Hi guys!
Sorry this post is a day late. I had a work event last night and didn't get a chance to post. First and foremosst, my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their familes in Aurora, Colorado and the horrific tragedy last night. Absolutely disgusting that someone could do that!
So my Thursday topics have to do with food and fitness. I've never had too much of an issue with weight (fortunately) but I've gone up and down a bit as well. I ran in Highschool so was quite thin and then in college managed to gain 20 pounds (yuck) but the maximum I was ever at was 140 so some was a natural weight gain over time (I'm 5'4 ). I then lost 10 pounds in the year or 2 after college and maintained for a while and lost another 5 pounds while training for the marathon 3 years back. Last winter, I gained again and was back up to my max. I don't need to nor do I want to be a skinny minny but I did want to get better control over everything.
It was around Christmas last year that I got my new iphone and was playing around with apps that I discovered MyFitnessPal http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ There are lots of apps out there for weight control but I had never used one before. Like many people, for the New Year, I made a resolution to drop the extra poundage. I started religiously entering in my exercise habits, my food and before I knew it, was down to the same weight I had been while marathon training (and this was without running an average of 40 miles a week!) I was thrilled!
MyFitnessPal has you enter in your current weight, what your goal is, how quickly you want to lose (or if you just want to maintain) and calculates a daily allotment of calories for you. All you have to do is stay within that limit and you will most likely lose. Workouts are negatives which means you get to eat even more--whoo hoo! I've never been one for diets and love that I can see how I can indulge without gaining. I also remember the morning I did an hour of weights and an hour of cardio and had an extra 900 calories to enjoy...that is a workout completely worth it for the anti-dieter.
There are some tricks to keeping up with it.
1. I recommend entering everything in for the day in the morning..plan out your meals for the day and even enter in your workouts. Its easy to edit but you likely won't forget to login this way and you are also more likely to workout if you can see what else you can enjoy by doing so.
2. Don't feel like you have to find the exact information. I think sometimes I go for what I think will be a higher calorie count then what I'm actually eating just to cushion myself. You can take time to load recipes as well but sometimes I'll just add in the ingredients and either stay under my calorie goal for the day just in case.
3. give yourself one cheat day. I'm pretty religious to my food and exercise habits during the week so often times, my calories for the day are below what I am allowed so I have some extra to play with. Therefore, when the weekend rolls around, sometimes on Saturday night when I know I'm going out, I don't stress about logging everything in for the day and just enjoy. Even if I go over for the day, the prior negative balances and the overall effect aren't that bad.
I've been maintaining now and It really has been a cool tool and I'm so glad to have found it. I've course I can't promise it will work for everyone but from my personal experience, it comes highly recommended!
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