/appetite for snacking. It was easy today, a clinic day. I had no time for mid-morning snacks. I didn't have lunch until 2pm. Will be harder tomorrow when I'm in my office all day AND I work out in the AM

2) Decreased exercise?

June 2014, I was routinely logging 15-20K steps/day at least 5 days/week (some of those were from running, which is the only exercise I did back then, 2 short runs + 1 long run/week). I don't know how many I'm getting these days because I haven't been tracking, but I suspect its less. Some of this may be artificial, because the calorie burn MFP gives me for my workout classes seems WAY too low, considering I'm working much harder than I would during a 30 minute run. But I'll use the calorie burn they give me, because that actually would workout in my favor.

I realize that if/when I lose the weight I want to lose, I need to reset MFP and figure out the right amount of food for maintenance, instead of just increasing willy nilly (and increasing and increasing and increasing...). I probably need to repeat this exercise every 3 months of so, to make sure I'm staying on track, its so easy to veer off unintentionally.

10 comments:

  1. Good for you. Though I'm cringing at what I will find when I begin logging again. For instance, I just grabbed a handful of candy that we got at the beach despite knowing that it is the wrong thing to eat. Shudder.

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  2. agree that making it until lunch is key for me too. usually i really am pretty busy in the AM which helps a lot. i KNOW i would snack more if i wasn't running from pt room to pt room.

    do you eat protein w/ breakfast? i make it from breakfast to lunch much more easily now that i usually have eggs.

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    1. yes, I do eat protein with breakfast. After a workout and walking to work, though, I really get hungry around 10:30-11.

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  3. I used to do the wait really late for lunch option. Somehow between 11 and 2 I would stop feeling hungry. This was definitely a strategy that only works if you are busy!

    I am pregnant with twins right now and am using MFP to attempt to get to my mandated 3000 calories. It's hard!

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    1. 3000 is a lot, especially with pregnancy nausea/heartburn/stomach compression. congrats on your pregnancy!

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    2. OMG -- twins!!! That's wonderful, congratulations!!! How far along are you? Best of luck!

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  4. That's interesting about the late lunch. I require a mid-morning snack, or I eat lunch around 11:00. If I don't, I completely lose focus.

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    1. that's the thing. If I'm working on "thinking" stuff at my desk, I lose focus. If I'm seeing patients or doing stuff iin the lab, I can power through.

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    2. Me, too. i don't want to wait until I'm cranky to eat. I'm also trying to avoid getting so hungry that I eat everything in sight. I'll let you know how that works out, though! Hm...

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  5. Totally with you on the calorie creep. It's scary how quickly that can sneak up with you. I also agree that sitting still at my desk, I feel hungry earlier. Sometimes when I'm running around in the hospital I can go 3-4 hours longer before I even notice I'm hungry just because I'm running around doing stuff. As for being cranky, there are so many other things to make me cranky at my job, I don't think that being a little hungry plays that big a role. Between nagging people, getting yelled at by patients, not sleeping enough, being the middleman between attendings who won't talk to one another, seriously, a little hunger in nothing.

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