Monday, March 29, 2010

WW Points And Resting Metabolic Rate

Saturday marked the end of 3 weeks back on plan (Weight Watchers) with a loss of 9.6 pounds during that 3 week period.  The interesting thing for me is that this time I around I am not only eating all of my daily points but I am also eating all of my weekly points.  While doing WW in 2008 and the first half of 2009, I only ate my daily points, rarely eating any of my activity or weekly points.  Gradually I stopped losing weight even though at the time I was burning an average of 850 calories a day in activity.  I got discouraged when I stopped losing for more than 6 months.  Then, when I injured my knee in August last year, I rapidly gained weight, even though I was only eating around 1900 calories a day.  In reading about metabolism over the winter, what I came to realize is that for the 16 months I was "on plan" I was eating significantly less than my resting metabolic.  When I was 236 lbs, my daily points target was 31 points which is only around 1550 calories per day.  But at 236 my estimated resting metabolic rate is 1959.  I was significantly fueling below my resting metabolic rate, which I believe over the 16 months of doing so, slowed my metabolism. 

When my weight stabilized at 285 lbs in late January I had no idea how many calories a day I was consuming.   I had stopped counting calories in November since it seemed that no matter what I did I was going to gain weight.  Anyway, this time I am ensuring that I consume, at a minimum, enough calories to cover my resting metabolic rate.  By eating all of my daily points and all of my weekly points, my caloric intake over a week is equal to my estimated resting metabolic rate over a week.  By approaching my weight loss this way, this time, I understand that without exercise I will not lose weight.  But I hope that by keeping caloric input above my resting metabolic rate, my metabolism does not slow back down.

Last week, I blogged about TrainingPeaks.  One of the useful features of the program is that by my entering the calories I consume each day, the tool tracks whether or not I am meeting my estimated resting metabolic rate and then how may calories beyond that I am either burning through exercise or consuming through food.  Last week for example, I did a good job of balancing my calories consumed with my resting metabolic rate.  I only under ate about 400 calories for the week.   And, according to the caloric expenditures uploaded from my Garmin 305 into TraininPeaks during my workouts, I burned 10,192 calories my resting metabolic rate.  This means I should have lost approximately 2.912 lbs through my activities for the week.  My weight loss shown on the scale was 3.0 lbs.  This is pretty closed to what was predicted by tracking calories in and calories out based on the data in TrainingPeaks.  The small difference may be a combination of the 400 calories I under ate and slight difference in % water weight.

I am pretty pleased with how well I balanced my basic caloric demand last week.  Again, it is my hope, that by ensuring that I consume at least my resting metabolic rate each week, I am able to prevent my metabolism from slowing again over time.  The key is to make sure that I eat all of my weekly points and to accurately weigh and measure everything that I consume.

We will see how well the theory holds this week...

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