No you have a fair point. No offence taken! Basically I don't drive and get public transport everywhere. Every morning I have to walk about 15 mins to the train and likewise back. I teach in company so when I arrive off the train I have to walk to the companies I teach in. I also teach in a huge factory so getting from 1 class to another might also require a 10 minute walk. Truthfully I don't know how many kilometers I walk, and I would be keen to find out!

Thanks for the advice re the trackers, but I'm pretty keen on the withings activity steel as it looks pretty cool as a normal watch too!.

Thanks for the input.

In the interim you can track steps with your phone. I don't really know what the state of the art is, but I work for mapmyfitness and I'm pretty sure our app will function as a reasonably accurate step tracker.

If you can afford it eating your phone battery it works OK. Though that could have been partly my music player that I also ran when tracking steps/rides. I was going to switch to a watch but just decided to quit tracking my steps and only use it for my rides in the spring/summer. I might get a watch/band this spring with a cycling mode to save my cell battery some but haven't decided if or which I will.

@OP: alright, that really sounds like quite a lot no reason for special walking then. if you want to start doing more cardio, that's still highly recommended because of its myriad of benefits. but it doesn't seem "mandatory".

@phone as a tracker: as i said, it depends if you have a a specialised "motion sensor" in your phone or not. if you have, then battery impact of using your phone as a tracker will be minimal (because the sensor is super low energy and running 24/7 anyway). if you don't, then the impact is large (because your main cpu has to stay awake to do part of the tracking).

@withings: yeah, i like the look as well. i thought it was more expensive than it is. still feel like it's very overpriced based on its capabilities, but yeah, the price difference is a lot lower than i originally thought.

@step tracking in general: if OP is already moving around quite a lot anyway, i don't see much benefit of buying something to track his steps. the upside of OP doing 50% more walking will be very low, compared to alternative uses of his time (strength training, yoga, flexibility, swimming, biking or whatsoever). at least that's my guess.

Hi mate, watch has been ordered so just waiting for it to arrive, should be here soon, so I'm prepared to wait for a few days and get a more accurate reading. The gf uses her phone and her battery goes down low quick and she complains about ghost stepping. She went for a 3 mile walk while I was working and the number of steps was ridiculously low.

This...plus ghost stepping etc

[QUOTE=trontron;49271891]@OP: alright, that really sounds like quite a lot no reason for special walking then. if you want to start doing more cardio, that's still highly recommended because of its myriad of benefits. buand running 24/7 anyway).

@step tracking in general: if OP is already moving around quite a lot anyway, i don't see much benefit of buying something to track his steps. the upside of OP doing 50% more walking will be very low, compared to alternative uses of his time (strength training, yoga, flexibility, swimming, biking or whatsoever). at least that's my guess.[/QUOT]

To be fair it has been already ordered. At some point I intend to start some interval training when I lost some weight. I wasn't bad with a skipping rope in the past, so when my knees can take it, maybe l'll try that.

With the devices that keep more data than just steps, is there additional useful stuff you can glean?

My iWatch tracks "resting energy" every day. Ostensibly, this could alert me as my metabolism is slowing down. Or give me some positive feedback if squats were giving me some EPOC. IDK if it's precise enough to show an increase or decline from those. Hopefully wanting to know the answer will motivate me to actually do some squats again...

@Rusty: I see your app can link with MFP. I would very much like a 1 stop shop to show my daily caloric surplus/deficit based on the calorie burn determined by my iWatch, and a food log (I am willing to switch food logs). Just MFP did not import exercise data from the watch, it was only interested in the steps.

I do feel like the calorie expenditure as reported by an HRM enabled activity monitor has to be a better way to compare dissimilar activities.

It reports sleep activity..time in deep sleep and the like... To be honest, I wasn't thinking about buying an hrm... All I wanted was a step tracker which didnt look weird while I am at work. I have started taking the stairs more, and all that kind of stuff.. I know it's small stuff but I reckon these things add up too.. (is that bro science or common sense?)

todays cals is literally the same as yesterday btw:

Breakfast: oats and fruit

200ml milk: 94cals
oats 40g: 150cals
100g mixed berries: 53cals

Breakfast total:297cals

Lunch: Bulgur wheat salad,

Same ingredients as lsited before: 612cals
(cal count is slightly higher as list didnt save in mfp and had to add all ingrdients manually again!

Dinner: Chicken and veg wraps

2 wholemeal tortillas: 400cals
167.5 gramms chicken breast : 330 cals
134g onion: 54cals
134g peppers: 34cals
12.5g mild coconut oil: 112cals

Dinner total:931cals

Total for day: 1840.

Trying a lower cal wrap like flatout brand would probably save you 200 cals or so when eating those two wraps for dinner.

Thanks for the advice dude, but live in Germany, and have never heard of that brand! I know they were probably the most calorific thing I have, but do you think I should be reducing my cal count even more?

Btw, dont know if you saw the post, but all those bourbons you reccomended are stocked by my local supplier...woop woop!

afaik (and short googling seems to confirm it): apple watch resting energy / activity calories calculation are very inaccurate and unusable for the intent you (aka highland) have. http://www.mcelhearn.com/the-apple-w...ting-calories/ was the first result...
just use your normal TDEE and add the (guessed) workout calories. it will be (a lot) more precise than what your watch tells you.

the general problem is: to get useful HR data to estimate caloric expenditure, you need 1s polling (= your HR is measured every second and saved). afaik there's no fitness tracker or smartwatch that supports this. HR-measurement directly on the wrist is also still far from a solved problem and some sensors are quite terrible at reading your HR accurately (according to dcrainmaker.com , the apple watch is somewhere in the middle; worse than the mio sensors or the new homemade garmin sensor in the fr235, but better than many other solutions). and even if you have the the 1s polling, all you can do with the HR data, is putting it into an algorithm (together with your weight and sex and maybe some movement data) and having it spit out a number. but that number is just a guess based on some study done a few years ago with some random participants in some random country that (should) represent an average human...

there are specialised gps sports watches (eg garmin fr 235 or fenix 3) that have 1s HR (&gps) polling, but (with gps and hr tracking) you get between 4-15 hours of battery life. while something like the vivosmart HR gets ~5 days (and non-hr activity tracker get 30+ days). and smartwatches atm try to be both, but (imho) are still closer to failing than succeeding at both. (@op: i like the idea of the withings: just integrate properly working tracking in a nice looking watch body without trying to be everything at once. so this critique is not really aimed at the steel)

so to sum up: ignore the calorie calculation of the apple watch. but if you just want to use the step data, this will automatically be exported to mfp if you install the mfp app on your watch.

ok.....so im so technologically inadvanced I wear a sundial

Your text is more convincing than that blog. I had read several of those, and found them all poor.

It's hard to imagine that they would make up something so recently that's just worse than the "formula", but maybe.

no, but you had said you went over your goal. Add 100 x 2 calories less of wrap = 200 calories more of chicken or veggies you can eat, etc.

I did. enjoy.

I drank way too much last night and as a result ate everything I could get my hands on that wasn't nailed down.

More chicken is always good.

Munchies....age old unsolvable problem!

Reducing your wraps by 200 Kcal isn't about reducing your daily intake by 200 Kcal but about eating 200 Kcal less of wraps and 200 Kcal more of more filling and healthy stuff (fozzy said the same thing). For example 200 Kcal is ~ a baked chicken breast. Or a couple of bananas.

Consider lettuce chicken wraps.



Saves you ~385 Kcal which is basically a meal.

you were too fast and missed my edit

guys: OP is already on an extreme deficit, and he's still coming in under his goal of 1800 nearly every single day (often by a lot; that's not good btw)...
and there's no reason why a wholemeal tortilla should be worse for him than additional chicken or more filling (or a banana). carbs are neither evil nor unhealthy...

That's what I originally thought. To be fair I have already reduced my carb intake by quite a lot and often my only carbs of significant quantity is my oats in the morning.

However saying that, this is the first time since the diet I have had wraps in the diet and it is unlikely that I will eat them often.. Maybe once a month? I'm trying to find relatively healthy meals that are simple to make and will come under my cal intake.

But as other people have mentioned of course I appreciate there are better things to eat them on... Felt a bit guilty for eating that second wrap last night...

It's pretty much unpossible to get down to 1800 cals daily without significantly reducing carbs - at least if you have a fairly decent diet (which you do). You need some fat for the taste and those cals add up quickly. Obviously you want high protein. Not a lot left over for breads, rice and other assorted carbs.

Agree with trontron's post. OP's diet is really stunningly good for someone of his weight. I haven't really tried to calculate protein, might want slightly more if you start lifting but honestly there's little reason to change things around much for now.

Cheers man, that's reassuring. I have really tried to focus on making my meals balanced. Increasing fibre, adding loads more veggies while still coming under. For example today im making bolognese again, but ditching the pasta and eating it on high fibre pumpernickel bread.. Also first time in a while I have had beef... My diet these days is mainly chicken..

You can easily vary your animal proteins more - all lean meats (beef, pork, chicken, game etc), all low/medium fat seafood (i.e. most seafood!) and eggs makes for a pretty varied selection of animal proteins.

I agree, but it's also finding stuff that 2 people can eat. The gf doesnt eat a lot of pork and lamb, and apart from salmon no seafood..But we're getting there and its fun trying new recipes.

Working toward a more diverse selection of foods is very good. Lamb isn't ideal for dieting purposes anyway since it's pretty high in fat. But man, probably top 3 meat types for me.

I think a lot of people who don't like seafood just haven't had much good seafood prepared for them. Very easy to screw up and overcook - I think a pretty big majority of people overcook everything and seafood in particular.