Choose the best goals! - Changes I need to make for my challenge

that's what I looked all day - image by wikipedia

Hey! It's Wednesday again and though I didn't make any video yet (we had a storm and I was outside all day with my animals), I'm right on time to write this blogpost.

In my Nerdfitness-Forum Challenge log you can find more details about how my days went since Sunday but I want to fill this blog with more than pure data. I want to write down what moved my head in those 3 days.

It's hard for me to admit, but I really have to rescedule my biking goal - I would so much love to go for a ride, but I'm so tired every night and I just don't want to see any outdoor's rain, mud and wind anymore. I'd rather make body weight exercises. But yet a smaller goal came to my mind, but you'll read about it a little more below.

John, from the Obese to Beast YouTube Channel is a big inspriation for me. Not only because he's lost such a big amount of weight but also because his videos are so helpful. Some days ago he posted this very cool video - you might only understand it if you've been through what he's talking about yourself: how weight loss and willpower ride like a rollercoaster up and down and you never really get it. People in the comments argue, that there is no proof scientifically for metabolism damage, but if you've been there, you know exactly what John is talking about.

Here is the video:

So I realised something important about the weight loss equation that wasn't as clear before in my mind: "Calories in versus calories out" doesn't mean the same thing as just cutting out calories!!! It's all about balance!

My body has a certain ratio in which it burns calories everyday - this ratio depends on my body fat percentage and also on my level of activity. Eating less than I burn will FORCE my body into burning his stocked energy - Ok - I think, this is an obvious thing.

As a person interested in Biology I might add: my body's metabolism is constantly trying to find balance and it gets used to a certain amount of food and a way to process it - to loose weight we breaks this balance and we hope, that our body gets used to eating less. We are focused on the result: having a different number on the scale - but do we care to regain balance?

How can we have a healthy relationship with food if we forcefully strain our body and try to imitate having less food available?

At this point exercise comes in - strenght training to be more precise. I never really got this point - as I understood it it sounded like this: everyone talks about calories and that diet is 90 % of the battle - so, eating less equals weight loss - exercise keeps our mind busy, we spend more time doing something else than eating and it makes us feel good and we also build endurance - ok, so I can just eat less/right and loose weight without exercise also?

But I didn't yet pay attention to this tiny detail rarely ever mentioned anywhere: we cannot durably eat less than our BMR!!! Our body will always try to bring us back to it! Even if we do more exercise, we will get hungry for more food!

So, is weight loss a hopeless case?

First of all, I'm still trying - my journey is just on the beginning and everything I write here is just a hypothesis - but I dare to say: no! There's something we can do:

1. Build muscle!
Our body will then spend it's energy into building up the muscles instead of storing it as fat, which will make us even more endurant and strong to take on even bigger challenges. Plus: more muscle means we are spending more calories to mantain them, which means we can eat more, which means it's easier for us to eat less.

2. Eat clean!
There are certain foods that make us feel full easier on one side but there are also those full of minerals, protein, vitamines and healthy fats that really help our metabolism and make us feel great! We don't have to stuff our face with carbs and feel bad all day long because of our sugar levels. We can choose smart foods and not restrict us!!!

The 2 combined can help me to feel full and not hungry but caring about my weight at the same time - I'm curious where this hypothesis will lead me - it's very basic and simple so I can easily track it's evolution.

For 3 days now I started to eat more and more paleo again and I start to feel great again - what a happy moment.

I wanted to come back to my biking challenge: having realized now, that cardio is good but strenght training is having more benefits I'm thinking of changing this part. But I won't go into strenght training right away, there was something else with wich I wanted to start out:

Track my daily level of exercise in my daily life!

Before I make new workout plans, I want to know how much I'm doing already and have a better look at my real life. This is a small step but for the next few weeks I will track the minutes I spend working on the farm, doing grocery shopping, playing with the dogs, cleaning the house, working with m horses etc. I want to know how much of the day I'm active and to be able to optimize this or bring it to a more regular basis.

For example: let's say I find out I'm moving around 3 hours on some days and only 30 mins on others, I could then make the goal of moving for at least 1,5 hours every day so I know, when I'm doing less, I will have to look out for another activity (e.g. work in the garden).

This is my goal-change for this challenge - I will keep you updated on twitter, tumblr and in my NF-Battle log.

Thanks for reading - I will write again on Sunday!

Heads up everyone!
Yours,
Elanor