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Fitness Weekly Discussion
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
I've been using Macrofactor for a couple of years now to track calories, and it works okay. It's not cheap (~$70 annually), but since it has helped me control my weight, I feel like it's totally worth the money.
The algorithm uses only my calorie intake and weight variation to calculate my expenditure: https://help.macrofactorapp.com/en/articles/20-expenditure
As I lose weight, my expenditure goes down, and it automatically adjusts the targets: https://help.macrofactorapp.com/en/articles/222-how-does-macrofactor-make-adjustments-for-a-weight-gain-or-weight-loss-goal
I tend to overeat during holidays and then spend a lot of time in a slight calorie deficit (~ -200/300 kcal).
Doing "volume eating" (Google) has helped keeping calories down.
It looks interesting, macrofactor, though they do this anti pattern by shouting about getting 1 week free, but only if you subscribe, therefore hoping you forget and accidentally pay. I'm so drained about things like this :(
As a counter, the Kagi trials that were given away here don't do this. You get the trial, then service ceases and you decide what to do next. Just read the terms on macrofactor closer, and you have to cancel on the 5th day out of 7 to avoid charges. :( Can't even see the UI in-app before deciding.
I'm looking to restart a calorie counting exercise.
About 15 years ago I dropped from 145Kg to 69Kg with a combination of careful food consumption, and running 70Km+ a week, many marathons etc. I turned into quite a good runner actually, especially for someone in their 40s. I used myfitnesspal to track my exercise and food.
Fast forward to post covid (that's my excuse). So from 2020 my exercise virtually stopped. I started getting a bit injured here and there, there were lockdowns etc. But the main thing is, I started working from home. All my wonderful routes through parks and up and down giant hills were gone, and I basically lost all motiviation.
So I'm sat here being quite sad, and tipping over the 100Kg mark again. Still way below the 145, but much above where I want to be (probably 75-80Kg at my age would be fine, I'm in my mid 50s now).
I started going to gym but my brain thought I was still 40 and I could still run a 39 minute 10K. I cannot, but I trained like that's what I was aiming for and picked up lots of injuries again. Bah.
The point of this rambling essay is -- what the hell have they done to myfitnesspal? It's an expensive unusable mess now. I tried 'Waistline' but that's very terrible for other reasons.
I'm going to try and swap out my 6 year old home treadmill (not gym standard, but not rubbish either, it's powered incline, max 20Kph, it's okay) for a good eliptical. But I can only have one, because space, and no one wants a second hand treadmill, and it was built in the room in which it resides, so would need many hefty people to haul it out in one piece and take it away.
Suffice to say I'm just all kinds of grumpy about this at the moment. And everything is a lot harder than the first time around. Motivation is creeping back slowly, but even the tiniest excuse results in days of procrastination.
I'm probably going to start gym again, but with no subscription this time, just PAYG. And try and stay off the treadmills (but I do love them so, I ran a half marathon on one once, in a leisure centre whilst waiting for family to stop swimming, that took about 2 hours).
Thanks for reading, probably the longest ramble I've written on here.
Oh yeah, went for a walk today in the sunshine, just a couple miles. Stood on a pebble and twisted my knee awkwardly.
I don't know if it's your style but you could look into a Zwift setup. It's a nice way to gamify your workout.
I also like to do (virtual) spinning classes as your easily motivated to stay on the bike and push harder.
I've done some calorie counting in the past with MyFitnessPal but it's indeed a huge mess nowadays.
I disliked all alternatives like Chronometer, FatSecret or Lose It! As it was all trying to be way to polished.
I've experimented a bit with ChatGPT for tracking calories. There's this Calorie Tracker GPT.
Where you can send a pic of your dish and it will guestimate the amount of calories.
It works easy but it doesn't store the information in a log for daily or weekly reports.
I weighed in at my heaviest (214lbs) about two months ago and was told I’m prediabetic, so I started getting on the Peloton 3x per week about a month ago. I travelled Friday - Tuesday so I missed two of my workouts, then was utterly exhausted yesterday and skipped that workout too. I got back on today, despite my lack of motivation, and it felt good to get back to it.
I want to start playing pickleball (and I read that it can burn a lot of calories), but haven’t been able to sync up with a friend of mine to take an intro lesson at the same time.
I feel like I'm finding my stride again after breaking my toe last September and it feels phenomenal!
I'd been back to biking/swimming since December, but with daylight savings kicking in I get to start Volleyball, soccer, and running again. Hell I even got the greenlight from my doctor to climb "at a mellow pace while listening to my body" again even with my worsening dupuytens disease. That was quite the win.
All in all my body is just feeling in sync. Like, when kicking the ball on the field or setting up for a spike in volleyball I feel really coordinated. Things are just moving they way they are supposed to. When swimming I feel like I'm just gliding again and have sped up a lot, enough that the guys I swim with have been mentioning it.
Overall just feeling stoked on my level of fitness and reveling in it before the next inevitable injury and I'm left crying on the couch!