Tags
before and after, caloric needs, daily calorie consumption, health, me, metabolic rate, personal, weight loss
This post was not easy to write. Like a lot of my fellow bloggers I am cautious with how much of my personal life I am willing to share and afraid of being judged when I am not perfectly consistent with my blogs moral and essence.
Enough with the dramatic introductions already and let’s come clean. Below you can see some captures of last month’s Christmas pictures. Apart from the change in hair color and terribly wind-destroyed hairstyle, you might have noticed that I look a bit more chubby than on the other pictures of me published on this blog. During 2012 I have gained the one or and other pound, until at the end of December, I decided that I really am not happy in my skin anymore and need to make some major changes.
Sadly those changes were not inspired by my knowledge about healthy eating and good judgement of caloric needs, but instead of the terrible wish to lose a few pounds as fast as possible. I cut down my calories terribly, opted for a lot of protein in my diet and added some strength training (no cardio) to avoid rapid muscle loss .
Result: In 4 weeks I lost about 7 pounds…
(picture taken after today’s daily hiit workout – please excuse the bad quality, I was still pretty sweaty and slightly shaking)
… was all along freezing, tired and in need of caffeine to keep myself focused.
Luckily I am not my 16-year old me anymore and developed a dominant health voice somewhere in the back of my mind, which came through more and more during the last week. This blog post by Brittany (GOtheXtraMile) finally gave me the last push. I decided to use my new Polar heart rate monitor to make a 24-hour burn test.
Subtract 180 calories for today’s workout and 10% for inaccuracy (due to Polar their HRM can be up to +/-10% inaccurate in measuring calorie consumption), I do burn at least 1850 but more likely around 2000 calories on a barely active day (call it rest day).
Luckily I still had a weekly cheat day on Sunday, so I hope the damage done to my metabolism is meager. Still, there is a new plan of action, starting with tomorrow’s cheat day:
- I will increase my calorie consumption steadily until I reach 1500 (which are my daily calorie needs -500, resulting in a reasonable loss of 1 pound / week)
- I will track my calorie burn during my workouts (especially cardio sessions) and add at least half of it on top of my daily calorie consumption
- I will not be impatient
- I will be more open with you and share my journey back to sanity and reason
By the way: I feel way better in my skin already. These last weeks will be brought to book as experience – I probably needed them to bring myself back on the right track, because lets keep it genuine: those months of overindulgence were not less unhealthy. And I am happy to get back to the roots of this blog and loose the remaining few pounds in a healthy way.
Have you found yourself being unhealthy lately? What are your opinions regarding weight loss? Do you use a heart rate monitor to measure your calorie burn or do you count calories?
As soon as the weather changes to warmer conditions I will embark on a new campaign of losing 14 lbs. I lost that amount of weight Nov/Dec 2012 thanks to a stressful period of mental and physical work. Small changes in life style can mean large outcomes later on. Good luck.
Thanks a lot. And good luck to you, too.
I’m super relieved to hear that you’ll be adopting a healthier approach to losing weight. I think everyone has tried the impatient starvation route at some point, and we can all safely say that not only is it super damaging, but it’s not maintainable in the long run. I don’t count calories or measure my burn because I’m afraid of it becoming obsessive for me like it used to be – I just do my best to stay active and eat healthy. I’ve found that the more relaxed I became about my diet and exercise, the easier it became for my body to find its happy place without me stressing over it too much.
Thanks lovely! It’s a shame how easy it is to fall back in old habits. Luckily nowadays it is also easier to snap back into healthy ones. I hope that one day I’ll be just as relaxed as you – and still able to maintain a happy weight. You are a great role model with your relaxed attitude towards diet and exercise!
Good for you!!! I’m so glad to hear that you are going about it the healthy way. I’m so proud! Good luck, you got this!
So nice of you, to leave a comment. I am so glad that I stumbled over your post about caloric needs – it really gave me the final kick in the a** to change back to a more healthy approach.
Wow, you’ve got a reeeally slow, sluggish metabolism. You must have really done some damage to make yourself so inefficient at burning calories.
I can’t imagine eating as little as you.
Excuse me if I got your comment wrong – but how can you conclude from what I posted that my metabolism is too slow? For a person with my height (5’3) losing 7 pounds in 4 weeks is quite a lot. Point of discussion are the low-calories that I ate, not the amount I lost. I plan on slowing down my weight loss by adding more calories to my diet.
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