Heh Heh Sometimes Praying Horse Has Fun

Or: Bovinus Mortimus, I Hardly Knew Ye

How Much Did I Actually Eat Before?

I weighed 278 pounds when I made my decision to change – I must have been eating millions of calories a day, right? Out of curiosity I thought I would plug in the numbers to see how many calories it actually was.

Interesting. Turned out to be 2300 calories a day to maintain that weight at my age and height. Guess how much I’m eating now, approximately? About 2000 – 2100. Not that much of a difference really when you look at it from a daily maintenance perspective.

However, I wasn’t exercising at all and I ate a lot of sugary and just generally unhealthy stuff. And even now, if I weren’t exercising a fair amount almost every day both on the treadmill and at the gym lifting weights or going out hiking, my maintenance calories would be just under 1600 per day.

More numbers – how many extra calories did I eat to gain all that weight? I know that somewhere in 1994 or so, I weighed 155 pounds. So I gained 123 pounds in 12 years. Supposedly, you have to eat an extra 3500 calories to gain a pound (and restrict by the same amount to lose one). So I ate 430,500 extra calories to do that, in 4380 days. That’s something slightly more than 98 extra calories a day on average.

To me this just highlights the need to vigilance and care. I already know that I have a propensity for gaining weight, and I have a lot of fat cells that are just waiting for some extra calories to show up so they can grab onto it and store it.

So now, in order to maintain, I know that I must

1. Pay attention to what I eat. This is why, even though it may seem obsessive, I still count and log my calories. It keeps me honest because I love food so much it would be ridiculously easy to start justifying overeating again. And the food I eat is as healthy as I can make it, with only the occasional straying off the path for a gooey treat.
   
2. Get as much exercise I can in a healthy, safe and fun way. I have a desk job where I sit on my butt all day, so I have to stay focused and dedicated to this. If I don’t exercise, I have to restrict my calories down to my estimated maintenance level.
   
3. Weigh myself on a regular basis. Again, I personally consider this a key factor in my own maintenance because it makes it impossible to lie to myself. It’s a number and it keeps things objective.

Metabolism and You: Some Numbers

BMR: something interesting I’ve learned about metabolism while trundling along my weight loss journey. There are various methods of calculating what your metabolism is probably doing if you can’t afford or don’t want to go through lengthy or costly metabolic testing.

Here’s the idea – you want to know approximately how many calories you burn on any given day by taking your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) and adding in your typical activity level. Once you have a pretty good idea of that, you can figure out how much of a caloric deficit you want to create by eating somewhat fewer calories than your total burn. A calorie deficit means that you are setting the stage for weight loss. If you don’t want to lose weight, but instead maintain your current weight, you’ll want to eat around the same calories as you burn.

The BMR calculation produces a number that tells you how many calories you would burn if you did nothing but stay in bed and breathe all day – no activity at all, just how many calories you would need to continue existing. There are a number of calculations and online calculators, and I’m sure each has its proponents, but suspect that for most of us they’re going to come up with numbers fairly similar.

You don’t want to eat fewer calories than your BMR because if you deprive yourself below BMR, your metabolism will slow down so that you burn less – a double edged sword for sure. This is where regular exercise – both strength training and cardio – can help, by increasing your BMR. Exercise also just makes you generally more healthy and fit and boosts your ability to burn energy.

Here’s a link for more info about BMR: Wikipedia Link. This BMR calculation uses metric measurements, so if you need them, here are some converters for pounds/kilograms and inches/centimeters: Pounds/Kilograms and Inches/Centimeters

This is the BMR calculation for women that I’ve used to calculate my own BMR, as an example. Figure out and plug in your own numbers to see what you’re burning.

655 + (9.6 x weight in kilograms) + (1.8 x height in centimeters) - (4.7 x age)

655 + (9.6 x 65.77089365) + (1.8 x 166.116) - (4.7 x 51)655 + 631.4005 + 299.0088 - 239.7 = 1345.7093 BMR

This weight in kilograms is 145 Centimeters is converted from 5' 5", age now 51

For men the calculation is somewhat different:
BMR = 66 + (13.7 x weight in kilograms) + (5 x height in centimeters) - (6.8 X age)

If I were male, my calculation would look like:
66+ (13.7 x 65.77089365) + (5 x 166.116) – (6.8 *51)66 + 901.061 + 830.58 – 346.8 = 1450.78 BMR

Using the multipliers for activity level:
1.2 multiplier for sedentary
1.375 multiplier for lightly active (light workout day)
1.55 multiplier for moderately active (probably a typical day for me)
1.725 multiplier for very active (if I really push it)

These are my estimates for burn at different activity levels:
Sedentary burn: 1615
Lightly active: 1850
Moderately active: 2086
Very active: 2321

And if you want to do it the easy way, here’s a link to an online BMR calculator.

What Do You Really Want? Maybe Not Food

Here is a great idea I read about recently for working with emotional eating.

As emotional eaters, a lot of our desire or desperation for food is really related to our desire for something else. For example, we feel lonely and reach for food to make us feel better. Our true desire here is for friendship or companionship or a loving relationship. Or we’re bored so we eat, but what we really want is some excitement or something to do that we find stimulating.

The idea is to make a list of what we really want in our life, five items or so. Write it down, memorize the list or carry it in our purse or wallet, and when we recognize that we want to eat when we’re not hungry or we’re overeating (ready to dive into a bag of cookies), we can look to our list of wants and see if what we really want is one of these items rather than food. If so, then rather than mindlessly eating or stuffing down our feelings with food, we can take some meaningful step toward meeting one of our goals or manifesting a true desire.

Here's my list as of today:

1. A strong muscular body and good health.
2. Financial stability with some level of security in knowing that I can retire comfortably.
3. A positive move to the ranch.
4. A loving relationship with my husband.
5. A creative outlet, or many creative outlets like writing, blogging, art work.
6. Close friends who can be trusted to support me and to whom I can offer support that is appreciated.
7. A method of generating income that is creative, interesting and fulfilling.

Food is the Pillar of My Life

There was a question on a questionnaire I took last week about emotional eating habits - Is food a pillar of your life? Emphatically yes! Still!

There are times even now when i spend more time thinking about food than much else, what it is I'm going to eat next, and how long it will be before I get to eat again. A great deal of mental energy goes in this direction. I don't even know if this is something I need to consciously try to change or if it's something that will begin to change all on its own in time, as I get more comfortable with maintaining my weight and with my hunger patterns. A lot of it does have to do with actually being hungry a lot, since I do work out a lot now, not that I'm an elite athlete of course, but I have recently increased my weight training and that has a direct effect on my hunger level.

However, I admit to some circular logic here because it is also true that I exercise specifically so I can eat more. Yes, I do the exercise for heart health and it does make me feel good afterward and I love the results and I love being stronger, but here it is: I get to eat more because I burned more calories. Somehow that feels wrong - or at least, not quite right, somehow.

I feel that my basic instinct is still, to some extent, to want to eat a LOT of food and to get full. And I am afraid that I would just go nuts and eat way over the amount I need to maintain my current weight if I stopped counting calories and keeping track.

Another insight I have had recently about food and my emotional response to eating. Sometimes, I actually feel sad when it's time to stop eating, whether it's because the food is gone or because I'm full. (Usually the former.) Sometimes, I go to bed thinking about the grand moment in the morning when I am going to get to eat breakfast.

In addition, although I love to get full, it's the actual act of eating and the taste and deliciousness of the food that is at least as, if not more, important than the fullness.

Changing Beliefs about Eating

I found a great web site today that gave me a great deal of insight into learning to change our relationship with food. Although I have now reached a healthy weight, I am still finding it a challenge learning how to trust myself with food and with eating. The web site, although it is aimed at bulimics and anorexics, has a lot of wisdom to offer those of us who have been emotional over-eaters. Link. One of the recommendations from that site was for us to examine what beliefs we hold about eating and about food that are negative beliefs that hold us back from trusting ourselves with food. Once we understand what those beliefs are, we can then "reframe" them into something positive that will assist us in changing our thought patterns and behavior. These are some of the beliefs that I have held, and how I would like to change them.

1. I always want to overeat. Change to: I eat the right amount of food to satisfy my hunger.
2. I like to get really full when I eat. Change to: I enjoy a comfortable feeling of satisfaction with the amount of food I eat.
3. I am afraid I will be unable to maintain a healthy weight. Change to: I easily and effortlessly maintain a healthy weight.
4. I love food more than I love anything else. Change to: My life is big and full and food is just one part of it.
5. If I get hungry, I'll starve. Change to: When I'm hungry, I can eat the right amount of food to feel satisfied.
6. I think about food all the time. Change to: I stop thinking about food when I'm not hungry.
7. If I let myself eat the amount of food I want, I won't be able to stop myself from overeating. Change to: I pay attention to when I am full and satisfied and easily stop myself at the right point.
8. I can't trust myself around food. Change to: I implicitly trust my body to inform me when I am full and satisfied with the amount of food I eat.
9. If I eat foods that I really love, I'll never stop eating them. Change to: By giving myself permission to eat the foods I love, I am able to eat them in the proper portions.

Emotions Stored in Fat?

Along my weight loss path, one of the primary issues I have dealt with has been how to work with my emotions without turning to food. In addition, especially at the beginning of the process, I ran into quite a few issues, such as neck and back spasms that had no physical cause, but were obviously emotional in nature, stemming from anxiety and fear. All along, I have thought that as I lost weight, I also released a lot of the emotions I was feeling at the time I originally created the fat cells (or stored energy in them, however you wish to describe it). In other words, that we store our emotions in our fat. I’ve spoken to other people who have lost a lot of weight and gotten mixed reviews of this theory. From a scientific perspective, this would not seem to make any sense. However, for me on an emotional and spiritual level, it really resonates. I have emotions and memories being released that very much relate to what I was going through around the last time I was at the same weight. I feel fortunate in that I have a very good support system, a loving husband and good friends, because learning to find other outlets for my emotional eating has been challenging.

Differentiating between emotional hunger and real hunger is something I always have to evaluate, not to mention figuring out the third type of hunger I have - mouth hunger, that is, the true pleasure I get from the taste of good food. Not everyone feels this - my husband doesn't really, he just eats to stoke the fire.