General Diet Plans and Questions General diet questions, support for various diet plans other than those listed below.

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Old 05-16-2012, 01:40 AM   #1  
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Question ?'s on calorie limits&livestrong(actually a lot of things)

Hello everyone! I just wanted to hopefully get some answers as I slowly see myself starting to eat bad things again. (BF came home with a tonnnnn of easter candy! and would not throw i away. I know I don't have to eat it but it's in my house and I just can't have it here without eating it!)

So I have been logging my diet on livestrong.com and it's really great! I put in my goals like how much I would like to lose a week and it sets my goals for me and tells me how much I should eat...

Also I have a android app called noom that has a gps tracker that follows me when I walk and tells me distance, steps and calories.

Well I noticed the more I tracked my calories on livestrong my daily limit started going down! and I didn't ask it to do that!
I try to burn 700 calories 5 days a week but I usually end up only burning 500-600
my bmr is 1,700
so I figured if I ate 1,600 and burned 500 X 5 days a week I'd lose a lb a week...
but ever since livestrong decided to lower my daily intake I've been kinda going over and it makes me feel bad.. I thought maybe it's because of my weight going down I need less calories? but I'm comfortable with 1,600 and it leaves me with plenty of food to eat. But with 1,200 I'm always left hungry... Should I just try harder at the 1,200 calorie diet? also I walk maybe 2.5 - 3 miles when I do decide to and I do the elliptical mostly because I did an hour on a treadmill and I burned the same amount as I would in 30 min on an elliptical. ha. I have done the firm express cycle about 3-4 times now and it's a 4..week program? needless to say it's getting old. I've thought about insanity but I tried it once and nearly died x.x;; any suggestions?

I'm also worried about the sugar in the fruit I'm eating, like today I ate a tangelo, 8 strawberries and an apple and the sugar was like.. 36? or something.. and that's like a candy bar! it makes me not want to eat fruit but I have a terrible sweet tooth and if I don't I'll have shoved a whole box of cookies and a gallon of ice cream down my throat!

I've been trying to grocery shop better, with fresh fruits, veggies and things like that.. ground turkey. it's just alot of cooking as far as the chicken breast and the ground turkey is there anything that is fast healthy and low sodium? I tried the tyson grilled and it's just not worth the amount vs the calories.. and as far as groceries are 100 calorie things worse than sugar free cookies etc? or what?


I've been in this game for going on a year in july... so I definitely need to change up somethings I just need some fresh new ideas some easy cooking and challenging yet doable exercise!
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Old 05-16-2012, 01:43 AM   #2  
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also the hr sensors on the machines are they very accurate? I figured so because I put in my height, weight, age and it's tracking hr the whole time.. but i'm not so sure.
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Old 05-16-2012, 06:27 AM   #3  
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You've got to do what feels comfortable for you; otherwise, you won't stick with it. Who cares if Livestrong advises you to eat lower? If you're comfortable at 1600, eat that amount. If you don't, you may find yourself throwing in the towel because you feel deprived. Also, fruit is fine. It's much better to satisfy your sweet tooth w/ fruit than candy, cake, etc. because the latter is much higher in calories.

As for recipes, why not just find healthier ways to eat your usual meals? I find that I can cut the fat and calories on many meals that I would normally eat, so there's no need to buy pre-packaged diet products (unless you need them for convenience). I usually get recipes from epicurious or foodnetwork and adjust them for lower calories.

The exercise machine calories are usually off. They usually say that we burn more calories than we really do. I've heard that the number it gives is about 20% higher than it should be, so you could just deduct 20% from whatever number you get. Personally, I just try to work out my hardest and don't worry too much about calculating my calories burned (although it does motivate me to enter my exercise into my smartphone app).

Last edited by lin43; 05-16-2012 at 06:28 AM.
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Old 05-16-2012, 06:56 AM   #4  
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This is why I like Sparkpeople - it doesn't tie your food to your exercise by "punishing" you with less food if you exercise less, or "rewarding" you with more food if you exercise more. It just gives you a calorie range for the day and you pick the calories you want to burn that week.

For me, I stay the most full if I'm eating real, whole food as opposed to 100 calorie things. Fruit is fine, and not comparable to a candy bar at all.

What I do to make meal planning easier is to make a bunch of things on Sundays and then mix and match them throughout the week. LIke I'll grill some lean steak and some chicken, make a few different veggies and then some kind of grain. Then I weight and separate them into containers so each day I just grab one for lunch. It saves so much time.
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Old 05-16-2012, 07:16 AM   #5  
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Yep, the program lowers your calorie allotment as you lose weight. The thinking is that you need fewer calories to run a less heavy body. Don't fret about it though ... Everyone is different and if you find you are able to lose weight on a higher calorie allotment then stick with the higher number.

I use Weight Commander which was developed years ago by a fellow dieter. It's a simpler way to track calories and weight and no log in is required which makes it fast and easy. You can try it for free but if you continue to use it the developer asks for a donation of $10 or more.

About sugar. Unless you are on a very strict low carb diet, don't worry about fruit sugar too much. It's really the sugars in complex carbs that cause big blood sugar spikes and resultant hunger.
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Old 05-16-2012, 04:02 PM   #6  
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That reaalllyy sucks that those monitors on the machines are off. I focus so much on the actual calories burned because there is an equation..
if I naturally burn 1,700 a day and I eat 1,600 then I am -100 and need to burn 600 more everyday 5x a week in order to burn off 3,500 which equals a lbs.
It all sounds exasperating but I like plugging in things and tracking calories to a T.

Also the thing about livestrong that I don't really like is when I put in my exercise it adds it to my food when I already know how much I want to eat that day.. it basically wants me to eat what I burned? which would be nice but that's not a way to lose weight! maybe maintain..

@seagirl- so you make a weeks worth of food including meats, vegetables and breads or rice on sunday and they stay good up until you are ready to eat them? do you freeze them or just fridge them? I considered this but I just dont want anything to spoil and I looked up how to make my own frozen meals so they can have a longer shelve life and it said I had to add things like gravy for it to be less drying and a lot of other things I didn't want to do.


thank you all for answering my questions and concerns! very helpful
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Old 05-16-2012, 04:20 PM   #7  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by raworz View Post
That reaalllyy sucks that those monitors on the machines are off. I focus so much on the actual calories burned because there is an equation..
if I naturally burn 1,700 a day and I eat 1,600 then I am -100 and need to burn 600 more everyday 5x a week in order to burn off 3,500 which equals a lbs.
It all sounds exasperating but I like plugging in things and tracking calories to a T.
I hear ya', but keep in mind that estimates are often good enough. Even calorie counting is not an exact science. Food manufacturers are allowed by the government to be off something like 20% in the calorie count they list on the back of their packages. However, even with all that, many people lose weight calorie counting anyway. In fact, it doesn't always have to be to the negative. For instance, I learned that I could eat a heck of a lot more than I thought to lose and to maintain. Just do your best, trying to be as accurate as you can without obsessing about it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by raworz View Post
Also the thing about livestrong that I don't really like is when I put in my exercise it adds it to my food when I already know how much I want to eat that day.. it basically wants me to eat what I burned? which would be nice but that's not a way to lose weight! maybe maintain..
.

Me, too. It's one reason I do not use livestrong or MyFitness Pal. Instead, I use an app called Calorie Count (it's free). To me, the layout is simpler, and the big advantage is that it does not add on calories to your food total based on the extra exercise you do. In fact, it gives you the calories you burn at rest, and if you add any exercise to your day, it deducts that same amount of time and calories burned from your "resting" time, which makes it much more accurate than My Fitness Pal as far as exercise goes. The only disadvantage to Calorie Count is that its database of foods is not as large as MyFitnessPal, but I can always find something comparable, and I've used it religiously since June 2011.
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Old 05-16-2012, 04:56 PM   #8  
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1600 is reasonable. You should NOT force yourself to do 1200! Fruit is fine! Yes the sugar content may be the same as a candy bar, but there is actual nutritional value to fruit. Natural sugar is not the enemy, heck, false sugar isn't the enemy either really, it's over eating calories that is. Sure, some people are more sensitive to sugar than others, if that's the case do what you must to succeed, but I don't think you should give up fruit!

Those websites are set to a formula to calculate your calories, ignore it or join a different site that won't make you feel bad.

Myfitness pal scolds me if I eat 1199 calories, but doesn't if I eat 1200. Accoring do MFP 1199 = starvation mode but 1200 = awesome. It's dumb. I will not let a computer program make me feel bad, whether I go over or under.

Last edited by LockItUp; 05-16-2012 at 04:56 PM.
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Old 05-23-2012, 02:24 PM   #9  
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I use my fitness pal and I just look at my food intake and not worry about what my exercise amount puts in
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