My Fitness Pal

My Fitness Pal, for people not familiar, is a website/app that helps you track your calories and exercise. My Fitness Pal, if you enter your weight as 149, height as 5'4", and age as 40, will give you a daily calorie allowance of 1300.  I find this to be complete BS. The way I believe it to work, in my tiny mind (ha, so not true!!) is that it is a pure calories in, calories out formula. It also appears that they take your goal weight and multiply it by 10 to get the calories needed for a loss of 1 lb per week. I know this because I have a set of 2 cookbooks called Eat Yourself Thin (these are really great cookbooks by the way!) that propose this same formula.  Of course, if you exercise, you get to eat more calories.  I was not finding MFP to be my pal!!! I am a hungry girl!!

MFP!!

I consulted with my girls on the Mama

Laughlin Fit Camp page, and some suggested using my BMR (basic metabolic rate), which is the number of calories needed to maintain my current weight if I did absolutely nothing more than normal human activity.  Then, I used the Baldwin equation to find my caloric need based on my actual activity level.  I came up with around 2100 calories based on my TapouT XT program.  Then I subtracted 500 calories to get a 3500 calorie deficit per week.  Now I will be eating 1600 calories per day. (If I can manage to stick to the program. My brain is screaming "What about my cheat meals!!!!")

The reason I am trying out the MFP program is that I have stagnated on my weight loss. I know that part of this is due to me building muscle from the strength training portion of TapouT.  But I would still like to see the scale move a little faster, and I sometimes wonder if I am eating too much, even though most of what I eat is healthy.  (For example, I normally eat a whole banana and guesstimate a tablespoon of peanut butter for my snack, but today, I only ate half the banana, and measured the peanut butter, which is like half the calories of my average snack, since I was way off with the pb!!!)

At the very least, I will gain a better perspective on how many calories I am actually eating.  I can use this to take it up or down depending on my activity level.  I will also be able to see the effect that the calories I am eating have on my weight loss.

And now on to the important stuff...

Our houseguest, T, shall henceforth be known to this blog as Mr. Tumnus.  H gave him this name, because his real name reminded her of the character Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  We have all taken to calling him this in conversation.

I have discovered that Mr. Tumnus is a sweet potato fairy.  Twice now, I have come downstairs to find a cooked sweet potato sitting out, waiting for someone to eat it.  The first time, it was on the kitchen counter.  The second time, it was on the dining room table.  I know that he means to take them with him for lunch, then he puts it down and forgets it! I, myself, am a coffee in travel mug fairy.  But I don't even think anyone notices. :(

The hubster tried to flood the kitchen filling the Brita jug today. Fortunately, I heard the water and was able to avert disaster!

If you fill the Brita this way, you CANNOT go outside to water the yard at the same time!

And on a sad note, I only have one week of vacation left before I go back to the salt mines.  I am warning you in advance not to expect to hear too very much about my work, because I have heard about too many teachers who lost their jobs because of something they wrote on their blog about their students, school, or district. Sorry in advance!!

Thursday's menu:

Breakfast: Special K vanilla almond with almond coconut milk

Lunch: half a croissant roast beef sandwich and various side salads (I was at a memorial service) 1 pb cookie

Dinner: Sriracha Salmon, half a sweet potato, corn salad

Snacks: a peach, a pluot, some cherries

Workout: rest day!

Friday's menu:

Breakfast: whole wheat bagel thin, 1 scrambled egg, 2 turkey sausage patties

Snack: half a banana, 1 tbs peanut butter

Lunch: sriracha salmon and half a sweet potato

Snack: peach and pepper jack cheese stick

Dinner: fried Mac n cheese balls, fried pickles, garlic cheese dip with pita chips, half a cheeseburger, 3 giant bites of coconut caramel chocolate cookie with ice cream. Beers. (Hurray for cheat meals!! This week, we went to Slater's 50/50.  Their burgers are huge and you can build it however you want it. The hubster and I shared our burger and we split the appetizers with another couple.  We shared the dessert with everyone at the table.  One of the best cheat meals ever!!)

Workout: TapouT XT competition core. Planks, push-ups, squats with resistance bands, short cardio intervals with high knees and mountain climbers.