Any exercise/diet regime has to be sustainable for the long term. Push yourself too hard so that you don't enjoy the new lifestyle and you'll end up giving it up quickly undoing all the gains made. It's a difficult balance. Well done for embracing it!
One question - how do you manage socialising, like going out to dinner/drinks with friends and still being in a calorific deficit? How do you even count the calories when you are eating out?
For sure! I don't have problems with long term maintenance, more with adjustments downwards. It's much easier to stay at one weight / level of fitness, than to improve!
As for managing going out with people:
- I don't count calories ever. Instead what I do is sort of figure out a heuristic. I eat from a certain set of things when I am not eating out, and after a couple months I figured out which combination of things would have me in deficit.
For example: Breakfast Sandwich, Yogurt, Salad, Tacos, Small Chocolate might be a set meal that I know I'll be in deficit for.
Sometimes if I'm doing a big workout day I'll swap out one item to replace with the meal I am getting with my friends. If I'm not working out, I might drop more items.
I don't count calories because its one of those things where theres this illusion of accuracy, but unless the numbers are 100% accurate (they aren't ever), you are still mostly flying blind, I find it better to create a system with some wiggle room, but where I know X is where I lose weight, Y is where I do not.
Do you use any apps or food/exercise journals to keep track of either goals or a sort of “viewing the big picture” approach? Or do you adopt a more “one day at a time” approach, while also keeping your big picture goals in focus? Speaking just for myself, while I like the idea of those tools and applaud anyone who uses them, I worry about becoming too regimented to the program, for lack of a better term, and, like the above commenter mentions, risk losing the enjoyment of the new lifestyle and soon, it’s off the wagon again. I’m always curious what others have to say about this.
I don't use an app, I just have a spreadsheet where I track what I've eaten and the exercise I've done (I also track things like water intake). I have a weird brain and enjoy tracking stuff like this on a daily basis, and I find having to go into a spreadsheet to add a snack discourages snacking!
Any exercise/diet regime has to be sustainable for the long term. Push yourself too hard so that you don't enjoy the new lifestyle and you'll end up giving it up quickly undoing all the gains made. It's a difficult balance. Well done for embracing it!
One question - how do you manage socialising, like going out to dinner/drinks with friends and still being in a calorific deficit? How do you even count the calories when you are eating out?
For sure! I don't have problems with long term maintenance, more with adjustments downwards. It's much easier to stay at one weight / level of fitness, than to improve!
As for managing going out with people:
- I don't count calories ever. Instead what I do is sort of figure out a heuristic. I eat from a certain set of things when I am not eating out, and after a couple months I figured out which combination of things would have me in deficit.
For example: Breakfast Sandwich, Yogurt, Salad, Tacos, Small Chocolate might be a set meal that I know I'll be in deficit for.
Sometimes if I'm doing a big workout day I'll swap out one item to replace with the meal I am getting with my friends. If I'm not working out, I might drop more items.
I don't count calories because its one of those things where theres this illusion of accuracy, but unless the numbers are 100% accurate (they aren't ever), you are still mostly flying blind, I find it better to create a system with some wiggle room, but where I know X is where I lose weight, Y is where I do not.
Do you use any apps or food/exercise journals to keep track of either goals or a sort of “viewing the big picture” approach? Or do you adopt a more “one day at a time” approach, while also keeping your big picture goals in focus? Speaking just for myself, while I like the idea of those tools and applaud anyone who uses them, I worry about becoming too regimented to the program, for lack of a better term, and, like the above commenter mentions, risk losing the enjoyment of the new lifestyle and soon, it’s off the wagon again. I’m always curious what others have to say about this.
I don't use an app, I just have a spreadsheet where I track what I've eaten and the exercise I've done (I also track things like water intake). I have a weird brain and enjoy tracking stuff like this on a daily basis, and I find having to go into a spreadsheet to add a snack discourages snacking!