Anyone interested in looking at my dashboard - Advice/Help/Strategy

[Amber_S]

I am looking for someone to look at my fitbit dashboard. I am trying to lose weight. (Lots of weight approx. 100 lbs) I am fairly active, but I am not sure I am doing it right. I am willing to share my dashboard, for honest advice. As far as my weight, I have talked to my doctor they do not seem concerned as I have zero other Health Issues and I have lost 18lbs since Nov. 

One thing I know I am not good at is tracking my food. I do use myfitnesspal, but after a few weeks of not seeing results, I get discouraged and quit using it. Then I start again. I am like a Yo-Yo on tracking. 

I am trying to come up with a plan that I can stick too. 

Things I am trying to consistantly do on a daily:

1. Keep steps above 12K

2. 45 Active Minutes (At least)

3. Daily Calorie Burn above 3K

4. At least 10 floors a day (Sometimes I slip and do less... and other days I do 12-18)

5. My average walking pace is 4.0 miles per hour

But is this enough? Am I doing it correctly? I would run but with the weight I don't want to hurt my knees and joints - am I misinformed?

[carl669]

just one piece of advice:  weight loss starts in the kitchen.  @Heybales said this in another thread:

Diet is for weight loss - done right just fat loss, done wrong includes muscle mass.
 
Exercise is for heart health and body improvements - done right encourages fat loss, done wrong helps fat loss.

so, while the activity goals you've set look quite good, i think getting a better handle on tracking your food will help more for your weight loss goals. 

[WendyB]

I agree its all about what you eat more than exercise.

You can'st out run a bad Diet

Tracking and weighing for portion control are key at least until you get it down right

[Amber_S]

Fair enough and understood. I admit I don't always eat the right type of foods, but I do stick to my daily intake goals by weight/measuring. The calories just don't always come from the best choices. 

Daily Intake Goals:

1,500 Cal.

189 g Carbs

078 g Protien

046 g Fat

120 oz of water - sometimes infused with fruit, but never bottled additives

So I will work more on my diet and my making sure I type it in the tracker. 

[youngWerther]

I focus only on minimum activity, that way I know that I 'always' have a basic metabolism of 2500 kcal (being male and heavy helps).  This makes the daily 500 kcal deficit more of a routine. Even then my dashboard (public) looks a little chaotic.

[Heybales]

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@Amber_S wrote:

Fair enough and understood. I admit I don't always eat the right type of foods, but I do stick to my daily intake goals by weight/measuring. The calories just don't always come from the best choices. 

Daily Intake Goals:

1,500 Cal.

189 g Carbs

078 g Protien

046 g Fat

120 oz of water - sometimes infused with fruit, but never bottled additives

So I will work more on my diet and my making sure I type it in the tracker. 

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After you eat enough to get your nutritional aspect of food in your body desires, it's going to be mainly about the calories to be gotten in your body desires.

Though I would suggest that while in a diet, more protein and fat.

Protein grams about 0.82 grams per lb of body weight.

Fat grams about 0.35 grams per lb of body weight.

Carbs get the rest.

If some non-best choices don't take away from other needed nutritional items, and fit in the day's calories, and don't cause you to binge, and make it so you can enjoy what you eat and adhere....

Then eat up!

Just confirm that 1500 daily goal is really a reasonable deficit from what you burn daily, on average, for the amount to lose.

Simple way to keep reasonable, 250 cal deficit per 20 lbs to lose. Over 80 lbs to lose, then 1000 cal deficit is reasonable.

Unreasonable is just risking muscle mass loss, unneeded stress on body with ill effects along with it, adherence problems, ect.

If you don't like the changing daily goal with deficit based on what Fitbit estimates you burned, then look at weekly emailed report of daily average burn rate, do math from that.

Ok, saw your first post stats.

Daily burn rate over 3000 calories. You are eating about 50% less.

You gotta know your body isn't going to be happy eating half of what you are asking it to burn.

It isn't. And any weight loss you get will include muscle mass - you dearly wish wasn't gone.

[josephz2va]

Check on the quality of your food choices. There's two differences. Bad Quality (Donuts, Candy, Chocolates, Powerbars, Protein Shakes, etc.) and Good Quality (Fruits and Veggies, portionalized food, foods to build lean muscle, etc.)

It's also moderation being key and avoiding bad temptations. And avoiding the chances of overeating. Like knowing if you buy a bag of nuts because they said you can consume nuts for building lean muscle doesn't mean you should eat the bag of nuts. I skip the nuts because I know I'll eat the bag of nuts. One serving of a bag of nuts is at most 250 calories and 14 servings mostly which is 3,500 calories. Or a canteen of sugar free ice cream because it's easier to eat dairy. That's like 200 calories times 4 servings. 800 calories.

I generally don't work off the in vs out of -500 to -1000. I focus on how much I'm permitted to eat. Close to the 1200 calories range set by my dietitian and only consume what is Good Quality low calories. Examples being 2 veggie salads, one cup of milk, egg whites, and avoiding breads and chocolates and other temptations. Once in a while if I need some hunger fight, I'll order a grilled chicken salad from subway with all the veggies.

[LocoMutant]

I have the same goals last year I was 300lbs and have dropped 64 pounds so far.  The one thing is you have to control your diet, and I have had the best results 9lbs in 10 days with low carb, low sugar, high protien diet.  I also, use my fitness pal and you have to be honest with your tracking otherwise it is useless.  You cook in any oil or fat log it, you sneak a drink log it, you have a cookie log it. for me I eat less than 1500 calories per day.

Plus, I use my fitbit one which helped at work I'm lucky I work in a 25 story building, and one each break I go up from 20-25 and then down, and then walk around the building.  On my lunch I walk around downtown about 1.5 miles.  I speed walk on a treadmill 3-4 miles per day 4.5mph.  Ten I use and exercise bike and got 2/3, two miles and fast as I can, and 3 minutes normal speed. I do that 2-3 times, and it really helps with cardio.

But the most important thing is you.  You have to change your life completely otherwise those old habits come back fast and so do the pounds.