Why I'm writing this? I'm not so sure. Maybe someone has a similar experience or a completely different one.
Just to give you some background information. I lost a lot of weight during COVID but last year was a tough one and my go to in such situations was always food. So I regained quite a substantial amount of weight back again. I wasn't working out consistently and my eating behavior was all over the place. I like to emphasize that in my case the weight is only a symptom and not the main issue for me. The main thing that really troubles and stresses me is my eating behavior. But like many others, weight is such an easy concept, a single number you can get lost with.
Anyway in the last couple of months I rebuilt almost my entire strength and endurance which I lost last year. However, the numbers just don't add up. I looked into my calorie intake the last few days and I compared it with what my smartwatch is giving me as calories burned per day, and it looks from the numbers that I'm currently eating on maintenance. The scale is telling another story, I'm losing weight. Sure I could have made a mistake with my own calorie intake calculation but it should be quite accurate. So, my assumption is that my not so smart smartwatch doesn't get my resting calorie burn (BMR) at all. By now I have built a lot of muscles and I assume that my basal metabolic rate is significantly higher than the watch is estimating. Also considering that my resting heart rate is for me quite low and that it is very difficult for me by now to get my heart rate high enough to get over the threshold to fat burn at least for a sufficient amount of time, makes me question if either the threshold my smartwatch is using is questionable or I'm currently decently trained. Another thing I noticed is that no matter how many steps I do per day, my watch is cutting me down by around 100-200 calories since I got a year older. So my assumption is that I must have reached some age threshold which downgrades my energy expenditure. That would explain why the energy intake and energy expenditure doesn't add up anymore.
These are a lot of numbers and to add to this, I'm currently at the upper end of my BMI. (I know, another questionable number.) That means that if I gain one or two more kg I classify as overweight, which even for me sounds kind of ridiculous.
What I actually wanted to say is, you can obsess about the numbers, use them as guidelines or just ignore them, because none of them tells the full story and none of them says how I'm really feeling. And at the moment I feel strong, and fit, and healthy. And as I mentioned above, it's not the weight or any other number that bothers me, it's my eating behavior. And as long as this is ok-ish I'm ok.
Numbers, Numbers, Numbers
Hello beautiful Blenders,
Sorry for the long message.
Why I'm writing this? I'm not so sure. Maybe someone has a similar experience or a completely different one.
Just to give you some background information. I lost a lot of weight during COVID but last year was a tough one and my go to in such situations was always food. So I regained quite a substantial amount of weight back again. I wasn't working out consistently and my eating behavior was all over the place. I like to emphasize that in my case the weight is only a symptom and not the main issue for me. The main thing that really troubles and stresses me is my eating behavior. But like many others, weight is such an easy concept, a single number you can get lost with.
Anyway in the last couple of months I rebuilt almost my entire strength and endurance which I lost last year. However, the numbers just don't add up. I looked into my calorie intake the last few days and I compared it with what my smartwatch is giving me as calories burned per day, and it looks from the numbers that I'm currently eating on maintenance. The scale is telling another story, I'm losing weight. Sure I could have made a mistake with my own calorie intake calculation but it should be quite accurate. So, my assumption is that my not so smart smartwatch doesn't get my resting calorie burn (BMR) at all. By now I have built a lot of muscles and I assume that my basal metabolic rate is significantly higher than the watch is estimating. Also considering that my resting heart rate is for me quite low and that it is very difficult for me by now to get my heart rate high enough to get over the threshold to fat burn at least for a sufficient amount of time, makes me question if either the threshold my smartwatch is using is questionable or I'm currently decently trained. Another thing I noticed is that no matter how many steps I do per day, my watch is cutting me down by around 100-200 calories since I got a year older. So my assumption is that I must have reached some age threshold which downgrades my energy expenditure. That would explain why the energy intake and energy expenditure doesn't add up anymore.
These are a lot of numbers and to add to this, I'm currently at the upper end of my BMI. (I know, another questionable number.) That means that if I gain one or two more kg I classify as overweight, which even for me sounds kind of ridiculous.
What I actually wanted to say is, you can obsess about the numbers, use them as guidelines or just ignore them, because none of them tells the full story and none of them says how I'm really feeling. And at the moment I feel strong, and fit, and healthy. And as I mentioned above, it's not the weight or any other number that bothers me, it's my eating behavior. And as long as this is ok-ish I'm ok.