Regulating My Weight Using the MyFitnessPal App

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share my system for regulating my weight using the myfitnesspal app. 

I’m a little hesitant to do this video. I know that lots of people struggle with losing weight and I have a lot of compassion for that situation. I have been there as well. Right now, I’m at a healthy weight — I’m lucky to have pretty good genes, a wide ranging palate, and a schedule and ability level that permits exercise. That said, I tend to overindulge during certain times of the year, so I need a surefire system to get back on track.  This is a system for those who are within striking distance of their goal weight and are looking for ways to maintain that. 

This system is adapted from observing a skinny person in my life. My husband has a different weight profile that I do. Whereas I have always been generally a normal weight for my height with some unhealthy yo-yoing around my college years, he has always been skinny and has even worked out to put muscle on — rather than to take fat off.  But the reality is, we are both getting older and our metabolisms are slowing down on us.  So, here is what I’ve learned from observing him. 

• He generally makes good eating choices (better than mine) and has an active lifestyle. 
• He weighs himself every other day or so — even when he’s feeling chubby. I tend to avoid the scale during those times. 
• He is more clinical and unemotional than I am about the number on the scale.  
• He doesn’t beat himself up or determine his personal worth from his weight.  It is just a number and he feels like he has the agency to change it.
• If that number is larger than he wants, he goes right to work limiting his calories and taking the weight off to get back down into the range where he is comfortable. He uses myfitnesspal and assumes a reasonably slow weight loss.  

Fascinating.  Upon observation, I think this is an extremely healthy way to approach weight regulation.  It includes good lifelong diet and activity habits, a monitoring system, and a reasonable, repeatable method to bring your weight back into the right range.  

Weight

So, I went to work modifying his system for myself.  The first sticky issue for me, was the number on the scale. I went through an unhealthy obsessive period in my younger years about my weight. For many women and men, this number horrifyingly seems to tie directly into our evaluation of self worth. There were many years that I refused to get on a scale lest I waken that obsessive monster. Now, I’m much gentler with myself. I think we should all be.  Pick a target weight range that is achievable and healthy.  I don’t need to be the size I was at my wedding (because frankly I was anxiety-ridden and waiflike).  And then, whatever healthy weight you choose, try to look as awesome as you can at that weight. 

Monitoring

This part is crucial.  Get on that scale daily or every other day. Maybe this sounds neurotic and crazy, but it is important to get okay with natural weight fluctuations based on sodium intake, day of the month, time of day, etc.  Plus, if you are at all anxious about that number, exposure therapy is the gold standard for treatment of anxiety. Expose yourself to your number every day and it will no longer hold power over you.  If you have gone two weeks with weigh-ins above your acceptable range, it’s time to do something.  Okay — and even if you are NOT willing to get on the scale daily, YOU know when you have overdone it and feel crappy. Or when everything is fitting a little tighter. This, for me, happens seasonally like clockwork right after the holidays and right after our all too often unstructured summer.  Time to reign it in. So, I turn to . . . 

Myfitnesspal

There are lots of apps that do calorie counting, but myfitnesspal is the giant in this area. I’ll just touch on the highlights:

• Calculate calorie goal - you enter your current weight, height, goal weight and some other details. You tell the app about your activity level and how fast you want to lose weight.  I’m short, so the calculate my daily calories very close to the minimum number.  That means I will lose slowly.  Don’t get too agressive here — you don’t want to burn out or make yourself nuts with starvation.  Okay now that you have an account, start entering data. 
• Enter weight - pick a time of day to weigh yourself and do it every day. Then record it in myfitnesspal.  Every day.
• Enter foods - this is where myfitnesspal really starts to earn its keep. It has an EXTENSIVE database of foods. It has most packaged foods and quite a few foods from chain restaurants.  If you’ve never counted calories before — first of all good for you — but you’ll soon become pretty good at figuring out the calorie range based on all of the foods they provide.  Let’s just put in an example.  Say I had an egg McMuffin from McDonald for breakfast. I can search for that and here it is.  What if I made something similar at home?  Well, I can search for each element: English muffin, one egg, American cheese, 1tsp butter, 1 slice Canadian bacon. You can modify the number of servings and even create a food if this is something you make often and don’t feel like adding in each ingredient each time.  Warning, I have found making a food to be difficult and frustrating. Maybe you will have better luck than I. 
• Enter exercise - this is not quite as good as their food database, but myfitnesspal has many activities at different paces. We’ll enter walking and you can choose your walking pace as well.  Then put in the number of minutes and it updates your overall number of calories up here. That means that the days that you exercise, you can eat more. You should definitely eat your exercise calories. This will give you enough energy to exercise and also keep it from being so dreary and, if you are me, hangry and mean.  
• Optional, connect fitness device - there is an option of connecting your Apple Watch, Fitbit or other fitness band to the app. I did this for a while, but I wasn’t happy with how it was counting exercise calories, so I disconnected them and now I just manually enter in my exercise sessions.
• Progress - you can see your progress here, which is great since it gives you a history.  This is my weight since I’ve been doing this in 2015.
• Other - you can invite friends to see your details if that is what motivates you.  I find that a little intrusive, but it might work for you. 
• Nutritional Data - And, you can check your nutritional data, which might be helpful particularly if you are trying to reduce carbs or sodium. 

It is important to enter your food, weight and exercise every day — even on cheat days until you are comfortably back into your chosen weight range.

Even when I’m not doing myfitnesspal, I have a bunch of rules about eating that keep me from going too nuts. I’ll just give you a couple of examples: I don’t eat any starch at lunch any more. This has more to do with energy level than calories — no starch at lunch means I don’t have an unproductive energy dip in the afternoon.  I try to eat 5 servings of either fruits or vegetables a day — 2 of those at lunch.  And I try to keep to 2 alcoholic drinks or under.  Those are just a couple of the basic rules that I try to adhere to.  I’m sure you have your own.  But even with my best efforts, I’m not always successful in keeping my weight in line. And for those times when I have overindulged or am feeling a little chubby?  I go right on myfitnesspal to get myself back into shape.

Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!