I've been running for three months now and my weight varies across the week by around five pounds, some weeks more, some weeks less, but I'm typically in the 190s somewhere. You know where I was when I wasn't running? In the high 180s and low 190s. I never get to the 180s now! What the heck?!? I'd do better to quit running since I'm putting on weight while I run.
I don't think that really. I think what's happening is I run so I feel entitled to a few extra calories. Maybe some extra carbohydrates the day before my long run so I can "carb-up." The thing is... my long run is around half an hour. It's not really all that long and the "carbing-up" I'm doing isn't really helping. It's just an excuse. I think the term I read in Runner's World Magazine is "compensatory eating." I eat to compensate for the extra exercising I'm doing... and also eat my normal eating... so I'm getting more calories.
You know how many calories I burn running 3 miles? Around 444. You know how many calories are in a Nutty Bar? One of my favorite pretend healthy snacks because it's got peanut butter for protein that I need after a run to build muscle? Yeah... 320. That means if I also drink my Dole Grapefruit juice (290 calories) I'm already over feeding myself for the exercise I've done. And I can assure you my next meal... will not be a salad because since I exercised I will have EARNED a "real" meal. Ugh... you see the nasty stinking thinking don't you? The real miracle is that I haven't gained MORE weight!
Every time I've gone used Weight Watchers Online I've lost weight. I love the program and it's super easy for me to follow. (Especially when I had the blackberry. There was a WW app for the Blackberry that made life very nice. There isn't a WW app for the android that I've found yet.) But Weight Watchers Online isn't free. It costs money. Is it worth it? I've thought so twice and both times I've lost the weight. I hate paying though. Really I do.
SparkPeople is a site I really want to love. I'm going to use it again for two months at least. Over the next month I'm going to use it to track every bite I take and every drink I drink. I'll log my runs on there too but I need to know what I'm eating and I think that that will help. If I have to report that peanut butter and chocolate wafer treat by Little Debbie... perhaps I won't eat it. I'm going to give it a try. If you're on SparkPeople already shoot me a message there. My username is simplerich and I could use some diet support.
For what it's worth, Lifehacker listed SparkPeople as the winner of the reader choice (Hive Five they call it over there) for weight loss sites. It really is (SparkPeople it, not Lifehacker it) a rich site full of content. Sometimes it's too busy for me... I wish they had a guy version of the site that was more vanilla. It feels like it was designed for women. Am I the only one that feels that way? Anybody else even reading this blog that's ever been to SparkPeople?
3 comments:
I'd been dabbling with SparkPeople for food logging and workout tracking. Like you noted, it gets awfully "busy".
Just switched this week to myFitnessPal.com and digging it so far. A lot cleaner and it seems to work well for me.
Really like how clean myfitnesspal.com is. It beats the heck out of SparkPeople for clean clutter free website design. It's also much easier to use. I like the forums on SparkPeople a bit more, they seem more active, and I'm a big fan of forums... used to like a thing called usenet, maybe you've heard of it lol. Will keep using myfitnesspal.com and SparkPeople both for a while, at least long enough to compare reports. That'll be good to see too.
Good point -- I'm just wrapping up one week on mfp so no clue about the reports yet.
I definitely like logging with it though.
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