[titsworth]

Greetings rebels, far and wide! Pull up a chair and join us for the kick off of a new Challenge!

 

 

The year is still young and a new challenge is always on the menu at the rebellion. I hope you last challenge was fantastic! And if not, I hope you continue to join us in the challenges to refresh and try again.

 

As always, some links:

• Challenge How-to (Updated 12/28/2023)
• 2024 Challenge Dates
• General forum rules and guidelines
• Guilds, Clubs, Adventure Parties, and PVPs 

 

And... It's become a long-standing tradition for me to add a bonus theme/thought to each challenge based on a recent email/post from team Nerd Fitness (and by long-standing, I mean I did it last challenge and will again do it this challenge... long-standingly of course).  Steve's recent email spent some time talking about how throughout our life, we start to become more like the people we spend the most time with.  I look back on my personal goals and can tie a direct correlation in my successes (and my failures) to the people in my life while I was working towards them. Who you surround yourself with, who you look up to, and who you trust to push you can drastically shape your journey along the way. 

 

So as you are enjoying drinks around the table of the Rebel's Roost Tavern and crafting your epic adventure's quests, think about how you can shape your path by who you select to be in your party. 

• Can you enlist a friend to go on your daily walks with so you will be more eager to step out the door?
• Can you join a class so you will have a community to support you?
• Can you tailor your online / social media presence so you see more posts from people who inspire you?
• Can you use this very group to help drive you and keep you on track?

 

What's something that you can do help you immerse in the people / groups / communities that drive you to be a better you?

 

I hope this challenge is the start of some beautiful friendships and some crushed goals! Cheers!

 

[Sovalis]

Sovalis settles into a comfortable chair by the fire, trusty hound, Saxon, at their feet. They are wearing a new wooden breastplate engraved with a spreading cedar tree on it. 

 

First round is on me! 

 

[Sea-to-sky]

Sky pulls out a chair close to the fire and drops her pack to the floor, tucking one foot beneath her as she pulls her mandolin onto her lap and proceeds to tune it.

 

Ginger tea for me please

 

 

[TimovieMan]

TimovieMan walks in, greets everyone, and then starts looking for a table with a good view of the room. He orders a cup of strong, black coffee, and takes a seat.

 

Have a great challenge, everyone!

 

[Artemis Prime]

9 hours ago, titsworth said:

So as you are enjoying drinks around the table of the Rebel's Roost Tavern and crafting your epic adventure's quests, think about how you can shape your path by who you select to be in your party. 

One of my mentors just called me out last week for not going out and having fun with friends anymore. Mostly because I've distanced myself from some people because all we did together was drink, and other people have moved farther away making regular hangouts difficult. And while you guys are absolutely fantastic, I would benefit from rebuilding my meatsuit party. So, towards that end I have:

 

1 - joined a local outdoor group on Facebook.  Going to shoot for going to one outing with them this challenge.

2 - sent a message to my local gaming venue about what games are available. Heard back from them about some stuff, waiting for the discord invite to see what other games are currently running.

[Harriet]

A warrior with more hope than strength is cosily curled up in a fluffy sheepskin armchair. "Mystery space drink, if you please." 

As for the influencing figures... do you think if I sidle up to the most jacked person in the gym, some of it will transfer to me and I will get stronk? 

[Elastigirl]

9 hours ago, Harriet said:

As for the influencing figures... do you think if I sidle up to the most jacked person in the gym, some of it will transfer to me and I will get stronk? 

Yes! I'll join you. We'll sit by this jacked person, while drinking our tea, and grow all the muscles.

[Jarric]

A wood elf  wanders into the taproom, looking quizzically at the group congregating around one extremely muscular individual. Deciding that this probably isn't his problem, he takes a seat at the bar and grins as the familiar face behind it.

 

Pint of the black stuff, barkeep, he says, in a voice that has said the same phrase hundreds of times before.

 

On 3/21/2024 at 3:14 AM, titsworth said:

What's something that you can do help you immerse in the people / groups / communities that drive you to be a better you?

 

I recently signed up to my first Crossfit competition. I'm not short of ridiculously fit people at my gym to be inspired by, but it'll be nice to meet a few others in a semi-conpetitive atmosphere. If nothing else I'll get to know my teammates a bit better.

[Mad Hatter]

On 3/22/2024 at 2:34 AM, Elastigirl said:

Yes! I'll join you. We'll sit by this jacked person, while drinking our tea, and grow all the muscles.

[DarK_RaideR]

Dropping in with a quick tip.

 

I know I'm not the only one who's struggled a bit when trying to keep up with challenge threads that involve long updates, even when it's people I love and things I'm interested in, so I wanted to share my solution: text to speech. Somehow I noticed I'm fine with podcasts or videos, even when they're playing in the background while I'm doing something else, but really struggle with extended on-screen reading, so I figured why not convert the content into a form I'm more comfortable with.

 

Hope that helps!

[TimovieMan]

Being close to Dwayne Johnson will probably lead to muscle gains...

 

Although it might be from him ordering you to work out! 😁

 

[Loveable_Bouncer]

A breeze of winter wind follows the tall druid when she quickly comes in. She goes straight to the bar and requests a heavily whipped iced caramel latte. Sipped with relief when she took a long sip. 

 

17 hours ago, TimovieMan said:

Being close to Dwayne Johnson will probably lead to muscle gains...

 

Although it might be from him ordering you to work out! 😁

 

But honestly, this sounds like the best way to workout. Come over to drink tea and end up getting gains with some good ole peer pressure. Feel like I skip out that mental barrier altogether....

 

 

On that note I did find a running group that meets up monthly at a local coffee shop. I'm nowhere near the strength of running safely, but realizing a long walk with a treat... might be what I need for an Easter Sunday.... Okay I might go to check it out after I talked myself into it...

[fitnessgurl]

Anavah strides into the bar & plops down on the nearest chair. & says, "Barkeep, chamomile-lemon tea if you please." Then proceeds to pull out her knitting, nodding thanks to Sovalis for her drink.

[Ranger Hal]

A very wet ranger walks through the door, drops her large pack which immediately starts forming a puddle, and wanders over to the fireplace. She gratefully accepts the bowl of hot stew that the barkeep sends over. (How does he always know exactly what's needed?) "Been a while since I got that wet."

[Sovalis]

Open call for information, pretty please?

 

TL;DR: Questioning BMR and how that works with determining a calorie consumption/deficit goal. I have read articles but still don’t quite get it. 

 

I do an InBody scan at the start of every challenge and it tells me things about my body make-up including muscle and skeletal mass, fat mass, water mass, inflammation, etc. And one of the things it tells me is my BMR based on the data the scan offers. This past scan it put my BMR at 1651 kcal. Previous scan was 1679 kcal, but I was a few pounds heavier at that time. It makes sense to me that the number would decrease as I lose fat mass (or weight more generally) as there is less of me to sustain. But I have no idea how to use that information to be calculating a proper deficit. I currently weigh 265 lbs and when I plug that and my height (5’10”) into calculators I get a variety of numbers that I don’t know what to do with. I don’t think any have been estimating my BMR that low, although I may be misremembering.

 

Can anyone explain it to me like I am five? Or offer any other feedback?

 

Thank you!

[Artemis Prime]

10 minutes ago, Sovalis said:

TL;DR: Questioning BMR and how that works with determining a calorie consumption/deficit goal. I have read articles but still don’t quite get it. 

Nerd time!

 

Most online calculators use the Mifflin-St. Jeor equation to calculate your BMR, which is based on your total body mass. Plugging in your numbers, that gives me a BMR of 1952.

I am assuming that your InBody scan is using the Katch-McArdle equation, which is based on your lean body mass.  
(There's also the Harris-Benedict equation, but that's an old one that's mostly been replaced by the Mifflin-St. Jeor.)

There's a lot of debate over which formula is more accurate. At the end of the day, they're all estimates.  

 

Your BMR is just the calories burned to maintain bare minimum essential bodily functions. It does not consider activity at all. For your stats, I get these numbers for activity levels:

Sedentary: 400 calories

Light Activity: 700 calories

Moderate Activtiy: 1,000 calories

Heavy Activity: 1,400 calories

Very Heavy Activity: 1,700 calories

 

So your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is your BMR plus whichever activity level fits your lifestyle. Just for an example, we'll go with Light Activity, giving us a range of 2,051-2,352 depending on which BMR calculator you use. 

One pound of fat equals 3,500 calories. So to lose 1 pound/week, you need to be in a 3,500 calorie deficit, which averages out to a 500 calorie deficit per day.

That means, to lose 1 pound of fat per week, your estimated caloric intake is 1,551-1,852. Depending on what your current caloric intake is, I would pick a number in that range that feels easily doable, try it for a while and adjust from there. Since all these numbers are estimates, they make good starting points but will probably require tweaking.

If 1,852 sounds daunting, you could always go with a 250 calorie deficit (1,801-2,102) and shoot for a 0.5 pound weight loss per week.

Also, instead of picking a number and shooting for it, you could just stick with the range if it feels more helpful to have some flexibility rather than nailing down an exact number you're trying to hit.

 

 

 

[Artemis Prime]

9 minutes ago, Artemis Prime said:

So your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is your BMR plus whichever activity level fits your lifestyle. Just for an example, we'll go with Light Activity, giving us a range of 2,051-2,352 depending on which BMR calculator you use. 

Oops, just realized I said I was going to use the Light Activity for an example, and then I actually used Sedentary. 🤦‍♀️ So the Light Activity range would actually be 2,351-2,652.

[Harriet]

Perfect response by AP, and the only thing I'd add is you only know your maintenance number or range* for sure when you eat at the number and track whether you lose, gain, or maintain weight for several weeks.

 

*it can be a range, because our unintentional movement or "NEAT" can go up and down to compensate for changes. Some people compensate a lot, others a little

 

If you don't want to think too hard about it you can also chuck your stats in here. https://tdeecalculator.net BF% and activity level make it a lot more accurate.

 

One more note: if you write down "lightly active" or "moderately active" or whatever, don't add those calories again if you have a device that counts calories from exercise. If you do want to use those devices, you can set the calculator to sedentary then add the exercise calories on top.

 

[Artemis Prime]

Random fun fact I learned yesterday: if you're trying to calculate your protein goals based on weight (0.7-0.8g/lb of bodyweight is sufficient for most, though 1g/lb has become a common rule of thumb) this often leads to an extremely high protein goal for overweight individuals, such that maintaining that level of protein intake is unsustainable for most people. You can calculate protein using  lean body mass, but that comes with its own problems, including knowing what your lean body mass is. Sorry, that was just the opening premise, here's the fun fact part: for overweight individuals, if you shoot for your protein intake in grams to be equal to your height in centimeters, that has proven to be a fairly good ballpark figure.

[ViperN7]

On 3/26/2024 at 11:42 AM, Sovalis said:

TL;DR: Questioning BMR and how that works with determining a calorie consumption/deficit goal. I have read articles but still don’t quite get it. 

Great explanation by Artemis Prime. I'm just gonna mention a few odds and ends. 

 

Calories are a unit of energy. 

Basal Metabolic Rate is the amount of energy your body uses per day in a coma, just to keep you alive. 

Total Daily Energy Expendature is all the energy you actually use in a day (so, coma level + any energy you use beyond that). 

 

Personally, I like to look at both https://tdeecalculator.net which Harriet linked and https://www.calculator.net/tdee-calculator.html  and compare the results. Any number from any calculator is going to be an estimate. The more variables you can input and the more specific you can make them, the more accurate your result (should) be. But it will still be an estimate. 

 

The TDEE is the number you need to calculate your Calorie deficit (or maintenance level or surplus). It's energy in (Calories consumed) vs. energy burned (TDEE). To lose weight, you want to consume less than you burn. 

 

I do not know much about designing a Calorie deficit diet, but I have heard quite a few sources say that you should eat at least your BMR every day, as a minimum. In  other words, don't cut so much that you're below this number (The reasoning is that it's not healthy to eat less than this: your body thinks you're in a famine and actually cuts corners to burn less and store more energy ie fat.) 

 

Hope that helps. 

[Mad Hatter]

I also wouldn't take any calculator number seriously as the errors on calorie absorption  is like 20-25% anyway. The only way to really figure out how much your body needs is to track with your current diet for a few weeks and see what happens with your weight and adapt from there. Keeping in mind that this figure changes with time, mental and physical stress, NEAT, diet changes....

[sarakingdom]

4 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

I also wouldn't take any calculator number seriously as the errors on calorie absorption  is like 20-25% anyway. The only way to really figure out how much your body needs is to track with your current diet for a few weeks and see what happens with your weight and adapt from there. Keeping in mind that this figure changes with time, mental and physical stress, NEAT, diet changes....

 

The last time I did this experiment at six calorie levels for six months, I had a spread of over a thousand calories (net, total adjusted to account for exercise) where I maintained my weight at every tier of deficit. But at the lower tiers, my joints ached all the time and it took me three days to recover from the short hikes I was doing every day without effort at the higher tiers. My metabolism shifted down to stop doing physical repairs instead of dropping weight. (I had to stop the lowest tier early, I was just too unwell to go the whole month.) And it turned out I still maintained at 400 calories above what I thought my maintenance was.

 

So it can get complicated.

[Jarric]

13 hours ago, ViperN7 said:

I do not know much about designing a Calorie deficit diet, but I have heard quite a few sources say that you should eat at least your BMR every day, as a minimum. In  other words, don't cut so much that you're below this number (The reasoning is that it's not healthy to eat less than this: your body thinks you're in a famine and actually cuts corners to burn less and store more energy ie fat.) 

 

As far as I know, this is more of a concern if you have an average to low body fat percentage, but less of a concern at a higher body fat percentage. If you're carrying a reasonable amount of fat then your body should be able to burn that to keep you from going into true starvation mode even if you're below your BMR. I wouldn't recommend doing it, because you probably still won't feel date and the diet will probably be miserable and difficult to stick to, but it's probably not dangerous so I also wouldn't worry about accidently dipping below your BMR if you don't have a good way to reliably calculate what your BMR is. (Disclaimer: I'm a random guy on the internet, not a doctor, this is not good, or even mediocre, medical advice.)

 

2 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

And it turned out I still maintained at 400 calories above what I thought my maintenance was.

 

I'm in a similar place with this - my observed maintenance from calorie tracking is a good 300-400kcal higher than most calculators will give me, and one calculator gave me a maintenance figure the other day that I'm currently losing 1lb/week at.

[sarakingdom]

1 hour ago, Jarric said:

If you're carrying a reasonable amount of fat then your body should be able to burn that to keep you from going into true starvation mode even if you're below your BMR. I wouldn't recommend doing it, because you probably still won't feel date and the diet will probably be miserable and difficult to stick to, but it's probably not dangerous so I also wouldn't worry about accidently dipping below your BMR if you don't have a good way to reliably calculate what your BMR is.

 

Anything you accidentally do once or twice is unlikely to be dangerous. (Apply advice within reason. Certain food items, as the late Terry Pratchett observed, are obviously edible, but only the once.)

 

The caveat to Jarric's advice I'd give is that it may not apply if you've been chronically dieting or at calorie restriction. Chronic undereating is thought to not go well. I suspect it may have been a component of the really unfortunate results I saw, where my body chose to drop my BMR rather than my weight. Sometimes a brief reset at maintenance is suggested.

 

Basically, calculating the numbers is easy - pick a number between your TDEE and BMR that means somewhere under a 7000 calorie deficit for the week. Applying them in real life can be more fiddly, because bodies don't always listen to calculators in the expected way, in both good and bad ways.

[ViperN7]

50 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

Anything you accidentally do once or twice is unlikely to be dangerous. (Apply advice within reason. Certain food items, as the late Terry Pratchett observed, are obviously edible, but only the once.)

Sage advice