I lied. I haven't had time to sit and read today. Just now my daughter and I are enjoying a little quiet time. Tomorrow we'll be decorating starting in the morning and then it's pretty much nonstop until late Saturday.
Pray for nice weather, would ya? It's been raining since yesterday!
Be well and be good to your bodies! I'll see you after the big event!

Hi everyone! I had a good day OP here.

Blyn the steel cut oats sound good! I'm going to have to make mine one of these days!

Thursday: 1577 calories, 1110 deficit, 45 minutes curves

Susan I'm praying for your nice weather, and sooo happy for you! You and your daughter must be so happy and excited, it sounds wonderful :D

Thanks Miles! Yes, I'm awake. Not frantic, just awake. I kinda wish I could go run some errands but nothing's open yet. If I run the vaccuum I'll be in trouble around here. So here I am at 3fc :)

I'm cooking adverse, too, and eat the microwave oats also. I *wish* I liked cooking, and maybe if I wasn't so busy I would enjoy it. But it is basically just an added stress. I even find boiling water to be annoying!

Yesterday was Day 11, food on plan: ~1300 cals but no exercise. So now to true-up for the week I need to do a double exercise some time before the end of the week. Maybe I'll get that out of the way today.

Getting close to my two-weeks on plan with no binging. Yippee!

Susan! Congrats on the big event, I hope it goes well :)

Yesterday I ate around 1800 calories, not much of a deficit. I am looking forward to next week when I start excercising again!.

Susan: Good Luck on the Big Day. That time went really fast! I will also pray for no rain!...hope every thing is beautiful!...

Lena: I use the splenda/brown sugar blend. It is really good...

Valerie..try it ...you'll like it...they are really quite simple.

Good day On Plan yesterday! I had a 850 cal deficit. Still journaling! yeah! and we will see how tonight goes...big family birthday..hope I have enough calories!...lol....Have a great weekend ..Blyn

Deficit of 433 yesterday, nothing exciting. Lot going on so had best get back to that, try to get back to you ladies soon, hope everything is going well.

Whats a good deficit to shoot for?

A deficit is the difference between the calories you burn and the calories you eat.

So if, on a given day, you burn 2000 and you eat 1500, you have a deficit of 500.

In order to lose a pound, you need to have a total deficit of 3,500. So if you have a deficit of 500 every day for a week, you will lose 1 pound that week. if you have a deficit of 1000 every day for a week, you will lose 2 pounds that week.

What deficit to aim for depends on:
a) how many calories you burn each day and
b) how much you want to lose.

It is not recommended to eat fewer than 1250 calories per day so if you are only burning 2000, then obviously a deficit of 1000 is too much. If you WANT a deficit of 1000 in that case, then you need to burn more i.e. do more exercise.

Note: the maths doesn't always seem to work. Many women have monthly fluctuations where they retain water at certain points in the cycle so, even though you have been really good all week, your scales might show no loss or even a gain.

Also, if you are exercising, then you are burning fat but building muscle so you might not see as much of a loss as you expect. But, if you stick with it and you are honest with yourself, it WILL work.

Nice summary!

I think I may increase my calories...my doctor told me 1000..but, I work out a lot and my 'basal' calories are pretty high...so, maybe I'll shoot for 1200 instead of 1000...

I just want the weight loss, and health!

Anyone have plans for the weekend??

I have another picnic tomorrow...yikes, picnic food!

=Sarah=

As long as we're talking about cycling... just about everything I've read about cycling indicates you have high cal days alternated with low cal days. Here's an example of the way I understand it:

Example 1
Total calories in = 4,800 or 1,600 average per day for the 3 days, regardless of exercise

My question is this. Is cycling determined solely by calories in? Or can you manipulate and cycle deficits? Would that have the same effect (keeping the metabolism guessing)? Here's an example:

Example 2
Total deficit = 1,500 or 500 a day for 3 days, which comes out to 3,500 calorie deficit, which should indicate a pound lost.

Or can you do some combination?

Example 3
I'm imagining the answer is Example 3, but I'd love to get some verification from those with more experience! Anything that can help break up a dad-blasted plateau!

TIA