More than Just Pounds

I compiled a few pictures from each month of my 165 hikes in 2023, enjoy!

I had a rough week of trying to eat an average of right under 1700 calories and decided to redo my goal with the app and realized that I had chosen the wrong exercise level before.  So, I adjusted that to "hard" because I do anywhere from 6-8 hours a week of intense hiking, dancing and then weight lifting and "moderate" was probably not the right selection.

After adjusting my exercise level and putting 2275 as my maintenance average, it put me up around 1900 calories, which sounds so much better for me!  Here are my new ranges:

I do the Plant-Based setting and I have my protein where I personally need it to be.  I also need more carbs than most people because of my 4 hikes a week.  And, I like to eat a good amount of healthy fats in the form of nuts, avocado, olive oil and of course cheese!

On my old scale, I was down 1 pound and on my new scale I was down about half a pound.  But the best news is that my body is shrinking - I lost 2 1/4 inches off my body this week!

I have waited most of the year to be able to pay for the Carbon Diet Coach app and finally was able to!  I've only used it for 2 days but already find it much easier to use than MyFitnessPal.  It has my maintenance calories a little low at 2072 and has me at 1679 to lose 1 pound a week but I decided to let the coach figure it out for me as the weeks go by.

I had to choose the "Plant-Based" setting to be able to lower my protein down to 90 grams but I'm thankful that they do have that setting because "Balanced" only allows me to go as low as 114g and that was NOT going to work for me, that's too much protein!

I'm also not sure if I chose the right exercise setting - it was either moderate or intense and I chose moderate because I exercise 5-6 days a week, not everyday as the intense setting requires but I do 4 days of hiking and sometimes I'm hiking for almost 2 hours, so maybe I should choose intense??

I'm starting at 161 pounds on my old scale, 165.4 pounds on my new digital scale and 23.5% body fat, though I think that is about 2% off and I'm probably more around 25.5% body fat.  I also did my measurements today and will do those once a week.  I put my weight goal at 150 pounds but I am not aiming for a certain number because I will know when I'm at goal based on my measurements.  At 120 pounds of lean body mass currently, I'm thinking 145-150 is probably going to be the best range for me.

I have successfully maintained my weight now for 1 year!  I haven't posted lately because life was a little difficult but things are starting to smooth out now.  I've not pursued trying to lose any more weight but I hope to after Christmas.  I haven't had to track for months and have successfully learned how to maintain and not have to be bound by tracking.  I'm so thankful that I have been able to do so because it is so freeing!!

I do eventually want to get back to losing 15-20 more pounds but I am enjoying my new body and enjoying my great success at maintenance and being able to eat so much food and not gain the weight back!  My main goal has been to keep my metabolism up and I have attained that.  Anyone can lose weight but not many can keep it off because they destroyed their metabolism in the dieting process and to maintain, they'd have to eat small amounts of food forever.  I didn't want that, so I am glad I made sure to do refeeding and focus on eating ENOUGH food to keep my metabolism on fire.