"It HAS to be the food!"

As I've explained in "The omens and the blue-haired tormentor," Flaminia ("Fla"), my trainer, pointed out to me that I was working out every day and I should have been losing weight but I wasn't.  She said, "It HAS to be the food!"

Fla had me join MyFitnessPal.com ("MFP") which tracks calories and all nutritional values and told me to just worry about the calories and she'd worry about the rest.  Worrying about just one thing made it easy.  She and MFP put me on 1,500 calories a day.  I was already used to tracking on Weight Watchers ("WW") so it was no problem switching over to MFP.  Fla often checked my food entries and made comments/suggestions about what I should and shouldn't eat.  I was listening by this point and I tried all of her suggestions.  I kept some, others I didn't.  But in all cases, I made some type of modification to my diet. 

The first month Fla and I truly started working together in late November 2014, I lost 14 lbs.!!!!  In one month!  Incredible!  From the day I met her in August 2014, until a year later in August 2015, I lost another 75 lbs. (69 lbs. of which were from November 2014 when I started listening to her).

One of the things Fla pointed out to me after I gave her my first food diary (which I had copied over from my WW diary), is that WW was allowing me way too many calories and it was deceiving because WW tracks points, not calories.  I'm a visual learner so I went home and worked out the numbers to compare WW and MFP.  I still wasn't sure why WW was failing me, but once I saw it in black and white, it made perfect sense.

WW works on points.  Foods are assigned points and each point is equivalent to about 40 calories.  Most fruits and vegetables are 0 points.  The number of points allowed per day depends on the person's gender, age, and present weight.  As a person drops weight, the daily points are reduced and if a person gains, the points are increased.  Daily points are only for that particular day and cannot be carried forward, meaning that if you end today with a balance of points still available, you cannot carry them over to tomorrow.  WW also allows an extra 49 points per week to be used in any way (in one day, throughout the week, or not at all).  Finally, WW also allows additional points for activities, such as exercising, housework, gardening, etc.  The amount of extra points WW allows for an activity depends on the intensity and length of time for that activity.  For each week, the website automatically deducts points in the correct order (daily points first, then weekly, then activities) and the client doesn't have to calculate anything so it's pretty easy.

As for MFP, it tracks calories and all other nutritional values for everything, including all vegetables and all fruits.  MFP does not allow for extra calories each week.  Both WW and MFP allow credit calories for exercise and activities (such as mowing the lawn), but WW's list of activities allowed is longer. 

To make the comparison of MFP (calories) and WW (points), it's necessary to convert WW points into calories.  Assuming one WW point is equivalent to about 40 calories, at the time I met Fla, I was on 37 WW points a day, or 1,480 calories a day.  MFP allowed me 1,500 calories a day; therefore, the two are comparable for daily calories allowed.  

Where the two diverge greatly is as follows:  

a)  WW gave me an extra 49 points (1,960 calories) every week to be used as I wanted or not at all.   Assuming that I used the 49 points throughout the week equally, that gave me another 280 calories per day.  MFP does not offer any extra calories per week. 

b)  WW does not track most fruits and vegetables because most are 0 points, but MFP tracks EVERYTHING.  Let me tell you, when you start including the calories for vegetables and particularly for fruits, your daily caloric balance starts diminishing fast!  For example, I love mangos, but one mango is 200 calories!

c)  Both WW and MFP give you extra points/calories for exercising and other activities (such as mowing the lawn), but WW's list of allowed activities is much longer and includes such things as ironing or doing laundry.  While using WW, on any given day, I could have an extra 7 to 14 points (280 to 560 calories) available to me depending on what activities I had accomplished that day. 

So between the extra 49 points, not tracking fruits and vegetables, and giving me credit points for ALL activities, I had a ton of points available to me.  In fact, because I had so many points available, I would indulge in having a glass of wine, a piece of cake, etc.  In my mind, it was no big deal because I was staying within points.  It turned out that all these extra calories were keeping me in maintenance and if I went over my allotted points (beyond what WW already allowed me), I gained.

So here it was, in black and white:  I had been eating WAY too many calories every day, every week for over a year and a half!  No wonder I was stuck in a plateau!

As soon as I started using MFP and just worrying about 1,500 calories a day, the weight started coming off quickly despite not being perfect on MFP either.  Because I was working out all the time, I gave myself 200 extra calories a day rather than having to add up credited calories for all activities I had accomplished on any given day.  This meant I could eat up to 1,700 calories a day and still lose weight as long as I continued to work out regularly.  Fla didn't like it at all that I went beyond the 1,500 calories a day, but she eventually agreed that 200 extra calories for how much I was exercising at the time was reasonable.  I also kept saying that as long as the weight was coming off, it was fine with me.  It wasn't that I was eating anything bad either, a banana (100 calories) would push me over so as long as I kept it around 1,700 calories a day, I was still losing steadily.  Fla's response was, "Imagine how much more you could be losing if you stayed on 1,500 only!"

In the past I had always heard that when you reach a plateau, you need to analyze what you've been eating and make the necessary adjustments.  I wasn't listening or I didn't quite understand what this entailed.  It seemed to me that if a program had been working, it should continue to work.   Obviously, this was incorrect.  Now when I reach a plateau or gain, I immediately start looking at what I've been doing:  did I eat a lot of empty calories (foods that offer no nutritional value such as bread, chips, etc.), did I eat too much, did I work out less, could it be too much sodium that causes water retention, etc.  Sometimes it's just my body's natural fluctuations and sometimes the culprit is because I need to be better in the future.  In order to succeed in my journey, I've been forced to constantly monitor what I'm doing (or not doing) and make subsequent modifications or changes.  It's been a never-ending learning experience.