About Dominique

Dominique · ‎10-10-2014

OK, your BMI went down from 31 (starting range of obese) to 28 (mid-range of overweight). You could still afford to lose another 10-15 kg, to aim for BMI between 23 and 24.5 (= upper range of normal weight). BMI would be relevant for you, since you don't appear to be an athlete (based on your self-description). It wouldn't be for someone like Sylvester Stallone, who's about the same height as you, but very muscular. What you'd want to avoid is becoming "skinny fat", ie. lose a significant amount of muscle mass besides the fat. This is what tends to happen if your weight loss comes mostly from nutrition (eating at a calorie deficit) and moderate cardio (your walking). You may therefore consider adding some strength training to your routine, so as to minimize muscle loss during further weight loss and make the weight loss as much fat as possible. In itself, having your last meal at 7 pm instead of 10 pm doesn't really matter, but having increased your sleep from 5 hours (way too little) to 8-9 hours is definitely a good thing.

Dominique · ‎10-09-2014

@ogdenlady wrote: I would like to hear more about the accountability group. "Starting an accountability group" = half-hidden way to say someone posing as a Fitbit user is offering her commercial services as a personal trainer. Many people (me included) believe the combination of your Fitbit tracker, your Fitbit account and the great Fitbit community (friends, forums) is just what you need to be accountable.

Dominique · ‎10-09-2014

Did you switch to your current step level (about 5000 to 10,000 steps per day, based on your profile) from couch potato state? If so, when did the switch happen? Your body may need to adapt to your new habits.

Dominique · ‎10-09-2014

@mavery wrote: That sounds like a cool product. Where did you get it? It's probably an app running on a smartphone. I'm using something similar, called Stopwatch Timer (by Javier Salmona), on my Android phone. I use it to time pauses between sets during strength training. It was suggested to me on this forum. The app used to be called "Hybrid Stopwatch". It's free, but you can get rid of ads by paying a one-time fee (€1.30).

Dominique · ‎10-06-2014

@Moonie wrote: I personally can't eat a variety of 26 different types of fruit and vegetables everyday! I probably couldn't afford too either. Neither can I, but I don't think you have to eat all fruits and vegetables known on the face of earth in order to have a healthy diet. As to the price, for $44.50 (which is the stated price of a monthly supply of "Orchad Blend" and "Garden Blend" capsules), I'm sure one can buy a decent amount of the real stuff from which one can make real meals, even if it's "only" 10 different types of fruit and vegetables. Here are some ingredients from which I make large supplies of a delicious soup: It's more work, but well worth the effort.

Dominique · ‎10-06-2014

@Funmore wrote: I am five days into my Transform 30 (a new opportunity for eating healthy and supplementing with Juice Plus). I have already lost 3.8 pounds (from Wednesday to Saturday).! Any weight variation (one way or the other) observed over a five day period is likely to be water weight. On their web site, the company advertises their product as the "next best thing to fruits and vegetables". I'd personally rather eat the actual stuff (and get the benefits from it - satiety, fiber etc.) rather than capsules made from it. OK, I would settle for capsules if I were an astronaut with no access to real food...

Dominique · ‎10-02-2014

@lukegor wrote: Losing 25 pounds in 7weeks is the title,not sure how to put the link on here. If you are posting from a mobile device, you probably have to copy/paste the link, as here: http://youtu.be/oPwttn_LixA If you are posting from a PC or a Mac, you can make a clickable link.

Dominique · ‎10-02-2014

There are hundreds of "how I lost xx pounds in yy months" on YouTube, so why not include the direct link to your own video, since Fitbit forums make it possible?

Dominique · ‎10-01-2014

@TCG wrote: I bought an odometer by Bell and it measures calories burned plus fat calories burned and I manually put that into my log. I ride at least twice a week and the Fitbit did not reflect the workout. Just curious: how would the odometer know how much fat you burned? My understanding is what your body decides to use as fuel during exercise depends on parameters such as your heart rate, which your odometer has no way to know. Besides, since fat is a fuel, shouldn't the quantity burned during exercise be expressed in grams (or other weight unit), rather than calories?

Dominique · ‎10-01-2014

If you want your calories to be correct, you need to log your biking (and any other non-step-based activity), as explained here: https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/413311-how-do-i-log-or-record-an-activity-

Dominique · ‎09-30-2014

Thanks for the link! I've been wondering about this: "It [walking] is less beneficial for bones than running". Why is that? Does the higher impact from running make your bones stronger?

Dominique · ‎09-27-2014

It's really up to what type of diet (from a macronutrient breakdown point of view) suits you best. LCHF (low carb, high fat) and HCLF (high carb, low fat) may work just as well, same with a diet that includes similar levels of carbs, proteins and fat. Whatever diet you end up choosing, you would want to favour "good" carbs over "bad" ones, and "good" fats over "bad" ones. And if you want to lose (or why not gain) weight, what matters most is the total amount of calories you eat (regardless of macronutrient breakdown) vs. what you burn.

Dominique · ‎09-24-2014

Are you sure the 11,193 step day was 1115 calories (and not 2115)? 1115 sounds really off, it's probably less than your BMR. Not sure about today, since I don't know what timezone you're in. However, 783 calories with already 10k steps sounds low. The rest don't seem that inconsistent to me. What tracker do you have? I have the One, which allows me to record activities (by pressing its button when the activity starts, and pressing it again when it ends). This is great to compare step counts and calorie burns when walking the same set distance every day. This allows you to isolate your main workouts from your other steps during the day. One thing comes to mind: do you use calorie estimation in your profile? If you're wearing your Fitbit all the time, you should disable it.

Dominique · ‎09-24-2014

@whome wrote: Not all steps are created equal, so a 1000 calorie difference with the same number of steps is indeed feasible. A 1000 calorie difference per day with the same step count is very unlikely IMO. I personally burn about 1800-2000 calories on low step count days (3-6k) and 3000-3200 calories on higher step count days (25-27k). You can check on my profile for the last few days, since I have had both high and low step counts. I would need extremely high step count days, one walking very slowly and one running very fast, in order to get a 1000 calorie difference with the same step count.

Dominique · ‎09-24-2014

Can you be more specific: how different is vastly different? What daily step counts are we talking about?

Dominique · ‎09-24-2014

As far as I understand, none of them are accurate. A scale would emphasize fatness/leanness in your lower body (because it sends an electrical current through your feet); likewise, a handheld device would emphasize your upper body. A BIA device that would send the current through both your hands and your feet (eg. the Tanita BC-558) would presumably be more accurate (but BIA is still very sensitive to the hydration level of your body). My understanding is calipers are best used by fitness professionals (eg. personal trainers), who have a long experience of their use. The "gold standard" is considered to be a DXA (aka DEXA) scan, but it's expensive and may not be easily available. FWIW, @Michael recently mentioned another method called "air-displacement plethysmography". It appears to be much less expensive than DXA.

Dominique · ‎09-23-2014

Do you wear two Fitbits connected to two different accounts?! That would be highly unusual, especially for someone brand-new to Fitbit. Some long-time users (eg. @Colinm39 ) have performed such tests.

Dominique · ‎09-23-2014

It's a known fact very active minutes are much harder to earn with the One than with the Zip. Unfortunately, different Fitbit trackers don't count VAMs in the same way, although they are supposed to use the same formula.

Dominique · ‎09-23-2014

You need to eat less than what you burn with your 78,000 steps and other activities.

Dominique · ‎09-22-2014

It really depends on how important calories are for you: do you count your calories in and do you try to reach a given calorie deficit (or surplus)? Your Fitbit definitely takes your walking speed into account, but not any elevation changes. I also walk in rather hilly surroundings (my Fitbit One has registered almost 46,000 floors so far, in 18 months), but I don't bother logging my walking/jogging activities. I don't count calories in, so calories burned are just a nice-to-know for me.

Dominique · ‎09-22-2014

@M-and-B wrote: I have been walking 10,000-15,000 steps every day for 2 weeks and I have put on .5 kilos 2 weeks is a rather short time (to expect results one way or the other), and 0.5 kg is a very small variation in two weeks, well within the normal range of fluctuation. I gained 2 kg in just one week: Friday was my carb refeed day (= leads to water retention). I ate unusually salty food - bacon, smoked salmon - on Saturday (= even more water retention). 66-68 kg is my normal range of fluctuation at the moment. Keep moving, regardless of what the scale says! You know it's the right thing to do in any case.

Dominique · ‎09-22-2014

@josephz2va wrote: I used to be 15% body fat with them. 30% today since I quit doing night classes 2 months ago. I'm somehow skeptical anyone could go from 15% to 30% body fat in just 2 months time. What method was used to determine body fat?

Dominique · ‎09-22-2014

Maybe you'd be interested in Lyle McDonald's book The Stubborn Fat Solution (I guess belly fat in middle aged people would qualify as "stubborn"!). However, it's aimed at people who are already very lean. I've read his Guide to Flexible Dieting and I found it very useful. Unfortunately, I'm not yet at the level one must reach before tackling stubborn fat

Dominique · ‎09-21-2014

Search "weighted vest" on Amazon.

Dominique · ‎09-19-2014

@fluxcore wrote: Try juicing. OTOH, juicing is quite wasteful: it retains the sugar and gets rid of the fibers that would favor satiety (in addition to their other benefits).

Dominique · ‎09-19-2014

@SunsetRunner wrote: so...risk gout to avoid the #1 of Vit D.....the sun. Sun is an option if you live in a place where you get enough of it. I live in Finland, so I would get enough of it (for the purpose of getting of sufficient dose of vitamin D) 3-4 months of the year at most. I therefore eat 2 x 10 µg of D3 everyday as tablets everyday, and get another 10 µg from fish oil. These are about the only supplements I take. They are cheap and their efficacy is proven.

Dominique · ‎09-18-2014

No problem with that. I think the disclosure is appropriate, since you're asking money (albeit not a lot) for the app. Since it's brand new and you need to attract users, you should probably make it free to start with (perhaps with some in-app paid features). I'm personally not keen to buy an app that hasn't got a single review.

Dominique · ‎09-18-2014

@carl669 wrote: @SunsetRunner wrote: ... Don't buy low-carb or no-carb diets -- body needs carbs and all carbs are not equal. i disagree. low carb can be a great way to shed weight and increase energy. I agree (with @carl669, who disagrees with @SunsetRunner😞 general principles apply to all diets (like favoring food prepared by you from raw ingredients rather than ready-made, highly processed food), but the split between macronutrients is a matter of personal preferences and of what works best for each of us. I don't think low-carb is for me either, but it's well established it can work well for some people, so why shouldn't they "buy" it? I found the following four-part article by Lyle McDonald useful to assess the suitability of various mixes of macronutrients: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/comparing-the-diets-part-1/ http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/comparing-the-diets-part-2/ http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/comparing-the-diets-part-3/ http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/comparing-the-diets-part-4/

Dominique · ‎09-18-2014

See the definition of very active minutes (VAMs). In order to get VAMs for a logged activity, the total amount of calories for the activity logged should be six times your burning rate at rest. So if you're burning 1 calorie per minute doing nothing, your 30 minute PiYo session needs to burn 180 calories or more in order to qualify for VAMs. Anyway, as @Flylow21-Judy said, VAMs are just an extra motivator. It's not the end of the world if you don't get as many as you think you deserve, or even if you get none for logged activities (which are all or nothing . Consider your heavy sweating as a better indicator of your real exercise level. Also note that, from a weight loss perspective, exercise is only about 20% of the equation, the rest being nutrition. As many have said here, "you can't out-exercise a bad diet".

Dominique · ‎09-18-2014

@jinks215 wrote: Im 28 years old 6 foot 5 and i weigh 330 lbs Here is an amazing success story by @LewWagner, who went from 300 to 170 lbs in less than 10 months. It must have taken a lot of dedication and effort. Maybe he can share tips.

Dominique · ‎09-18-2014

@jinks215 wrote: ive been using the fitbit flex and dieting i workout but im not losing weight i burn alot of calories everyday and always make sure i take 12,000 steps everyday even if im just sitting at the office Your profile shows you have been using your Fitbit since Sep 4, ie. just two weeks. This is much too short to expect any significant results. During those two weeks, you actually exceeded 12,000 steps on only one day. This is no criticism, merely saying the perception of one's own activity level may not match the reality (Fitbit provides a good reality check). Anyway, most people can't lose any significant amount of weight by exercise alone, nutrition is the most important factor: the kind of food you eat, the size of your portions etc.

Dominique · ‎09-17-2014

@jonsl wrote: However, it would be great if Fitbit could help me calculate what my goals should be and benchmark me with peers! The benchmark part is available under the Premium plan. I believe you can try it for free during one week, so that should be sufficient for the purpose of setting goals by benchmarking yourself against peers. You can benchmark yourself against people of same age, same gender, same corpulence etc. Personally, I'm lazy and I have kept the same goals Fitbit set for me back in March 2013, when I started: 10,000 steps, 10 floors, 8 km, 30 VAMs, 2566 calories. They are all "easy" now, except for the calorie goal, which is still challenging (especially since I don't log non-step-based activities like weight lifting).

Dominique · ‎09-17-2014

@sjr1 wrote: I wanted to add that I am a female if that makes a difference in the weight lifting area. Read posts by @JenniLacey and check her profile. You'll find interesting information on losing weight and lifting, from a woman's perspective.

Dominique · ‎09-17-2014

@sjr1 wrote: What about aerobics? Aerobic exercise is primarily for cardio fitness, it won't prevent muscle loss if you're on a calorie deficit to lose weight.

Dominique · ‎09-17-2014

@carl669 wrote: i'm curious as to what part of Attia's post you found freaky. i know low carb and/or ketosis isn't for everyone, but i've never thought of it as freaky. Actually, it was the part that involved measuring glucose and BHB on a daily basis. Of course, I understand most low-carbers don't do that and that he has a professional interest in documenting these values, acting as his own guinea pig. However, reading other blog posts of his really gave me the impression being in ketosis would be too much of a burden for me. As you said, it's clearly not for everyone.

Dominique · ‎09-17-2014

@SunsetRunner: thanks for the detailed info! Epilepsy isn't an issue for me or anyone close to me. Like you, I have been experimenting with low-carbing, or rather lower-carbing. It's a loose experiment: I've skipped items like pasta, rice and bread, but I still eat fruits and veggies. I hardly ate any sugary stuff before the experiment, so no change on that side. I don't count my intake, but I’m pretty sure I'm above 50 g, and probably even 100 g. I've had "free" meals (as described in Lyle McDonald's Guide to Flexible Dieting) every five days or so. After nearly three weeks, I haven't noticed much change one way or the other (weight, body fat, energy level etc.), not that I started this experiment with a given goal in mind. I'll carry one for a couple more weeks, but I think I've reached the same conclusion as you: I feel more comfortable with a more balanced diet that doesn't restrict one particular macronutrient and I can't picture myself eating less than 30 g of carbs on a semi-permanent basis.

Dominique · ‎09-17-2014

Are you affiliated with the company that sells this app? The reason I'm asking is the app was added to the Google Play store only yesterday (Sep 16) and it hasn't got a single review yet.

Dominique · ‎09-16-2014

@AM2977 wrote: I am looking for a good balance and at the present time I seem to have a high % of carbs. Looking for some feedback on what a balanced breakdown wood be? As often, the answer is: it depends. Here is a very good article (in four parts) by Lyle McDonald that compares the main types of diets: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/comparing-the-diets-part-1/ http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/comparing-the-diets-part-2/ http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/comparing-the-diets-part-3/ http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/comparing-the-diets-part-4/ At the end of part 4, there's a chart that suggests the optimal diet depending on factors like your activity level, insuline sensitivity etc.

Dominique · ‎09-16-2014

A question to the low-carbers out there: how low on carbs is your low carb diet? I'm asking because it seems the amount varies quite a bit depending on which "guru" you ask: some say 30 to 50 grams, other less than 100 grams etc. How many of you go low enough to get into ketosis? I read this blog post by Peter Attia (supposedly one of the low-carb "gurus") and he makes it sound quite freaky: <QUOTE> Anyone who has bought a blood ketone meter knows how tough it can be to get “into” ketosis by carbohydrate restriction (since everyone asks, I use the Abbott Precision Xtra meter which uses two different strips: one for glucose and one for beta-hydroxybutyrate, or BHB). Most practitioners consider the minimum threshold of NK to be a fasting serum level of BHB above 0.5 mM. I’m a bit more stringent in my practice and like to see fasting BHB levels above 1 mM. To give you a sense of one person’s numbers (mine), over the past 6 months my mean (i.e., arithmetic average) morning fasting level has been 1.7 mM with a median value of 1.4 mM. The highest morning level during that period was 5.2 mM. (The highest morning level I have ever measured in myself is 5.7 mM.) </QUOTE>

Dominique · ‎09-16-2014

@finneycanhelp wrote: Time is short. No time for cooking. I really think you should reconsider this, instead of taking it as a given. Even if you think you're an extremely busy person, I'm sure you can find the time, by resetting your priorities. Eating is so important for your health (as you said yourself: you are what you eat) and even a small amount of extra time spent planning it can make a big difference. It's a bit like TV: many people seem to think it's a given they have to spend 2-3 hours in front of it everyday, because it's what "normal" people do. You will then see tips on Fitbit forums on how to make the most of it (Fitbit-wise), by climbing up stairs during commercials, walking in place during shows etc. I used to be a "normal" person and I watched TV 2-3 hours a day. Nowadays, I hardly watch it at all, and guess what, I'm still alive. All of a sudden, I have more time available for exercising, cooking and other activities that are more important for my health and fitness.

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