As I said in the earlier entry, I made an offer to J that I'd pursue my eventual surgery with Dr. McGinn if she could help me lose the requisite weight. I agreed to follow her guidance since while my way had worked for the first 30-35lbs, I had obviously hit a plateau that I couldn't seem to get past. The first thing she broached was for me to track my calorie intake at either SparkPeople or LoseIt. I'm not sure why but I chose LoseIt.
My first quandary there was what "gender" to select. Legally I'm female, I've been on hormones for well over a year now, but I was still physically a male and there is a definite calorie difference between the two. We agreed that I'd go ahead and track as a Female, and we'd broach it with our GP since we had an upcoming visit. The next choice was my goal weight, we settled on 170lbs since that's still probably heavy for my size, but it's also a good 10lbs under what it should take me to get to a BMI of 28 so I'd have some wiggle room there. The last choice was how much to lose per week and we settled on 2lbs.
I was a bit shocked at the calorie limit that I'd need to adhere to to lose 2lbs/week - approximately 1500. Now considering my affection for Coca-Cola at 140 calories per can, that was a real concern. Not that I average it, but there have been days that I've probably downed 1500+ calories in just soda. My next shock was just how many calories are in certain foods. In some cases 200-300 calories in one of the Hardee's/Carl Jr.'s fresh made buns for example?
We agreed to start this on Thursday, February 28th of this year. My first shock was when J brought me home lunch - she and M had went out shopping. She brought me two of the Burger King Spicy Chicken sandwiches. I'm not really a "mayo person", but when we were on our trip a couple of times we hit BK and got them as part of their 2/$5 and I just ate mine as-is since that's how J likes hers. Well as it would have it two of those are in the 1200-1300 calorie range and with the soda they brought with it I had expended my calorie intake on one meal - this was going to be harder than I expected.
The next day I decided to look into a fitness tracker for us; I had been holding out for something from Samsung since I have a Galaxy S4 and she has my Galaxy S3 (from when I lost it at the airport a few months ago); but I was tired of waiting so I started poking around. The best fit for us seemed to be the FitBit One model. I looked at others, but they were either not as cost effective, didn't have Android support (hey Nike I mean you), or something else. I had initially considered the FitBit Flex, but upon reading the reviews it seems to overstate activity which is something I've seen with the Walking Mate that is part of the S Health Suite on the GS4, so we went with the One as it's a dongle that would clip to a bra easily to stay out of the way. In hindsight I probably could've went with the Zip since the differences seem to be sleep tracking which isn't a big deal to me and stair climbing which is only quasi-accurate on the One anyway from my observations. At the last minute I decided if I was going to dive in with these, I might as well look at the FitBit Aria scale as well.
So that Saturday M and I were going shopping anyway so we swung by a Best Buy and I got all three of us one of the One's and an Aria scale. A quick $400+ later we were on our way. There are plenty of reviews of both devices out there, but I'll toss in my two cents in the next few days; but suffice it to say the One has really given me some incentive to up my activity. Now in the case of J and M they can easily do 15000-20000+ steps a day at work; I on the other hand sit at a desk at home so I'm hard pressed to get any significant activity; so mine comes if we go out or if I venture down to the treadmill. I actually spent two hours on it the other day over three sessions (30min, 1hr, 30min) and have been down there semi-consistently the last week or so now that I'm feeling better. Their Android App works well as does their website. There is integration to LoseIt (and others); although in the case of LoseIt you need to be a premium member which ran me another $40 each for J and I; although it will also sync the scale and other devices as well. I didn't so much mind that as they have to make money somehow - which is something a great many people don't understand when they expect everything to be "free" on the web.
The big shock for me is that I seldom get any calorie adjustment on LoseIt from the FitBit - I need to usually hit near 10000 steps to start getting calories and it's not a whole lot at that. Now J has gotten 1500+ calorie adjustments in many cases due to her being so active - it does make me jealous at times, but I still prefer my job to hers. :) However, calories aside it's caused me to realize how active I am (or am not) in a day and to do something about it. For example last night I ended up on the elliptical for 25 minutes and did a hour on the treadmill over two sessions so I could hit the 10000 steps. I don't do that everyday, but even on days that I don't I tend to try and be up and moving a lot more than I used to, so it's been worth it to me so far. J is the same way as she's tracking everything on LoseIt as well. For M - well it's more of a "toy" than anything, but I felt bad getting J and I one and not her, so it was worth it even in her case and I have noticed her being more active even if she isn't really tracking her food, etc.
So far it's been a bit over a week and I've had some fluctuation as always, but I'm down about 4-5lbs so far, but the key will be in say a month to see if I've been able to continue to lose weight or if I'm still stuck around the 225lbs I am right now (well 224.8 <G>). But I have faith that J won't let that happen, and for that matter nor will I.
- M
No comments:
Post a Comment