I'm sorry, my muscle children!

I finished my semi-long run this morning.  2:15ish, mostly on trails.  The dog enjoyed it more than I did.   However, it wasn't a bad run, just one of those blech runs requiring constant reminders to maintain cadence, good form, etc.  You'll feel better if you keep X or Y tight.  Just get up that hill and then you can open up a bit.  The less time you spend touching the ground, the faster you will get home. Yeah, it was two hours and fifteen minutes of I just want to go home.

Anyway, I think I may have sorted out my problem a bit more.  Why am I so deep in the hole this week?  Potassium deficit, hills, and long-term surreptitious Beer Me aside, there are two possible additional factors:

1.  Just tired from speedwork.  Since it's been a while since I've done speedwork, I'd forgotten the resulting fatigue.  Honestly, my lazy version of ultramarathon training, gliding around for umpteen hours, is not much of a tear.  The push doesn't really start until after 6 hours.

2.  I've also been cutting a bit of flab, thanks to My Fitness Pal.  The first three weeks or so went fine once the cravings subsided.  However, when talking with my husband about overestimating one's exertion level (not in reference to me), I started to wonder if I was actually doing this.  I was inputting my exercises, but the remainder of my life, research, studying, and writing, is slothful.  I'm not even walking much incidentally because we live about 3 miles from the closest store--whenever I make it there on my own steam, I log that separately.  So I downgraded my activity level about 10 days ago even though I was doing fine.  I'm new to intentional weight loss, and somehow I thought it had to be a bit worse, what can I say?  It meant just 240 fewer calories per day.  It kind of sucked getting used to it, but I adjusted.

Well, during that short span, I've been losing a bit more than twice as fast as I'd originally planned.  I haven't had any acute gut issues, I'm not dehydrated...an extra lb here and there is somehow melting off a little too quickly, which still might not be too bad unless I'm not getting enough carbs either.  Hard to say.  Fortunately, there's plenty of time to reverse.  Dinner tonight will be sweet potato fries and extra cheesy mac&cheese (and some fruit to be Healthy, too), because I still have to eat 2041 calories today according to My Fitness Pal's readjusted calculations.

But what are these calculations exactly?  What is this voodoo that has perhaps led me astray?

My Fitness Pal says it uses the Mifflin-St. Jeor* equation to calculate basal metabolic rate. This equation, however, actually calculates resting energy expenditure (they're almost the same thing anyway, and just one part of the picture)...and now my sloth prevails because I can't be bothered to check what MFP uses to refine the results (ie, n(1.143) for incurable fidgeting).  However, the Mifflin-St. Jeor equation has its own limitations: even among bedbound patients, REE varies wildly according to other factors such as body composition.  I'd entered a few body measurements in My Fitness Pal, just neck-waist-hips, but these are optional and seem to be more for tracking purposes than for revising BMR.  Furthermore, the Mifflin-St. Joer equation, devised in 1990, largely replaced the Harris-Benedict equation (1919), partly because average caloric expenditure has largely fallen due to changes in the average Western lifestyle.  Maybe my lifestyle is still somewhat old-timey--it used to be when I was urban and walking or biking or running almost everywhere, and carrying all my groceries, and there are still echoes: I'm presently typing outside, beside the pit in which I leveled dirt after my run today.  I don't think I count as a high fit woman, but I still might be less energy-efficient than expected.  I do fidget a lot.

At any rate, the science behind human non-exercise activity thermogenesis is perhaps still in its childhood, and there aren't too many studies about non-overweight subjects.  So, basically, I should have realized the difference between just hungry and really too hungry.   No worries, I'll bounce back with Uber cheesy MAC&CHEESE with EVEN EXTRA CHEESE!   (my apologies if this stuff is somehow subliminal.  Triangles just look subliminal somehow (thanks, Illuminati "theorists" :/).


*For sure I'll calculate over all this in private.  And how many extra calories are burned during baby math?