This first week had it’s ups and downs.
Good: Food and exercise-wise I slammed it. I was verrrry good on the food front. I hit all my workouts but that’s to be expected right? The food is where I get into trouble.
I set up my weightloss goal on my Fitbit Aria scale, aka El Diablo. It automatically calculates, based on a bunch of parameters I set up, the number of calories I should eat each day.
Bad: My first mistake was choosing the ‘kinda hard’ weightloss plan and telling it I wanted to lose 1.5 lbs per week. Why is it so easy to pack on weight by pounding food yet it doesn’t just melt away when you restrict calories too much?
Good: I was super good and bypassed all my usual trigger foods. No kid scraps, no dessert after lunch and dinner. No more making love to a bag of chips when I made the kids’ lunches. I was all in. Mindful!
Ugly: My runs suffered. A lot. I know I wasn’t giving myself enough fuel. I know better than to restrict calories so much but I did it anyway. My bad.
(source)
Bad: I’m not great about getting enough water either. In addition to measuring weight, body fat, BMI, and activity, El Diablo, I mean the Fitbit Aria has a food and water log as well.
Good: I still enjoyed pizza and chips/guac on Superbowl Sunday. Hey there are going to be treats, just not daily mindless ones. And I’m not one bit sorry about that. There’s going to be pizza in my life.
- Goal weightloss for the week: 1.5 lbs
- Actual weightloss: 1.1 lbs
- But I dropped 2% body fat so there.
Good: I am back in my jeans. Did I not mention I’d slipped into all yoga pants all the time? Yeah I did. But that’s over. Even though El Diablo says it’s barely over a pound, I’m feeling better, tighter, hopeful.
Going forward I’m going to adjust the setting to a less aggressive loss of 1 pound per week vs 1.5. Hopefully this will make my geriatric metabolism happy.
Good: For the first time ever. Ever! I planned out meals for the week. I thawed things in the morning, prepped ahead of time, and there was no seat-of-the-pants rushing around at dinner time. I know this is a simple thing and I’m probably the only imbecile on this planet not doing this but I can’t tell you how great that was!
On to week 2! Have you ever restricted calories enough to compromise your runs? Stall weightloss?
I’m the WORST at meal planning – I change my mind every time I have something planned out. I’m crazy.
Congrats on 1.1 loss – that’s pretty rad, especially if you’re keeping up with running!
I seriously can’t get the image of making love to a bag of chips. You are a wordsmith, my friend, and I like it.
I’m pretty sure my first 5 years of running were on restricted calories. I was under 115lbs. (I’m 5’6″) and didn’t really seem to improve much. My biggest fitness increases were when I first accidentally let myself “slip” to 120 lbs. I hover right around there now and I feel strong and fabulous and definitely get enough calories 🙂
Congrats on the loss! I’m feeling a bit heavy lately, and I fear it’s affected my running. I’m trying to remind myself it’s OK to be hungry sometimes and I don’t need dessert after lunch and dinner, like you said.
Sounds like mostly good to me, so congrats! Why is weight loss so darn hard?!
I have never gone too low on calories while training. I honestly cannot stand that really awful hungry/hangry feeling!
“better, tighter, hopeful…”
sounds pretty darn good! It’s almost impossible for me to lose more than a pound a week – so I know how you feel.
I’m a one person household and I don’t always prepare food and plan for the week – so I have no excuses. And a 1 person household it’s also WAY too easy to eat out…Boulder has a TON of healthy(and non-healthy) places for a person to eat out if I’m feeling LAZY!
Keep it the good work!!!!
From my experience, 1 lb per week is very doable. you can break it down further and figure out the calorie deficit per day (500) which seems even MORE doable.
Good luck!
Weight is one of my bugbears. It just doesn’t seem fair that you can pound the pavement for hours and not just be able to eat whatever you like. I didn’t lose a pound when I was training for a marathon even though I hardly ate anything extra. And it only seems to get harder as I get older.
Rant over.
I use to think that by eatinv less it was good. my runs started to suffer. mow i eat up to the proper amnt and fuel myself. ive lost 15 lb since christmas. best wishes.
You are not the only person who can’t seem to plan meals. We’re good about this for a while, but one slip….and it’s back to salty takeout. Sigh. I think you did great the first week! On to week 2….
WooHoo – a pound down!!!
And, I love that you still had pizza while watching the Super Bowl!
I think you have it nailed – it is about mindful eating!
Oh – I’ll take any chips you don’t want anymore!!! (JK! but they are my biggest downfall. And wine!)
Nice going… but yeah, 1.5 lb is a lot in a week when you are running lots. I gained when I was doing long distances cause I needed to EAT!
When I am trying to lose weight -as now – meals are so much better at my house! I am hungry for one and haven’t been snacking so I want to cook that meal.
OMG, we are soul sisters Marcia. On Lose It I put in that I wanted to lose 1.5 pounds a week too, and it gave me a ridiculously low calorie count to aim in. Fortunately I exercise most days and when I add that in it gives me a number I can live with without being in danger of going Postal on someone. 🙂 But boy-oh-boy do the pounds come off slowly. Oh, I have recently discovered Mi0 and I’m finding I’m drinking more water now that I can make it taste like fruit juice. 🙂
Gaye
You just need to have a date with the bathroom floor and toilet, like I did all weekend, and you’ll lose some weight – quick. I was so lethargic on my run today. Bleh. I feel like a truck ran me over 40 times. Good job on the loss though, you’re going in the right direction!
You are going to THANK yourself for the meal prep. It is SO much easier not to fall prey to bad snacks when there is a healthy meal half-way prepared or planned out. It took me forever to figure this out.
Congrats on the weight loss- more importantly the fat loss!
Good Job! I’ve been meal planning, and it makes it so much easier when I walk in the house at 5:00 exhausted, or when my husband asks “want help with dinner?” I say check the board!
Congrats on the weight loss!!
Meal planning is kinda easy for me, I can tolerate the same thing, day in and day out for weeks at a time. Change a spice here, cook a different way there.
Congrats! We don’t really meal plan because literally, I think we eat Jennie-O turkey loin and hummus about every single week day. I think its super tasty, plus, if it’s slightly boring I’m less likely to over eat. Kinda like the buffet-thinking of the more options there are, the more you’ll eat.
Way to go Marcia! Love that you are fitting back into your jeans!
I think a pound a week is a lot more reasonable, maybe even a half a pound since percentage wise, a pound a week is probably a pretty high percentage for you.
I’m not giving up pizza either, or anything else for that matter :-).
What a great idea for a scale! Congrats on the fat and weight loss!