Can you believe it's already May?!?! I can't!! I finished out my juice fast at about day 11 but my hubby is still going strong! I've lost track of how many days he's been juicing now. He took a meal off here and there when we had something going on but for the most part it's been pure juicing for him. He has lost 20.6 just since he started juicing and is down 27.6 from his highest in October. I'm so proud of him!!
I lost 11.9 in April through a combination of juicing at the beginning of the month and ending the month with calorie counting (WW Freestyle just doesn't work for me!) - most of the loss was through juicing though. Unfortunately, I had a gain of 1.3 this week even though I was right on target with my calories. When I decided to stop juicing I cancelled my WW app subscription and started using iTrackBites to track my calories. It works really well for calorie counting and I highly recommend it. However after my gain this week I started doing more research into how I could have gained when I knew I had a calorie deficit. I read up on macros and how different body types react differently to certain combinations of carbs, fat, and protein. Long story short - not all calories are made equal! I know, so simple but for some reason my brain just clicked on that reality that probably everyone already knows. It really made a lot of sense to me so I have decided to give macro counting a try.
I looked and looked through iTrackBites trying to find a way to easily track my macros and while I could see the macro counts for each individual food, I didn't find any area of the app that would add them up for me. I am way too lazy/busy/opposed/whatever to using math to that extent!! I knew there had to be a better way since so many people are on the macros bandwagon.
One of the blogs I researched for info on macros was Roni Noone's blog. She shared that she uses My Fitness Pal. I used MFP years ago and I still had it on my phone so during my lunch break I opened it up and started looking through the options. I put in what I had eaten today so far and then put in what I planned for dinner. I quickly realized that I was way too low on protein and way too high on carbs - hmmm...could that have been my problem all along. I made some adjustments to my dinner plan and ended up getting pretty close to perfect at the end of it all. I will definitely make some different decisions tomorrow!!
I really like MFP so far. I put in my weight and goals and it figured my macros and my calorie goals for me. I'll be completely transparent here - I'm 5'7" and I weight 234.7 (ugh!). The goals the app set for me in order to be able to lose 1.5# a week are:
Calories: 1,390
Carbs: 174g
Fat: 46g
Protein: 70g
(and a bunch of other ones too but these are the ones I plan to watch the closest)
I love how the app tells you what you have left to use rather than showing you what you have used - again more math that I do not want to take part in!! Here are how my numbers turned out today:
Calories: 31 left
Carbs: 9g left
Fat: 3g left
Protein: I went 5g over on this one
I feel really good that I did well on these numbers today. I did have a little more sugar than I should have but I'll work on that tomorrow. I think the granola bar I had for a snack is probably what put me over in that category.
I sure hope this new way of eating is the key to getting to a healthy weight range!!
No comments:
Post a Comment