Very true.

My fitbit I wear does have a heart rate monitor, so I have noticed a difference between the numbers it gives me and standard calculators and it seems closer to accurate. I know it still uses an average, though.

pavvie I'm a commercial dogwalker so I walk every day Mon. - Fri. from about 8 a.m. to roughly 2:30 p.m. with a 45 minute "lunch" @ 9 a.m. and little breaks in between 4 walks to pick up/drop off the various dogs. I also walk my own dog 2X per day on the weekend and I do evening walks some nights too.

I do yoga (my own mishmash of stuff I've picked up over the years) 3X per week and light weightlifting 3X per week at home.

I'm going to try to get back into kayaking next summer, mostly on the weekends.

I had a SUP which I loved - first and only sport ever I was great at from the first try - but had to give up as there was no time. I also own a bicycle - hope to get back into that and the SUP at retirement.

Dagmar

Hi ladies, I am up twenty pounds over my maintenance weight. My pants are uncomfortable and I feel sluggish. I took ten of these pounds off earlier this year and then gained more. I'm ready to let the extra weight go now. My cholesterol is up as well as my A1C. I don't think I look cute with this spare tire that is poking out of all of my clothes. I am ready for a change. I got scared twenty pounds ago that I was going to have trouble finding smaller clothes that I could reasonably afford. I was conflicted about reaching my true goal of fitting in what I considered a normal clothing range. Which for me meant the sizes that you usually see in Costco. When size two started to fit and I was still losing I freaked. I was afraid of losing more. One of my goals was to find clothes easily in stores like Target, Old Navy, Macy's, etc. I was afraid of maintaining of even losing a bit more and no longer easily finding clothes in these kind of stores. I was afraid that my bra band size could go down to a 26 and I would need to special order expensive bras from Poland! Little by little I stopped logging my food daily, stopped weighting daily, and exercise stopped. Now I need to backtrack and do the work of keeping my weight in check.

Welcome valid28! I read an article today that said that those who track their food do have a better chance of losing weight. That said, I need to get back on that bandwagon!

Fitbit is notorious for overestimating caloric expenditures during exercise by about 20% compared to Polar or actual treadmill testing, and the BMR estimates are inflated, too. This implies you could multiply its estimated calories expended by 0.8 and get pretty close. Or, just use it as a pedometer. Or a not-very-attractive fashion accessory...

147 on the nose on the scale today. Progress!

//kaw

Hi guys I could really use some extra support this week.Ii am so discouraged.2binge days this week after losing 6lbs in 2 wks and now back up 3.Intense exercise last night on treadmill, 60 minutes of intense intervals and up 2 more lbs. When will I realize that food isn't a substitute for being stressed or tired or happy. I am feeling the failure this morning. I am nervous about heading into holidays

Hi merowi2!

Perhaps you are stressing yourself too much. Six pounds in 2 weeks is a very fast loss. Were you cutting calories to too low a level?

Increasing exercise to offset overeating also doesn't work. It just increases your stress.

Take it easy! Eat with your calories at a level you can sustain without setting off a binge. Your loss will be slower, but that's OK if you are able to keep going. And exercise the same way--don't overdo it thinking you can "catch up."

Hang in there!

Good grief, a week's gone by already. Work has been in the way of everything. I am meeting with my financial advisor in two weeks to quantify how tight, if at all, the "golden handcuffs" are with my job. For those unfamiliar with the term, it's why a lot of people stay in jobs they don't like for way too long - the retirement benefits approach a point where they just decide to gut it out. I am pretty sure that I can walk out of here without fretting too much; the company froze pensions a few years back and it wouldn't be all that big even if I did stay.

to all and a special hello to our newcomers!

JayEll, your retreat sounds like it accomplished what you hoped it would. I think I would enjoy it, too.

Pool was out of commission for two weeks due to a neighboring pool needing unplanned maintenance, which threw their swim team into our pool; we're back in the water and back on track starting Saturday morning. I need to pick a date and sign up for a meet.

I keep forgetting to weigh! No doubt that's partly denial and partly just a lost habit. I did get the batteries replaced, so that's a small kudo.

DH has been home all week. He got a deer on opening day and has been shuffling around things in the freezers and dealing with the butchering. It's nice to have him home, but I have to gently dissuade him from having a beer poured for me when I come in from work. It's nice, and I like it, however beer tends to make me less interested in paying attention to other things, such as second helpings.

I'm getting a Kinect to go with DS's Xbox One (thank you, credit card points). Just recently discovered that with the Xbox Live subscription, there are workouts available that are paired up with the Kinect. Some of them actually look both efficient and interesting.

And finally, I've finished assembly of my far-infrared sauna. Looking forward to breaking that in very soon!

Becky - DH uses XBox Fit I think? It always seems to be a solid workout.

I sit here wondering not where the week went but where the year went. Oh, my goodness! Next week is Thanksgiving! And then it's Christmas! Sheeesh.

I've been VERY successful this week with cutting down alcohol consumption. Very happy about that. But I wonder if that has contributed to my inability to hear my "alarm clock" (coffee maker) chirp me awake. I missed it twice this week and almost missed it today, save for Louie cat having woken me minutes before.

That said, my membership in several wine clubs has netted me an overabundance of wine. Usually, I have a full wine rack (maybe a case worth) and yet now my rack is full and I have at least another case in the closet. Obviously I have not been drinking much wine lately. At least I don't have to run out to buy any for the upcoming holidays and I can even use some as gifts.

I've also been reading a lot. Getting my head around things. I haven't lost anything lately but not for lack of trying. I know that in the long run the #1 think I need to do is start tracking my food again. It just gets so tedious.

But then today begins several days of eating out. Lunch with our CPA today. Lunch out (normal Friday) with DH tomorrow followed by our monthly wine dinner. We'll see what happens on the weekend, but we normally go out for lunch on Saturday. My in-laws will be out of town for a funeral, so they won't be bringing lunch on Sunday, so who knows what we'll do then.

Shannon, thanks for the info! I was surprised to see what was available over Xbox Live (thanks to DS, we're Gold members). Workouts from Shaun T, Jillian, etc - and some designed to be nice and short and intense. That's what I am looking for. If I'm going to be getting up earlier - DS is starting every day morning swim workouts and will be rattling around by 5am - I might as well suck it up and grab a workout after I turn on the coffee pot for him. I will admit, there was/is a temptation to just go buy a coffee pot with a timer.

Allison, I was listening to the radio this morning and the host put it perfectly - the weeks have really been dragging but the year is speeding by - we have only 41 days left in the year!!! Holy moly! Kudos on cutting down the alcohol. I *have* to follow suit, and it's not just for caloric reasons. I'm going to impose a limit on weekend beer (start with 48oz total) and respect a one-glass-of-wine limit with dinner. I'm also going to forego wine with any meal that has to be consumed in under 10 minutes, which is happening more often than I would like.

So tired of bouncing around in the low 160's. This was a decade-long setpoint for me before the big jump into the 170's about 10 years ago. I want to get strong and feel really good again.

Gees, weight up TWO pounds from going out to lunch with our CPA yesterday. I had iced tea and a chicken salad from Red Robin. It "seemed" like a good choice. I hope it doesn't repeat itself today with two meals out.

Tomorrow we're attending our first Porsche club event--coffee and cars. It's a gathering that apparently happens all over and not just for Porsche (but this one is). My brother used to do them all the time and I have a friend in the midwest who attends them as he is a freelance writer for an automobile magazine. Basically you go and show off your vehicle and hob-nob with the other owners.

Becky, re your golden handcuffs--how much longer before you are fully invested in the retirement plan? Would you get anything if you left today? Just curious.

Alcohol helps throw restraint right out the window. All kinds of restraint. I'm glad I don't have to deal with it anymore.

My weight is coming down, and my tracker is back to being correct again.

Jay, walking away today will cost me about $700/month on my pension benefits. That's fairly trivial compared to the weight of other assets and passive income we have stocked up. Past good decisions about treating the pensions and SS as something unstable and not including them in our planning are starting to bear fruit. DH and I have also taken some actions to not have our retirement completely dependent on IRA/401K savings, because ... government. We don't trust them to keep their hands off our savings. Call us paranoid, but we sleep pretty darn well at night.

Oh, I'm pretty conservative myself when it comes to money! Unfortunately, I've not had the level of income that would allow me a lot of investment. My IRAs and Social Security are going to be my baseline in retirement.

I would find it really hard to walk away from $700 a month! One just never knows what might happen. But it sounds like you have planned well.