The Exercise Enigma - both genders

[atomic sagebrush]

Don't add the cals burned to your diet. Just aim at the LE Diet limits and let your weight loss be your guide. If you lose, eat more, if you gain or hold steady with weight to spare, dial it back.

The reason for this actually helps me to answer the other part of your question. For reasons we don't understand, we believe that focusing overly upon details (like numbers and goals and doing equations to figure out exactly how much you burned/ate) may sway strongly blue. I can ~almost~ but not quite spot the people whose sways are not going to succeed because they're super consumed with graphs and charts and tracking every nuance of their pH and CM and 9 month swaying schedules and stuff like that. SO, I want you to take your Fitbit and put it on the shelf for now. I don't want you to know how far you went I don't want you to know how many calories you burned, and I really, really, really do not want you to be monitoring your heart rate every second. What you are doing is FINE. All it needs to do is go for 60 minutes. Walking is fine, part or all of the time.

[Happy Mom]

Thats perfect! I actually only wore my Fitbit one day to see what I was doing and making sure that it was a type of workout that was more pink.

But now that I know to just let my weight loss be my guide then it makes working out way more fun because I'm actually enjoying the break from my weights and watching more Netflix lol!

So do you recommend tracking calories? I have been the last week to see if I was within limits. But do you think once i get a good idea of what types of things and how much to eat I can drop this too?

Thanks for the quick response!


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[atomic sagebrush]

Yes as long as you're not prone to cutting back more and more over time, that's fine. Exactly what I did.

The main reason I have people track is that they don't eat enough. So if you're sure you're avoiding that pitfall it's all good.

[plasticserenity]

I could have written your post Happy Mom! I too have been using the treadmill most days for at least 60 mins (with other exercise on other days). I too have my fitbit, I keep track of my calories burned, heart rate, distance. I'm a bit more extreme in the data and control side of things though.

I'm a bit worried that I'm going to ruin my sway this way. I'm doing okay with veggie LE diet, doing good with exercise. I think overall I'm doing pretty well at living a girl-friendly lifestyle so far!

But man... I just love data so much. I have had a spreadsheet tracking my weight and calories every day since the end of 2012, and I've been using My Fitness Pal for years. I have graphs upon graphs of everything, so with starting swaying it has just come naturally to me to gather data and graph everything to do with that too! Whatever exercise I'm doing I get a kick out of checking my heart rate rise (and seeing how it's coming down quicker after exercise as I get fitter!) and I'm having so much fun seeing how my BBT and CM magically tells me what my body is doing, I honestly love it.

I know how boy-friendly it is to have this level of control, but honestly it's kind of just who I am (I even have an "I <3 Spreadsheets" mug sat on my desk at work!). How much of an effect do the results show this way of life to have on a girl sway?

I think my question is - do the results (and your experience, atomic!) show enough of an impact that I should have a go at leaving all my tracking behind for a while?

I think... I could TRY to let go of all of this stuff, but I suspect even if I stopped updating my spreadsheets the desire (and attitude!) would still be there! So maybe I just need to take this hit and accept that my sway might not be perfect as a result (hell maybe LE diet, exercise and one attempt are better swayers than being a blue-mum-data-lover anyway)?

But I can always give it a go, who knows, it might be good for me

Thanks for any input <3

[Throwaway_panther]

I agree with atomic that, once you get a good idea where you are with portions/calories/exercise, dropping excessive tracking is s good move.

But just as the hopeful added relaxed factor to you girl swayers -- I was insane before conceiving DD, but I DID get a girl. I weighed and measured everything, wore a FitBit, would freak out if I didn't hit at least 300 minutes of exercise a week, etc. I literally measured every part of my body every week and had graphs for every part. I had calipers to measure my body fat every week, and I eould triple check my measurements. Every thing that entered my body I obsessed over.

Now... DON'T do any of this lol. I was relapsing into my ED, and it's a pretty miserable way to live.
But I am as obsessive as they come (my obsessive drive to lose weight is now obsessive tendencies with hitting protein for HE, helping my DD hit her milestones, planning her birthday party 3 months in advance, planning my dreamed of son's nursery... you get the picture), and if you've seen ANY of my posts on here, I'm as Martha as they come.

Lol, so don't be like me, but know if I got a DD despite doing all that (but following a very LE lifestyle), you can too. So relax!

[Throwaway_panther]

I could have written your post Happy Mom! I too have been using the treadmill most days for at least 60 mins (with other exercise on other days). I too have my fitbit, I keep track of my calories burned, heart rate, distance. I'm a bit more extreme in the data and control side of things though.

I'm a bit worried that I'm going to ruin my sway this way. I'm doing okay with veggie LE diet, doing good with exercise. I think overall I'm doing pretty well at living a girl-friendly lifestyle so far!

But man... I just love data so much. I have had a spreadsheet tracking my weight and calories every day since the end of 2012, and I've been using My Fitness Pal for years. I have graphs upon graphs of everything, so with starting swaying it has just come naturally to me to gather data and graph everything to do with that too! Whatever exercise I'm doing I get a kick out of checking my heart rate rise (and seeing how it's coming down quicker after exercise as I get fitter!) and I'm having so much fun seeing how my BBT and CM magically tells me what my body is doing, I honestly love it.

I know how boy-friendly it is to have this level of control, but honestly it's kind of just who I am (I even have an "I <3 Spreadsheets" mug sat on my desk at work!). How much of an effect do the results show this way of life to have on a girl sway?

I think my question is - do the results (and your experience, atomic!) show enough of an impact that I should have a go at leaving all my tracking behind for a while?

I think... I could TRY to let go of all of this stuff, but I suspect even if I stopped updating my spreadsheets the desire (and attitude!) would still be there! So maybe I just need to take this hit and accept that my sway might not be perfect as a result (hell maybe LE diet, exercise and one attempt are better swayers than being a blue-mum-data-lover anyway)?

But I can always give it a go, who knows, it might be good for me

Thanks for any input <3

You could swap my name out for yours and we'd be the same person. Between my DH being the consummate man's man and me a Martha, I'm starting to think we should be the face of how the LE diet works lol. If it was only personality or testosterone or something, we'd be rolling in boys!

[atomic sagebrush]

You could swap my name out for yours and we'd be the same person. Between my DH being the consummate man's man and me a Martha, I'm starting to think we should be the face of how the LE diet works lol. If it was only personality or testosterone or something, we'd be rolling in boys!

exactly, but do keep in mind that there are other people who have had the exact opposite experience too - ate an LE Diet and then still got boys anyway and because again and again they have been the ones who would be making the 12 month sway schedules, sending me 2 page long letters 3 times a week, etc I can't help but believe there is something to both angles.

Best approach is to do diet and then not allow yourself to get sucked into the "color coded chart" approach that was so endemic on Ingender.

[atomic sagebrush]

Plastic, you know that good feeling you get when you see your heart rate rise (or check off items on your to do list, fill in your spreadsheet, make a graph? Or if you're me, when you alphebetize your DVDs and have all the good kinds of soup arranged neatly on my shelves in descending order of use) We talk about "testosterone" but I don't think it's really testosterone per se, I think it's THAT feeling. so YES I do think you need to drop that stuff.

Swaying pink feels like jumping into the deep end without a flotation device and you only know how to dog paddle. You WANT to give up those things that are basically just rituals you perform for your own peace of mind. It's really hard to do, but you don't necessarily want to stay in your comfort zone here. The only reason not to stop what you're doing is if you get that same happy feeling from stopping monitoring that you were getting from monitoring LOL if that makes sense.

I can't quantify how much it sways. It's all too amorphous and individual to track but I do know that it's more often the people who were really super controlling about every detail that gets sway opposites. I think it's worth the effort to try to switch things up in that deparment.

As Panther points out, this is NOT a dealbreaker. Trust me, if I got a girl, anyone can do it. I don't mention it to discourage anyone or make them feel their sway won't work, but to help you avoid a really common pitfall that may undermine you. I would try. imagine you're jumping into that water and it feels scary but after the first couple times it gets easier and pretty soon you realize "oh wow ok I can actually float."

[XXforhubby]

^^^This was me swaying the second time around. I couldn't believe that, "I could actually float", but I did!

I was such a hot mess during my first sway. I have them both posted in the TTC Girl Add Your Sway section. You can see a CLEAR night and day difference between my two sways. It's kind of funny- It took me 11mo to conceive this time around compared to 8mo the last time.

You can do this! It feels so foreign, so strange, trust me! FX and GL to you!!


[emoji170]8/2010 [emoji170]6/2013 [emoji170]11/2015 [emoji170]
[emoji178]Baby Girl [emoji254]EDD 9/30/2017 [emoji178]

[Happy Mom]

Thanks ladies for all of your advice.

So, my plan is to keep tracking my calories and protein for a little while longer. Still trying to get the LE diet understood.. but honestly, I'm not sure about you ladies, but I'm finding it way easier then I expected! (Is that normal? Lol) but I will eventually drop the tracking too in a few months, as long as I don't start loosing too much weight because I do tend to loose weight fairly quickly.

But since I've dropped the worry about am I running enough or walking too much, heart rate and calories etc. I have been enjoying my runs so so so much more! The 60-70 mins fly because I just watch tv.. something that I actually want to watch! Thank you for that advice atomic.. probably the best thing you could have told me to do! I think I'll accomplish the 6-7 days a week with much less dread now. I am actually finding it therapeutic! [emoji1]


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