Do you ever have the odd day where you knuckle down, get really focused and go a little extreme on the weight loss?
I do, normally at the weekend to see how much I can move the scale.
Some of my hardcore moves include: i) going smaller on portion sizes for the day; and, ii) doing much more exercise than usual, to the point of feeling quite tired.
I have tried hardcore several times and it's backfired on me.
The harder I exercise and the less I eat, the less I lose. It's a vicious circle some weeks when I feel like I could take on the world via exercise and am trying to learn to eat when I'm hungry vs. a timed schedule.
Moderate exercise and about 1200 calories (less about 300-400 in exercise) seems to be the sweet spot.
Shouldn't I be happy that I don't have to break my neck to lose weight? I guess I am. I wish the scale didn't own me but it does. And that's one of the major ways I measure my success.
I too have tried going hardcore and it has backfire as well. Not every time, but 90% of the time. I wish I could go "normal-core" on weekends, as I'd be further along in this journey if I could just shut the door on my social-life-leading-to-alcohol-binge lifestyle. DANG though, it's hard haha.
I'd love to go balls to the wall, but it just never works for me. Although I am starting a heavy weight regimen so that might make my life "hardcore".
No, and disclaimer: this will probably not work for most, but i am strict 6 days of the week and on fridays i go all out, eat whatever i want and how much i want, thousands of calories. And then i reign it in immediately on Saturday through Thursday, eating "clean" and never over eating (but not extremely restrictive, making sure i eat enough macro nutrients, etc.) and i lost all my weight that way, i think it kept my set point from sticking if that makes sense.
No, and disclaimer: this will probably not work for most, but i am strict 6 days of the week and on fridays i go all out, eat whatever i want and how much i want, thousands of calories. And then i reign it in immediately on Saturday through Thursday, eating "clean" and never over eating (but not extremely restrictive, making sure i eat enough macro nutrients, etc.) and i lost all my weight that way, i think it kept my set point from sticking if that makes sense.
I'm so jealous of you! I wish I could trust myself to have even 1 cheat day, nevermind one a week. And you had tremendous success so obviously it works, you look awesome!!
i hear you guys! I think I was going hardcore on the eating for the past two days and I noticed my energy dropped! I ate about 1000 for two days. I didn't try too...I ate a big dinner but was too full to have my full day's worth. I kinda felt secretly good about it, but today I have already eaten 850 and it's only 2 pm. I FEEL WAY BETTER TODAY!
I think hardcore for a day or two is good mentally, as we feel badass, but it's not sustainable. lol so...do we aim for...mediumcore?!
I go hard core on occasion, but not to the point of 'feeling' it. Some days I'll choose a particularly difficult workout (like the floor T-tap workout, it is so brutal a beginner might not be able to lift their leg up in some of the positions, because just holding correct form is already taking so much strength) if I'm feeling good. Or yesterday, because of my food choices I was satiated and so I chose not to eat when not hungry and came up short on my calorie amount. Given that I'm already dieting under a fair bit of physical demand (nursing and all that), being down at around 15-1600 calories is a very extreme deficit and not one I could maintain long term. But I can do it every few days without feeling overly depleted or sluggish, just like those challenging workouts.
I push it a bit daily, in intermittent fasting. I force myself to go just a little ways beyond what I can easily tolerate in terms of hunger, to make my eating window more condensed (and thus more mentally satisfying - that feeling of a truly grand meal as opposed to nibbling/grazing). But again, that's as far as I can go. I don't want to burn my adrenals out or short my daughter on nutrition by tanking my milk supply, so I am careful to judiciously apply extra oomph and not go whole hog until it boomerangs on me.
Last edited by Arctic Mama; 05-29-2013 at 04:26 PM.
I went to a music festival over the weekend, danced like 12 hours a day and hardly ate and lost like 3 pounds and my torso looks better than ever - this was coming off of a week eating < 1500 calories a day. It's tempting to "keep it up" but I know logically I gotta EAT to NOURISH to minimize the revenge of the appetite and do pre-emptive damage control.
I used to only go hardcore. So eventually I'd let up, go back to my old ways, and regain. I changed a few years ago and took a moderate approach. I lost more than I'd ever been able to before and maintained it for a couple of years. I still go hard core sometimes when the mood strikes, but that's balanced out with me spending far more time going...soft core (?).
The past 6 months I've been going too heavy on beer and too light on exercise (and by that, I mean no exercise). So I put on 8 pounds, which I'm working on getting rid of mainly by making better choices in those two areas.
I was very hardcore w/exercise for a year then right around March-April I started flaking out when I saw the scale hit goal. I figured I could ease up and then I (very easily) lost a few pounds past my goal. Exercise was making me too hungry all the time and I'd wind up going over in calories. Now I exercise less and eat less and I'm maintaining.
I used to go hard core on eating/calorie counting/restricting...but it just doesn't work for me anymore. There is nothing to motivate me to be that OCD about it.
Now, what I WILL go hardcore on is exercise, because I LOVE it! Yesterday I woke up and did a P90 workout, then after work I went and did a spin workout at the gym, and when I got home while I was waiting on the boyfriend to show up I did my C25K workout! Woohoo! And I really wanted to do some burpees after that, hehe. I love pushing myself that way, it feels great! And I don't even THINK about my weight. All I do is think about how good I feel. What a nice break
Yes on the weekends I go hard core. Eating substantially lower calories and also eating only during about 6-8 hours in a day. Even going to the gym so on those days I may low net calories. I always find my body loses weight on these days and generally it stays off. I find it is kind of a shock to the system AND helps make up for any extras that mistakenly happen during the week.
Thanks Emma. That's like what I do too. I find the weekend gives me the opportunity to push things a little without the pressures of work and sitting at a desk all day.
Yup, definitely guilty of going hardcore, specially in the last few months, between January-March. Started training again in a quite intense way and eating around 1500 calories... I don't even want to think about what kind of calories log I was really getting after putting in the workout negative calories in the lot.
It backfired massively, if I can say so. I am still facing some physiological problems since I went a bit bad cr*p crazy on losing the few pounds that I was aiming to lose.
Do you ever go hardcore?
I wish the scale didn't own me but it does. And that's one of the major ways I measure my success.
