I use My Fitness Pal on my phone. I track after I eat and after I workout. I mostly just look at the calories and types of food (it's easier to catch when I start slacking), but sometimes I look at the macro breakdown. I'm trying to cut carbs down a little to see if that will speed things up, and it's nice to be able to just glance at the numbers.

I hit a total of 5lb loss today!! Slow and steady, I guess....

I just keep track as I go. Usually just a running total in my mind, though I sometimes write it down if I am eating several things. With a shortened eating window, I'm really only consuming two small meals and one snack. Then I have an automatic 100 calories per day in hot tea.

Right now, in order to lose weight, I keep my calories between 800 and 1000, so you aren't really talking about that much to keep track of anyway.


I just track calories, not the actual nutrient ratios and stuff. I eat lower fat naturally because heavier foods make me sick to my stomach. Main thing I have to watch is carbs. It's easy for me to overdo them and not get in enough protein because of that.

So, while I'm nowhere near perfect with it, those are the things I try to keep track of throughout the day.

I use LoseIt on my iphone and it keeps track of weight, exercise and food (with nutrient breakdown). The food db is decent and you can add your own. Was free!

I use My Fitness Pal but I don't like it for a few reason. First, it tells me I should never go below 1200 because doing so puts me in starvation mode (which is absurd because on sedentary days at my height/weight 1000-1100 is necessary to lose), which just annoys me.

Second, I don't really think a lot of the calorie or weight counts are accurate. They are all member-submitted, and even on the ones that have several "confirmations" I've noticed some really incorrect counts on some things. The calculations it gives for the exercises you burn do not factor in height or weight and I mainly just ignore it.

Third, it doesn't count strength training towards your weekly "minutes" of exercise or more importantly towards calories burned. This has on a few occasions led me to skip strength training in exchange for cardio, which is dumb on my part. Of course it is my responsibility to ensure proper health, not my calorie counter, I do wish it gave more proper health support/information by putting more weight on strength training (no pun intended ).

Lastly, I do not like that it keeps macronutrients like protein in the green or "good to go" zone if you don't meet them that day, and red or "warning" zone if you do or go over. Sends the wrong message that eating more protein and fewer grams of fat/carbs one day is a bad thing. Again, my responsibility not my counter's to ensure I'm eating right, but I want my counter to at help in that process, not send the wrong message.

This seems to be working for me, I got on the scale this morning and saw 142! I am sure I will bounce up and down again but to see those numbers felt SO awesome!! I am one of those people who thinks about food the second I wake up so I can't believe how easy it is to eat this way.

I did have one day this week where I snuck in half a banana around 11 am because I felt a bit off, I can't explain what I was feeling but I felt better as soon as I ate it.

So, so far so good!

hi im new around here and came across your post kinda by accident and have decided to start the fast-5 plan. everything about this way of eating just clicks for me. i hate breakfast!i always have but was always told i HAD to eat it. when i was in high school and at my lowest weight this is exactly how i ate just because i was never hungry til later in the day. we since trying to loose weight everything tells you to eat more smaller meals well i felt like all i thought about was food and after i ate i never felt satisfied or full!i have been binging on weekends because i was desperately wanting that FULL feeling again!i really think this will work for me and feels so natural im still not hungry yet and it almost 12. my only questions is working out im so confused about the cardio vs weight lifting thing!i really enjoy weights but dont feel like its enough since im not sweating like i am when i do cardio. so what and when should i do??i dont really know where to ask this but hoping yall can help?

Another interesting thing I've noticed on IF: on days when I exercise I don't get nearly as hungry and end up eating back my burned calories. I don't trust calculators telling me how much I've burned, so I don't like eating back burned calories unless I'm starving. On IF I've noticed I can still stay at around 1200 a day even with moderate or intensive exercise. Today I had a higher-intensity workout (25 min hard run and 20 min hard elliptical) and felt no more hungry than I do usually. I don't know if this is directly related to IF but it has happened consistently since I've been doing IF so I'm likely to believe there is some correlation, and a good one at that

thenewkim Welcome to 3FC! If you don't feel like you're getting enough workout from weights then lift heavier weights and really check on your form. The body tries inherently to find the 'easy' way to do an exercise, so make sure you aren't hyperextending your back during deadlifts, etc. You should be exhausted after a good strength training session. Check out the exercise forum for more info- it will be much more helpful for providing links to lifting techniques and guidelines as well as FAQs than the IF thread best of luck and welcome again!

Started IF yesterday. My last meal was around 7 pm Sunday night. I made it all the way until Monday at 3:30 pm. My plan was to have my window from 2 pm to 8 pm, but got side tracked around 2:00 pm. I kept my calories to 800 yesterday, and ran week 4 day 2 of my C25k program. Lost 1.5 pounds since yesterday morning. Making it fine today, but looking forward to protein/fiber bar at 2pm.

I typed out a big post and lost it somehow!

On weight training vs. cardio...

Before I ever knew about HIIT or PACE I experienced the benefits of weight training and sprints while training with the boys high school football coach. He had trained this way forever and I just happened to get placed in his PE class. I did low reps maximum effort on basically 4 types of lifts. I gained dramatic strength within 3 months of lifting 3 times a week and for very short periods of time. Then I did sprints for softball practice and was generally an active person. My own experience with training this way for years gives confidence in weight training being a big piece of the fat loss puzzle, or at least maintaining a lean physique. When I used to play basketball and run non stop I never had as easy a time maintaining a lean body, even if I ate junk all the time, than when I was lifting weights and doing exercise I enjoy...which is NOT a lot of steady state cardio. If you LOVE running, do it! But if you hate steady state cardio and think you HAVE to do it to lose weight...ditch it!

I can't post links but go to stumptuous dot com for weight training info for women

and google : Dr. Sears PACE twins interview youtube. it will show you a good video on two twins who did different types of exercise and the different results that they got.

Many people advocate doing body weight exercises over lifting weights....both can be very effective!

I've been reading Leangains for a good part of the afternoon (day off work, woo woo!), there is so much information! Good, good stuff here. I definitely fit into the set up for folks with 9-5 jobs and evening workouts. The articles on IF and endurance training are also really interesting. I'm just starting to train up for a race and was curious how IF would affect my longer runs. Looks like if anything, it could potentially help them.

Looks like people are doing well! Keep up the good work

I did a 24 hour fast yesterday. I quit eating at 8pm one evening and then didn't eat again until 8pm the next evening.

Actually it was much easier than I anticipated. I think I had it built up in my mind to being a 'real' fast when it was really just postponing my eating window for a few hours. Nothing really major at all.

One thing I haven't done is gone a full 'day' without eating. That is fasting in a more Biblical sense, and something that I want to try. It wouldn't be hard, except for the small mental hurdle of thinking 'I will consume no food today'.

I will say that even after my crazy week in NYC AND being smack in the middle of that *certain* time of the month, the scale was only up a 1/2 pound this morning when I weighed in again!!

That really shocked me and helped get my day off right!

Hoping to use that as momentum to see some positive movement soon. I wanna see the 130's soooooo bad.

I lost most of my weight doing something similar to this. I didn't know it had a name, though!

I'd eat two pieces of whole wheat toast with peanut butter or spray butter for breakfast.

Lunch was usually a balance bar. Sometimes it would be turkey breast or a small salad or sandwich.

Did an intense interval training workout for 45-60 minutes when I got home from work at 5 or 6.

I ate a "normal" supper, usually between 5 and 8. I lived with my parents at the time, so whatever we made, I ate until I was full. It was usually healthy 5/6 days a week (chicken, veggies, rice, whole wheat pasta, fish, etc.) but I didn't limit myself and ate as much as i needed. Which actually didn't take too much because I was eating so little throughout the day, so I'd feel full really quickly.

I know it wasn't technically IF since I did still eat breakfast, but my total calories before 6 pm were usually less than 300.

I am trying to find something else that works for me, after falling off of the band wagon and gaining a few pounds back over the winter/holidays. I have continued my workouts, but added a lot of snacks and other food I wasn't eating before. I am trying the whole snacking/calorie counting method, but I always end up starving at night and in the morning and quite irritable and sluggish. It might be time to go to a IF method again. I found that I would look forward to being "full" during my evening meal, and it made resisting unhealthy snacks a lot easier.

There is no technical aspect to it. What you were doing was not fasting. No big deal but if there are health benefits to intermittent fasting you would not reap them.

I'd say give it a try. You might find that you are grouchy and irritable without food in the morning. Some people are like that.

Can I be that annoying person who reposts a question I asked earlier? Maybe no one else shares this experience, so if I don't get any responses again I'll stop bugging you all. Since I've been on an IF schedule I've found I am no more hungry on exercise days than non-exercise days. Regardless of the physical exertion, I am still satisfied with my usual caloric intake. Is this all mental or does this have some sort of explanation rooted in the chemistry behind IF?

I've not read about this specifically related to exercise but I have read many accounts of people who before IF would struggle on their low calorie diets and when they IF they struggle to get the same number of calories ingested.