Anyone need to lose a stone or less and needs motivation?

[Flippetydip]

Not that I can provide the motivation but hey ho, I thought perhaps if there were more of us it might help!

I'm currently 10 stone 12 and 5 foot 7. My fighting weight is 10 stone and I would like to get back down to this.

Lockdown has seen me put on at least half a stone. A bad back has seen me stop running and lack of school runs means a distinct deduction in time on my feet.

Anyone else in the same boat?

im not sure i could do fasting. I think im going to do low carb. But the hardest thing will be giving up crisps and chocolate.

@CalmConfident I found zero through another thread and I agree, it's great! Unfortunately I'm struggling with 16:8 in that I keep eating loads of sweet food during the 8. Must do better.

Welcome to the new joiners, lovely to see the thread staying active 😊

14 days done here and still feeling positive and like I can keep this up 🤞🏼 I am weighing food and tracking all calories and measuring that against what my watch tells me I have burned that day. My goal is to achieve a calorie deficit every day for 80 days. So far my lowest deficit has been 297 and the highest 1,121.

I have been walking, did a few Couch25k sessions but stopped due to my knee, cycling and even got an open water swim in at the weekend! That was hard after so long without swimming but am hoping to do more as a lake closer to home reopens next week. I also really think that lots of walking is really helpful. Regardless of what other exercise I have done that day my deficit is always highest when my step count is highest.

I have thought about 16:8 but have decided to stick with good old calorie counting until or unless that stops working!

To the poster who said about weight loss after menopause I can definitely say my experience is it is way slower. There have been days when I have found it so frustrating but it has really confirmed to me that it is easier to stay at (or at very least near) a healthy weight than it is to lose it once it’s on! I’m mid 40s but post menopause and I would love it if the weight came off like it did a few years ago!!!

I'm very envious of your open water swim @PeasandCucumbers! I am a swimming pool swimmer and it's been nearly four months now since I've been swimming because of a shoulder op before lockdown. I hope they open some pools soon (open air would be good!).

New plan for me today - 16:8 plus mfp to make sure I'm only eating 1200 cals a day. I know that eating during limited hours will help me not exceed the calories target, and logically I know that it will work!

I feel this is a great chance to control what and when I eat, compared to normally working in an office and going out for meetings and dinner. I must take advantage of it.

I blame peri-meno for my weight challenge too...it sort of crept on around my middle even though I am quite active ! Last summer hit 11 stone which was a turning point, been steadily losing, now back to 9st 7 and hoping to hit the magic 9 by autumn. Upping my fitness and strength has made me feel so much more me during lockdown too.

@PeasandCucumbers do you use the calories burned on your Apple Watch as a guide? Is it quite accurate? I always worry the watches over estimate our calorie burn.
I signed up for a free trial to Noom to see what it is like but I’ll be cancelling it, they want me on 1100 cals until October which isn’t sustainable, I would rather consume 1500-1700, while burning 2,200+ a day and lose more slowly. Being so restrictive would lead me to binge I think.

Yes I do use Apple Watch for calories burned. Without either exercise or a lot of walking it doesn’t register over 2000 calls for the day. For example yesterday, even with a 1 hr cycle that had my heart rate averaging 135bpm I used less than 2000. It said that my cycle used 304 cals which I think sounds about right. The highest it has been for calories burnt in lockdown is 2422 and that day I did 30mims yoga, a c25k run and walked over 17,000 steps!

So for me 1,700 calories a day is more like maintenance than weight loss. I weigh every day (mostly) but also look at Weds as my ‘official’ weigh in day and this morning I am 0.2lbs heavier than last Weds! And I am honestly so careful with logging ever single thing I eat and drink and weighing foods. I spend a lot of time on the phone calculator working out calories. My average calorie deficit is around 700 per day. I totally think this is menopause linked as I have never lost weight so slowly and I haven’t tracked calories burnt before, only consumed. In the past 1,300 ish calories has been enough for me to consistently lose 1 - 2 lbs a week. I haven’t changed how I track and weigh food from how I did a couple of years ago but now, being consistent for 2 weeks I have lost the sum total of 1lb!!!

But I am so determined to crack this and stick with it. Thank god I haven’t got lots to lose!

I use a Fitbit for calories burned and that seems to be pretty accurate too. My activity level is consistent but the number of calories I'm burning is gradually coming down as my weight does, which is what I'd expect. I use it to judge when I can have an extra treat without harming my progress and so far that's working (and definitely making weight loss easier than denying myself treats or feeling guilty for having them!)

Weighed myself this morning and I'm down to 136 lb. 10 lb to go!

Really interesting to hear other people's experiences. My DM says my current weight challenge could be related to the menopause - pesky hormones!!! I use my Fitbit to track my calories burnt and my weight. Looking back I can see how this was at the beginning of lock down (1320 on one day!) but now by trying really hard to up my step count it is getting closer to 2000.

Which fitbits do you use Powerslide and lorisparkle? My DS had a Fitbit ionic for a while but we found it pretty useless and it kept stopping working. After 2 replacements in under a year when the third one had problems we switched him to Apple. He is very active, does a paper round every morning and lots of triathlon training and his Apple Watch definitely gives him less calories than the Ionic did. I had never had an Apple product before Feb this year but switched to an iPhone so that I could also get an Apple Watch. The BMR (nasal metabolic rate) it gave me was essentially the same as the machine at the gym so I do think the calories are quite accurate.

I think I just have to aim for a calorie deficit every day for ever basically and add in a bit more strength exercise to counteract muscle loss after menopause. The joys of being a woman!!!

Has anyone tried Team RH? They recommend 1700 cals for me with six 30-40 min resistance workouts per week and 15,000 steps per day, whereas Noom say 1,100 but I don’t think they are taking into account any exercise at all and they had my steps on 2000 which is far lower than I usually do. Surely if I have a deficit of 500 cals a day I will still lose even on 1700 cals? Argh I don’t know which to go for now, need to commit to one and crack on. Both plans require weighing and tracking all food.

Placina I guess it depends how much you want to lose. 500 calorie deficit a day is generally 1lb weight loss per week. If you are eating and drinking 1700 cals you will need to be consistently burning 2200 cals a day. I know I don’t do that. Depending on whether you work and if so doing what, 15,000 steps every single day is quite hard to achieve I think. Days when I have lots of meetings (quite often) I would really struggle to achieve that on top of a 40 min workout.

Do you usually track steps anyway? If so look at what your average has been over a few weeks and decide whether you can increase it to that level on top of the 6 workouts.

I usually hit 16,000-20,000 steps per day, so that side of things isn’t an issue for me. My average calorie burn over the past month has been 2,265 a day. I packed a lot of my current weight on by eating/drinking way too much over the first 5-6 weeks of lockdown and also giving up on exercise as was feeling really down and sat scrolling through misery news on my phone. I had already put on about half a stone before Christmas when I gave up smoking, so I’ve ended up a stone over my preferred weight.
My average cal burn in May was 2,265 cals, I only started tracking my food two weeks ago and I think before that I was eating about 2000 cals per day, since I started tracking have been 1500-700 but only lost 1 pound in two weeks.

@PeasandCucumbers I've got a Fitbit charge 3 - lovely Christmas present! I've not had any problems with it yet. When I'm working normally and doing the school run normally I can easily get to 10,000 steps a day but I have to make the effort at the weekend and all through lockdown.

I've got a Fitbit Charge 3 too and am happy with it, but I've only had it a couple of months so far. Interesting that there are discrepancies between Fitbit and Apple Watch calories though!

God it’s boring being hungry and thinking about food all the time isn’t it?

I wish I could just recalibrate my body. I do have an off switch, it just doesn’t kick in at the right moment. If I relax and eat what I want, it’s not like I pile on the weight particularly quickly, it just creeps up, which means I’m only eating a bit more than I need to.

Obviously at the moment I’m eating less than I need, so that I lose weight, but I wish maintaining was easier, at least.

I've got a fitbit inspire hr. im pretty happy with it. I also do about 15k+ steps a day, also peri menopausal :(

but i eat a lot of rubbish.

I've been good today though!

Morning all. How is everyone’s weight loss going? I have managed three fast days now. The last one was a bit of a washout in the evening but we won’t talk about that

I am finding it really hard to fast when I am working, by 3 o’clock I have basically lost interest in doing any work. The alternative though is fasting on a weekend which doesn’t sound much fun.

@Flippetydip how are you getting on?

I am perimenopausal and my weight jumps around a lot (a good 4lbs in a week) Think I have lost 2 to 3lbs so far. The perimenopause thing is not helping, I agree

No movement on my scales today, hey ho. I think if I stick this out for two weeks and don’t see a movement I’ll have to drop the calories. My PT is adamant that I should be able to lose on 1700 ... my TDEE according to Apple Watch is 1400 and then I tend to burn 800+ cals from movement but scales are not budging.
Maybe I need to be even stricter on weighing food - atm if the packet says 100g I just enter 100g rather than weighing it to see if it really is 100g...

Might sound silly but how do you all know what calories you are burning. I mean generally using per day without exercise. I use a calorie counting app that guesstimates calories used by each type of activity but I don’t know how much my body generally uses in a day.

You can work out your calorie burn at rest using a TDEE calculator online - it will ask for your height, weight, age and so on

I have no idea how my Fitbit works out calories burnt I'm afraid. I was doing well yesterday in the day but had a late evening snack again. I was also rubbish on the number of steps. I endeavour to do better today!

@KeirStarmerDonkeyFarmer I spend a lot of the time conflicted about this - surely as a feminist I've got better things to think about than weight. But then I'm not happy as I am and want to take control of my body until I am happy, which seems like a positive act. But yes, it is tiring and annoying thinking about it so much!

@Plancina, @Lurkingforawhile, @bez91, @CalmConfident... I'm also a short arse. 5 ft 2 and when I started this I was 9 St 3. Doesn't help that I'm also really slight so any extra padding just doesn't sit right on me.

I think I'm in the same boat as you, @Plancina - my scales aren't shifting. I've been fluctuating between 8 st 13 and 8 st 11 for the last few weeks, despite sticking to the diet. I'm doing 5:2 (with 500 calorie fast days), I'm also restricting to 1200 a day on non fast days and doing 16:8 (kind of, I'm basically not eating breakfast ) too.

Surely I should be seeing some difference after all those lovely calories in depriving myself of??
It's pissing me off, tbh ... (Mind you, I'm on my 2nd consecutive fast day (couldn't fit them in at any other point in the week so had to go one after another) so I'm angry and pissed off about most thinngs .)

@clevername when I realised that someone had eaten the square of dark chocolate I had promised myself after dinner last night I was so cross! I am annoyed because I’m working out 6 days a week using weights, getting the steps in and eating 1500-1700 cals as instructed and nothing is happening! So I think @PeasandCucumbers is probably right and I need to drop to 1400 cals or less. Bums.