See How Easily You Can Maintain Your Weight! - 01.04.08 - D16P3R3

LIW - 175.4 lbs (12/17/07)
Today's Weight - 177.8 lbs
2.4 OVER LIW

Here is my menu for yesterday. This is what I had:

Breakfast: Coffee with Cream - a small slice of DR Fudge (Thanks to JPS's MOM!!!)
Mid Morning Snack: 2 Egg Omelet with Swiss Cheese
Lunch: Large Lettuce Salad with Chicken with Blue Cheese and Blue Cheese Dressing
Mid Afternoon Snack: Coffee with Cream
Dinner: Spaghetti Sauce with Meat with Shirataki Noodles (Do you remember Noodle Gate???)
Dessert: Small piece of Apple Crisp with a small amount of Vanilla Ice Cream

A total of around 1650 cals divided this way: 106 Fat, 84 Carbs, 86 Protein (need to focus on more protein!)

GO HERE AND SIGN UP FOR UPCOMING HCG NEWSLETTER!!! We are really trying to get this out, I am looking at Monday - thank you all for being patient!

Lise is still looking for support for her Teeth Fund, if there is ANY way you can help her, please pay attention to this Preview Commercial - her date of takeoff to Costa Rica is the 6th:

Dire Super Emergency Teeth Fundraiser for Lise Who is Scared Witless About Being Toothless in Ohio!

End of Preview Commercial!

Here is the eMail form for signing up for the New Book Club! I actually posted to the Book Club yesterday, but I have an assignment I gave to myself before we can start. I will be posting an update later on this morning. If you haven't signed up for it yet, please do so now. eMail Address Form

Thank you for the responses I received yesterday for the FAQ question I posed, I got responses from an Anon Poster, and Cindy. I am going to leave up this FAQ question a few more days to try to get more responses. Again, the FAQ form has only one question on it, you can take as much room as you like, it should be able to handle your response.

Please take a few moments to fill this form out:

TOM / Aunt Flo Issues on the Protocol



How much better can that be??? Going in the right direction!!! In just two days of being diligent about my choices, I have lost 3.8 pounds, that is what I call SHWEET! Again, I used the wisdom of my OWN words for a change and ate sensibly, watching everything I put in my mouth and came out a winner! WOO HOO FOR ME!!!

Now what is this about my title for this post today??? I want to talk about "Maintaining Your Weight" - this is an important part of the protocol, actually the MOST important part because this is the part that needs to last for life. Every "break" we take until goal, we are asked by Dr Simeon's to maintain our weight within two pounds of our LIW. This would include both the 3 week "Phase 3" portion (no sugars or starches) and the subsequent "Phase 4" portion, which is eating regular food again. It is at this point that we all need to learn how to "maintain" our weight, to keep it stable so that it creates a 'set point' in essence.

In my experience, I have found there is some confusion about this topic. I have come across people that pretty much do not understand what BMR is, which in my opinion is essential in understanding how to maintain, so this will be the focus of this post today.

BMR is an acronym for "Basal Metabolic Rate" - basically this is the number of calories that is necessary to keep your particular body alive at rest. There are many BMR calculators available on the internet, one that I use quite often is here:

BMI Calculator

Keep in mind that BMR is something that changes as you get older, as your weight changes, and as your activity level changes, so this means your BMR is something you need to check all the time. Having too many calories (going past your BMR plus activity level) will cause you to gain, but get this, so will going under. So really, the key is to discover your BMR and eat that many calories and you should be able to maintain. I say "should" because there would be instances that even by eating your calories, but eating the WRONG type of calories you could gain, but that is a post for another day.

Let me add here that knowing your BMR will also help you lose weight (and actually for some, it will help them gain weight) - but our focus right now is to discover how to "maintain" our weight. Again, that is a post for another day.

Ok, so it's easy enough to figure out using the above calculator what our "at rest" calorie needs might be. How do we figure out what it should be if we are at different levels of activity. Interesting, when I was using NHW this was their calculation for 'breaks' - to maintain your weight during these times you need to add 300 if you are sedentary, 500 if you are active, and 700 if your an athlete. Pretty close to the formula that I use here:

Harris Benedict Equation

I like using this formula because it seems much more accurate, giving you a little more activity levels to closely represent your lifestyle. The only thing that this formula does not keep in mind is "lean body mass" because that too plays a part of estimating our calorie needs, so in other words, in the "very" muscular it will underestimate, and in the "very" fat it will overestimate.

Ok, so let's use me as an example - I am going to plug my stats into the BMR Calculator to see the number I come up with - it's 1521.21 - this is the amount of calories I need to basically just stay alive during the day. This is the amount of calories my body uses as energy to keep me alive. Now let's use the formula found in the 2nd link and see where my daily calorie needs are according to my activity level ... right now, because of my back issues, my chiropractor has asked me to not do any exercise, so my classification would be "sedentary" - so I would take that number and multiply it by 1.2 to get 1825.45 - this means I should strive to meet that amount of calories to make my BMR for the day, or in other words, for me to maintain.

Easy enough eh?

For some? Maybe, for some others? Not so much. Some people find it very laborious to keep track of their calories day after day. Some people feel that this is too much bother. Some people also do not want to be attached to a calorie counter because this is what they have been doing their entire life. You might be surprised if you just keep a journal for one week of what your eating. What is interesting to me is that after dealing with the same foods day after day, I start to realize what calories are in the different foods I eat. In my HUMBLE opinion, I tie this into the illustration I used yesterday about our cars ... you wouldn't just put ANY amount of motor oil, some cheap brand, or some extra oil you had laying around the house into your vehicle. You would make sure the exact amount with the optimum numbers that are needed for your particular vehicle and use that. Why not spend that kind of time making sure we are meeting our calories.

This is what I usually do ... right after dinner, while the day is still fresh in my mind, I head to my FitDay - it takes me no more than 5 minutes to enter the stuff I have eaten for the day into there. At that time I can look over my menu for the day and see where I need to change things, or even if I need to. 5 minutes of my time during the entire day offers me SO much for SO little investment.

What is your BMR? Tell me either by using my TAG Board in the left side bar, or use my comment box on the right side bar, or leave me a comment, either way, I would like to know what your BMR is!



HA! I told you I would get prolific again! It was just a matter of time before I would get all geared up for my long butt posts again! WHAT IS THAT ABOUT? I am finding that the longer I am on this protocol, the more healthy I am thinking. My thoughts have really turned right around to good health, mental as well as physical. You will be finding more and more of these types of posts in the future, as I delve into this new world.

On to my commenter's - these are my responses to yesterday's comments:

Mary - HA! Girlfriend, you are entirely TOO FUNNY!!! I think once you settle down into your routines again, you will do just fine. This next round will be a kick start for you on the straight and narrow once again!

Crystal - Oh, your ham soup recipe looked DIVINE, but it's something I need to stay away from right now, OMG - salt is my enemy! ROFL - Did you do the interview? How did it go???

Lili - Geesh Lili, OMG - I am nowhere even NEAR the whole Potassium/Sodium ration thing. UGH - I am seriously putting that down in my notebook to learn more about this. I would rather stick to more natural ways to get potassium in than taking supps, KWIM??? Thanks for that info tho, you are a WEALTH of information! And your funny too ... BOTOX??? I just have ONE question ... did it hurt? Ok, two questions, did it WORK???

Wendy - Yup, the water worked! WOO HOO FOR ME!

B - Oh yeah, I think I will use the car illustration for many moons to come, it really works ya know??? I just got to thinking how much some of us take care of our cars to the hilt, yet wont do the same for our bodies, what is UP with THAT???

Becca - Shoot me an email if you still have my addy, if not, use that little comment box on the right side bar and shoot me a comment with your email, I don't think your added to the Book Club. HA! You like my purse eh??? How cute is that??? I can't wait to be able to change that outfit, I am getting tired of looking at it! ROFL

Have a great day people!!!

Biz