An Experiment

Things have been rather laid back here in the Loud Redhead household this week, at least as far as exercise goes.  As far as the rest of life goes, it’s been as busy as it ever is. 😉  JJ has a hockey tournament this weekend, and Jamie also had a game last night.

Both of my boys are playing great hockey, and although their teams have not garnered a win yet, there is definitely progress, so that’s something to be happy about.

As for me, I’m taking it easy and exerting very little effort.  In fact, on Monday, I took the day off work and got a massage and pedicure.  Because I know how to do post-race celebrations, am I right?? 😉 I did run two miles on Tuesday with JJ, since he had to get a run in before this weekend, but we took it nice and slow.  I thought about strength training on Wednesday, but my shoulder was actually hurting for some odd reason, so I decided to skip it this week.

Yesterday morning, though, I decided to get back on the wagon and run three miles.  I woke up at 5am and felt tired enough that I said heck with it and rolled over to go back to sleep.  But then I couldn’t actually get back to sleep, so I dragged my happy ass out of bed and ran 3 miles. It was warm and a little foggy, so I got a little sweaty, but I managed to finish at a 10:31 pace.  Not bad for my first “true” run after the half.  Later, when I had showered and was heading out the door for work, I got to see a nice sunrise.

After the two-day food-fest that followed my awesome half marathon, I got right back “on the wagon” on Tuesday.  But…it was a different wagon. :p  Anyone who’s been reading this blog knows that I am a Lifetime Weight Watchers member and have been following the program solidly for 4 years.  (And not-so-solidly for the 20 years before that, ha ha!) The program worked well to get me to my goal weight and continued to work well for the first 3 or so years, but this last year has been more of a struggle. I ran a marathon in April 2014, and afterward, I found about 10 pounds creeping back on.  I ran another marathon in April 2015, and managed to drop about 5 of those pounds, but now I’m a good 12 pounds above my lowest weight.  I don’t think my absolute lowest weight (113) was feasible for the long term, but I do feel like I should be able to hang in the 115-120 range.  Unfortunately, I have spent all the weeks since the first week of June at or above 125. :/

I’d been debating what to do, and I decided, after reading my friend Katie’s recent blog entries, to try this whole “calorie counting” idea.  Just FYI, I have never counted calories in my life.  Ever. So it has taken some getting used to.  I did try to do it about a year ago, but I was doing it simultaneously with Weight Watchers, and I got frustrated really fast with the “double” tracking. So I quit.

So, this time around, I’ve abandoned my Weight Watchers eTools (for the moment) and am fully committed to the calorie counting.  There are a variety of free sites and programs out there to help you, but I ended up landing on My Fitness Pal.  The site has a nice, simple look and feel (I found some others to be annoying busy in design), and the process to add food is relatively easy.  It has a surprisingly large database of food, which is extremely helpful.  And the final selling point was that it will tie in with my Garmin, so when I run, it automatically transfers the calories earned into the program.  Sweet!!

When I first joined, I used the “automatic” calculator to let it tell me my calorie goals, based on how much I want to lose, how sedentary I am during the day, and how much I exercise.  It came up with 1200 calories.  That just didn’t sound right to me!  I run a lot, and I know I need fuel to keep me going. So then I went to the USDA website and found this:

https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/bwp/index.html

I plugged in my info and it told me I should eat a little over 1600 calories per day.  Big difference!  I decided to sort of split the difference and go with 1500, and that’s what I’ve been using each day.

So far, it’s been an “ok” experience.  It definitely has its plusses and minuses.  The minuses include the fact that I have to enter every recipe into it to calculate calories; I’ve been using the Weight Watchers eTools so long, I pretty much have them all loaded already.  I mean, like dozens of them!!  So, that adds time.  The other thing I don’t like is the rather unpleasant message I get
at the end of the day when I “complete” my entry.  Like this:

Well THAT isn’t very motivating. :/  The other thing I didn’t like is that fruit and vegetables are not “free” like they are on Weight Watchers.  For example, I learned that a banana is 110 calories!  That is absolutely not “free.” 😮

I also don’t like that I can’t carry “activity points” over from the day they’re earned.  Sometimes I just don’t have the time in my day to eat the activity points, but I got used to being able to use them another day.  Hmm…and then I wonder why I can’t lose weight… :/

On the other hand, I like that fact that calorie counting is really easy. It’s a number that’s easy to find or figure out, and easy to quickly do the math.  For instance, we had to eat out last night because Jamie’s hockey game ended at 9:30pm (!!), and for the first time in probably 4 years, I ate at Taco Bell.  A year or so ago, we’d stopped there on the way to a hockey game, but I chose not to eat, because it just didn’t fit within my points.  Last night, though, I simply pulled up the Taco Bell website and looked at the nutritional menu, and it was very easy to see the calories (it seems like every restaurant or food manufacturer has calorie/nutrition info readily available).  As we were standing there at the counter at 10:00 at night (!!), I was able to easily see what would fit within my range without having to take the time to pull up another app and plug in 4 different numbers (fat, fiber, carbs, protein) like I do with Weight Watchers.  I ended up having a Steak Cantina Bowl with rice and beans on the side. It was good, easy, and fit within my remaining calories very easily.  In fact, I had some calories left over (due to the 3-mile run), and the nastygram wasn’t quite so nasty, lol!

I also like the fact that I’m not penalized for certain foods.  Like the ice cream I eat, for example (Breyer’s Sugar Free Vanilla).  On WW, a half cup of that ice cream is 2 points, but a full cup is 5 points.  When you count calories, a half cup is 80 calories, and a full cup is–160!  Amazing!! 😉

The other thing I like about calorie counting is that it’s different. I can’t just skate along, knowing all the values for all the foods and eating based on my memory (which honestly, sometimes I do on Weight Watchers).  I think it’s good to challenge myself, and even if this doesn’t result in a dramatic loss, I think it will help me to shake things up and see my weight loss efforts in a different way.  I’m still going to weigh in at Weight Watchers on Monday so that I don’t lose my Lifetime status (and free eTools!), and I do feel like I’ll go back to Weight Watchers at some point, but for now, I feel like doing something different isn’t a bad thing.  We’ll see how it looks come Monday when I weigh in!

Thanks for reading!