April's CR Diary

But no, if people lived a "perfectly fulfilled life" stuck inside their houses and their little lives in those houses without ever going out for dinner, me and my mom will be out of business and people will go crazier and become even more anti-social and sociopathic than they already are!
And then, they'll eat us all.
Aprilitamu, take it easy...

I am ten pounds over the weight I am most comfortable at, and I really notice it, too! I can not for the life of me do full push-ups like I could a few months ago--it makes such a big difference!

I'm glad you pointed out how many calories people really can need. I was on 1300 calories (lots of ON!) for several months and lost quickly. And then I was veryveryvery hungry and ate myself out of that weight. I *thought* 1300 was okay for someone 5'3" (I'm also very small boned, and my stomach filled up quickly with that kale), but apparently when you are active at least an hour a day (easy stuff like walking, biking), it is actually starvation, not restriction. I had been beating myself up about it, thinking I had poor discipline--no, I was just hungry! It's not my fault! No wonder I felt overly restricted. I can probably do 2000 and lose at a slow but very sustainable rate. Anyway, this really encourages me. Slow and steady is healthy and sustainable!

Also good to know I don't need to up my cardio (I do also do strength training at least 2x/wk).

That's interesting! For my height and current weight (5'7") and 114lbs, I need 1700 approx cals to maintain, so if I want to drop down to 112 / 110lbs (goal weight, *my* ideal), that's 1200 cals a day, which is precisely what I set myself last year when I felt I was doing CRON properly. I've upped my calories in the last months because I felt that 1200 was too low (comparitive to other longer term CRONers), but clearly if I want to get where I want to be it's not. Just goes to show everyone's body and reactions to diet are different...

Other Sara,

but are you counting the wine? And are you accounting for the stuff you eat when you're out? I read your blog religiously, and I'm fairly sure you've said that you do 1200 in food but don't always measure your wine. My 1400 yesterday included alcohol as well as food. Alcohol calories can add up fast when you hang out with wine people, and those meals out can put a whole lot onto your average, even if your quotidian intake is lower.

When I first started CR, I was eating 1200 a day and losing weight like a hot potato, but at least twice a week I'd go out for a very large meal which probably put my total calories way higher. I was also burning off a huge tank of fat at that point.

When I was at my lowest weight (99 pounds at 5' 2") I was eating 1200 six days a week with one or two large meals out upping the average. That's including wine. My calories then were probably around 1400 average, with no exercise.

If you want to know how many calories it really takes to maintain/lose, measure absolutely everything, including wine, and don't go out for a month. I suspect you'll find that your real calorie needs are much higher than 1200.

a

*shame-faced* No, April, I don't count the wine... and you're right about the meals out. I have to eat out a lot, but I don't eat huge meals out; I'm very careful (P would say obsessively so!)... You're right though, I am almost certainly eating a lot more in calories than I think I am. But I do know that my metabolism seems quite a lot slower than other peoples' (why, I don't know) which might explain why I don't ever, ever, drop weight like a hot potato! :-) If I can ever get CoM installed again, I might have a better chance of getting back on track and a realistic idea of what I need, calorie wise, from food.

Your lunchtime salad must be a nutritional powerhouse. I can never get enough B5 without mushrooms.

The BMR calculator that you pointed to says a 55 year old person needs 100 calories less than the same 35 year old person, at my height and weight. As you say, everyone should pay attention to what they need and not follow some generic guideline. I've been weighing and recording and staying at 1200 calories a day. No change in my weight over a month. I think this is not surprising though, if you have to stay at 1500 calories a day at 35, and I am 55, and I don't burn the 200 calories in exercise that you do, and my lean body mass is only 85 pounds. It does not seem unexpected that there would be a 300-400 calorie a day requirement difference between us.

That makes sense Mary. Especially considering that I probably have quite a bit more lean mass than you do.

Also, I think I drink more wine than you do, and I've observed and also read that in lean women, wine calories somehow burn off faster than food calories. I note that 1300 of food vs. 1300 of food + wine produce different outcomes in my weight.

But these things fluctuate so much. I totally agree that one should follow one's own individual path. At the same time, I am often alarmed by the extremely low calorie goals that some have in the past set for themselves... often with the predictable result that they find it unsustainable.

Hi- I am new here. I just started CR with a 25% restriction. I am 5'4, 29yo and losing weight after only 3 weeks of CR. I had an extensive, thorough battery of tests to ID my actual caloric needs prior to starting. My average calories burned per day (measured over the course of a month) was 2226. I am currently eating a prescription of 1670 calories. I put all my information into the BMR and calculated my needs (x 1.375) and it came up with 2074, a little off but not much! Impressive.

Wow, Liz, good for you! Did you get all your bloodtests done too so you'd have a baseline to compare to?

a

Oh yes, I am very carefully monitored!

Hey April!

This comment isn't in response to the post you made, but is about an issue that I'm sure you'd want to be aware of: some people can't reach your blog! Not only that, but the same problem exists for any page at mprize.org (or methuselahfoundation.org, which maps to the same IP).

I mention this because I figure that you have more contact with the mprize.org admin than me, and I know you want your blog accessible to the public, and certainly it's important that your blog and the resources on the mprize.org website be available.

For the last few weeks, I've only been able to
reach (and read) it myself through a proxy server.
When I go to it normally, it just does a time out. I was hoping this was just a transient problem, but it seems not, so I did a little investigating.

Depending on where you browse or ping or traceroute from, you may not have a problem. I have no problem whatsoever reaching another website on the same subnet as you (I can reach techsane.com @ 216.194.67.156, yet cannot reach mprize.org @ 216.194.67.157), and DNS isn't a problem, both my ISP's DNS and OpenDNS sees "mprize.org" without any problem.

Using http://stat.qwest.net/looking_glass.html from Denver, CO, I see evidence of the same (ping, traceroute fails to .157, but works to .156), yet if I pick another router such as the Chicago, IL one, both work.

I'm not sure what to suggest as to the likely cause, or if it's anything that the mprize.org admin can fix. Given that it may be something out of the control of mprize.org's admin, it might be to your interest to change the server the blog is hosted on to get around this problem.. or not. Up to you.

I'm personally on mediacom in the midwest, so I expect if I'm seeing this problem, a fair number of others are too.

Hope this is of use to you.

I had the same problem accessing your blog when I was in California a couple of weeks ago. The whole time that I was on vacation, your blog appeared to be down. But when I got back to Boston, I could see that you had, in fact, made several posts during the time I was away and others had commented on them, so clearly *they* were able to access your blog.

Also, a commenter on my blog recently mentioned she was having trouble accessing your blog.

Weird!