Bodygem - RMR
 

I was wondering if anyone had ever had their RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) tested? I hvae read about it before and found out that you can go to a Bally's or sometimes at a doctor's office and get tested. It doesn't seem all that expensive ($40.00).

The article I was reading was kinda cool beacause there were women of simlar height and their RMR were pretty different. I think it would be cool to knwo exactly how many calories I burn in a day. I'm thinking that if I knew the EXACT number, would I be less likely to overindulge??

i did it. about a year ago. and i have no idea what to do with it!!!! my RMR was measured at about 1900 calories.. and with my exercise schedule and what i've been eating, i should have disappeared LONG LONG Ago.

soooo i'm just not sure what the real deal is. maybe it's not accurate? maybe i'm not really here????

Jiff darlin' your here!!! For some reason I didn't think that you counted calories.

I think I'll have it done, just for the fun of it. Then I can just say I have a slow metabolism!!!!

hi sandi!!!! you're right, i don't count calories, but i'm still aware of them, and i LOOK at the calories and wonder whether it's worth eating, considering the amount of protein and carbs in it. is it worth the space in my tummy or not??? of course, if it's dark chocolate,... the answer is always YES YES YES!!!

drat!!!!!

Hey - i thought dark chocolate was a healthfood.....something to do with vitamins and raising serotonin levels? are you telling me I am mistaken???????????? OH NO. OH NO. OH NO.

As you shrink, shouldn't your metabolism go down?

Hi! 'Scuz me for butting in here but I follow Jiffy around like a puppy dog, so I end up wherever she goes. :lol: (her real puppy dog weighs something like 85 pounds and likes to "sit on your lap", I'm told, but I digress).

I did the BodyGem testing and came out at 1600 calories RMR. Just like Jiff, my reaction was "I should be wasting away" -- but I'm still pretty solidly here. That number is supposed to be the calories that you would burn if you laid in bed all day. You have to add to that the calories you burn just walking around and your exercise calories to figure out what your maintenance level theoretically is. Supposedly I should be able to eat well over 2000 calories a day and maintain, given my level of exercise (pretty intense). In reality, I eat about 1400-1500 calories a day in order to maintain. :?:

Jessica's right -- the more you weigh, the higher your RMR will be. That's why you have to drop calories as you drop pounds in order to keep losing -- it takes fewer calories to sustain a smaller body.

But all that being said, I'd still go for it, Sandi. It's an interesting piece of information and you may be able to play with it and get it to work for you. :)

PS -- how's the gym going?

Gym - where? what gym? Oh....you mean the YMCA that I joined! I remember now :lol: It would be funny if it weren't so sad. I was loving the gym. Every minute of it. Then I got sick and was out for 4 weeks and then I have been back, but it's not the same. I come late, so I only have time for my cardio, and I blow it off every chance I get. My former motivation is gone and I can't seem to find it anywhere!! I know that cardio and weights are 50% of the success that I seek, but I can't seem to find my get up and go (evidently, it got up and went!) :dunno:

Any wisdom you can share Meg? It would be greatly appreciated. Give it to me girl...I can take it.

think the nike ads, sandi.. JUST DO IT!!!! the hardest part is getting started. i also had a 3-week layoff due to the pneumonia. and it WAS hard to go back, and i whined and complained THE ENTIRE TIME I WAS LIFTING!!!! but i did it anyway. one thing that helped was a couple of back-to-back appts with the trainer. he smiled and listened <sort of> and told me that the important thing was that i was DOING it and he didn't really care that i had a bad attitude.

and then he added more weight!!! he knows that the harder i have to work, the quieter i get...

soooo JUST DO IT. bad attitude and all.

Monday - the 19th - I am scheduled for my test! This should be fun!!!!

meg... come on, darlin.. time to check in on the Skinny Daily Post!!! juju is a wonderfully wise woman who's lost more than 100 pounds and has kept it off for quite awhile. she is ALWAYS an inspiration...

and sandi... we'll be waiting to hear what your RMR is. and while you're there, would you ask them what to do with this information??? if meg and i have the same experience [which REALLY surprises me since if SHE can't eat even up to her RMR without gaining weight], there's gotta be a something that we're missing here.

Sandi
 

Cool, Sandi! We’ll be really interested in the results. Hopefully whoever gives you the test will put the number into some kind of perspective for you.

About the gym and all … it happens to all of us, like Jiff said. We’re going along great and then life happens and boom! we fall right back into all those bad old habits and routines. It’s scary how close to the surface all the old habits and ways of coping lie — and they have a nasty way of popping back into our lives as soon as we start to get complacent. For me, it’s been almost two years that I’ve had the weight off and I still want to revert right back to being an emotional binge eater when something goes wrong or I get stressed. Sigh. I guess the great lesson here is that we’re never cured; we only learn how to cope with all the habits and behaviors that got us heavy in the first place.

Anyway, how to get back to the gym? Well, Jiff’s right — bottom line is that you just have to do it. But something that helps me when I’m struggling — like having a really tough food day — is to make a commitment to someone else. It would be nice if I could make a commitment to myself and have that work, but I know myself too well. I have a tendency to play little games with myself: one won’t hurt, you deserve it, you can start again tomorrow …. yadda yadda … that evil little voice that goes through my head.

So what I do is make myself accountable to someone else; someone I really don’t want to mess up in front of. For example, I’ll call DH at work and say that they are 13 chocolate chip cookies in the freezer calling my name and that I want him to count every last one when he gets home. Or I’ll email a buddy and tell her what I’m going to eat for the day. Or I’ll post at LWL and say that it’s after dinner and I’ve got the munchies but I’m not going to give in. And whenever the little :devil: voice tempts me, I think about how I’m going to report back to whomever and how I don’t want to admit defeat. Kind of like: 'failure is not an option'?

Now you can see that my little :devil: s are all food–related. I know your :devil: is getting to the gym but maybe the same thing would work for you. How about if you make a commitment — to DH or a friend or here — that you’ll go to the gym tomorrow and this is what you’ll do? And then come back and report?

Making appointments with a trainer is a terrific way to make a commitment to someone else, but unfortunately it’s not possible for everyone. For me, though, that’s probably what made this whole weight-loss thing work. I joined a gym on a whim with DD and immediately had a panic attack when I realized how alien it was to my couch-potato self. So I signed up for five weeks with one of the trainers and told him that I would do everything that he told me to do for five weeks, no questions asked. The fact that I had appointments with him got me there and that’s how I learned about lifting weights and cardio and a totally different way to eat. I doubt that I ever would have gone on my own; I was way too intimidated by the machines and the weights. Not to mention way too intimidated by weighing 257 pounds and imagining (incorrectly, as it turns out) that everyone was staring at me (specifically, my 57” butt :lol: ).

It took me a long time to get hooked on exercise — maybe about six months? It wasn’t instantaneous by any means — in fact, I thought I was going to die at first. :D But I stuck it out and slowly it dawned on me that I ALWAYS felt better when I walked out of the gym than when I walked in. That exercise really WAS a de-stressor. That it gave me tons of energy. And that it was cool to be a mom with muscles! And of course, I loved the results. :D Doing cardio burned the fat and building muscle revved up my metabolism and made things look tight and toned as the weight came off. I’m not going to kid you and say that exercise is easy for us at first, but if you stick with it, the pay-off is huge. I know — beyond the shadow of a doubt — that I would not have lost (and kept off) 122 pounds without exercise being an integral part of every day of my life.

So what I’m saying (in my usual long winded way), Sandi, is that you almost have to go on faith at first with exercise (and weight-loss in general). Karen (MrsJim) likened losing 100+ pounds to moving a mountain with a teaspoon and a cup. When you look a the big picture, it seems impossible. The only way to tackle that mountain is to break it down and do it one day at a time. Just make a commitment to exercise, one day at a time. Plan your food for one day. Don’t worry about tomorrow or six months from now. Every one of us can do it for JUST ONE DAY.

How about if you plan your exercise for tomorrow, come here and post about it, DO IT, and then come back and tell us about it?

Meg
 

Whoa.

Meg - as usual you are right. A commitment hugh??

Ok, gym day isn't until Thursday, so how about a 20 minute exercise commitement for tomorrow? Some kind of cardio for at least 20 min.

There I've said it, now I WILL do it!!

OK, Sandi, it's a deal!

Twenty minutes of cardio tomorrow sounds perfect. :tread:

If that little :devil: in your head tries to talk you out of it, you tell it that you have a whole big fan club :cheer: that's going to be waiting for you to report back and tell us that you did it!