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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2021-01-01, 01:10

I saw you mention calories, protein grams, and treats in a couple places now, kscherer. Are you using a food/meal calorie tracker on your i-Device? On my iPhone, I use FatSecret, though I know MyFitnessPal is a far more popular option (which I also used to use when a previous employer sponsored a free subscription for all of us). I went with FatSecret because it's not as naggy about paying to use a subscription service, the data entry catalog is good enough for my needs, and I'm willing to key in a few unique or new items that aren't recognized yet by its catalog.

Aaanyway, calorie counting (and macro counting) is a wildly underestimated essential skill for losing or gaining weight. After all, you can't fight the laws of thermodynamics! In my case, I'm actually trying to gain because I'm marginally underweight for my goals, and I realized that under normal conditions, I don't instinctively eat enough for any muscle growth no matter how hard I work them. I'm currently on a slow growth plan, but it's better than nothing, and if I wasn't tracking relatively closely, I'd definitely be under-eating most days for my long-term goals. When we went into quarantine starting back in March/April, I ended up losing a bunch of weight in the following couple of months because I wasn't out eating calorie-dense meals any more, I wasn't tracking what I ate at home, and in hindsight the difference was huge.

My wife is trying to lose a few pounds, and she was so frustrated not seeing any progress by just doing a bunch of extra cardio until she also realized that she needed to count her calories to really understand what was going on. It's all too easy to "reward" yourself after an intense workout and completely negate any possible gains you had, and I'm pretty sure that she was experiencing that more than just occasionally. She uses yet another different tracking app. I can't remember which one, but I'll try to sneak on to her phone to check later; I think it's LoseIt. They're all pretty much the same, though, with just slightly different interfaces emphasizing different goals and features.

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.
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