For the longest time, I’ve hated playing middle/blocker in volleyball because all the jumping destroys my knees.
Well, I recently got to play left-hand/hitter again… …and my knees still hurt afterwards.
I take this as a sign that it’s probably time for me to start bringing my weight back down. Things got a bit out of control, especially with the pandemic.
The big swings many years ago were from when I was using MyFitnessPal to count my macros for a bulking and cutting cycle. I’d typically bulk in the fall/winter (all those holiday meals) and then cut for the summer months.
Unfortunately, macro counting is a lot of work. I would weigh all my food, typically before I cooked it. It got the job done, but eventually, I got tired of spending so much time doing all that work.
I later switched to Gyroscope because of the option to take a picture of your food and have someone else enter the nutrition information on your behalf. This saved a lot of time, but it isn’t easy to accurately estimate the nutrition information of something simply by looking at a photo.
This wasn’t sufficient to get me the results I was looking for.
So a couple of weeks ago, I switched over to using MacroFactor. I’d heard that, in many ways, it’s an improvement over MyFitnessPal, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
At the end of May, I weighed in at 212.4 lbs. More recently, I weighed in at 204.9 lbs.
This is probably progressing a little faster than I’d like, but the app is still calibrating to my weight and nutrition information.
The nice thing about this app is that it does the math each week to calculate your new macro targets for the week automatically. And because I’m currently ahead of schedule, I’ve still been getting to eat more each week despite trying to lose weight.
Some of the things I’ve been eating regularly recently include:
- Quinoa
- Carrots
- Chicken
- Hummus
- Smoothies
- Rye crackers
- Nut/seed butter
- Stir-fried veggies
- Quest protein bars
- Salads with hard-boiled eggs and light vinaigrettes
Unfortunately, I still get cravings all the time for sweet things. So far, I’ve staved these off decently between smoothies, Jell-O, and Quest protein cookies.
I still haven’t figured out if these cravings result from stress/anxiety or just a sugar addiction.
In any case, I’m in my coaching certification classes all weekend, and these cravings seem like the perfect opportunity for me to do some self-coaching.
I hope I’ll be able to report back with more significant results by the end of the summer. 🙂
