Quote:
Originally Posted by neurodoc
Saef, I especially thought of you when I read this article. Could it be that by pushing yourself as hard as you have, and eating intuitively, you are unconsciously compensating for all those calories you burn? If reducing daily exercise to 30 min. a day allows you to cut back on portions without causing you to feel like you're starving, you may end up ahead, calorie-wise.
I read this also and wondered the same thing, Nuerodoc. After an hour with weights, and cardio, there is this ravenous hunger that comes on me a few hours later. It's real and impossible to ignore. I feed it with protein. I joke that I could tear a whole rotisserie chicken apart with my bare hands at those moments.
There are two complicating factors for me.
One is that I'm one of the "reduced obese." I was more than 100 pounds overweight for almost 20 years. Does that modify permanently one's metabolic workings, even after one has lost weight? I have seen reports elsewhere that reduced obese are a special case in some respects and have to put in (quite unfairly) twice the work in physical exercise to keep their weight down. I wish I had citations for you. I don't want to shift the onus from me and my current efforts onto my condition, but that may account for something here.
The other is that I may not mind the slight overweight as much as I used to because I don't think all of it represents fat. I've had some muscle gains. It's hard for me to see, looking at myself all the time as I do, but those who see me at the gym after my absence say it is visible in my back, shoulders and arms and the shape of my legs, and also a bit in my butt. The scale isn't saying anything about that. Also I find my aesthetic ideal has changed a little. I look at women whom once upon a time, I envied, and find them thin, yes, but weak-looking. And they labor visibly with weights in my circuit training class that I think are easy to handle. So my goal has been modified by all this exercise and exposure to heavy exercisers. The scale is really important to me but I waver back & forth over how I feel about it.
I may be sanguine today because I've got a nearly three-pound drop in weight from Wednesday. Almost surely this has to do with my snacks -- of which I've been deprived to some extent while not working from home -- and the timing of digestive and elimination workings, if you know what I mean.