Hello Lovelies,

Planning out my menu for the week took me a bit longer than I expected as I haven’t added a lot of my recipes into Myfitnesspal yet, so I guestimated on Sunday and started adding recipes to Myfitnesspal and the blog in rapid order. That whole process to me through Thursday.

Let’s take a look at the results:

Keto Day 42- Week 6 Measurements

Last Week

This week

I lost 3 lbs! It was such a relief to see that scale shift again. That means my total loss so far is 6.9 lbs, which puts me still in that 1-2 lbs per week. Slow and steady.

My waist is up 3/4 of an inch and my hips are up 2 inches. I suspect this is because I’ve added in new leg and core workouts the last 2-3 weeks which may be causing muscle growth and water retention.

Keto Day 42- Week 6 Fitness data

Last Weeks Fitbit data:

Sunday, June 28th 4,483 steps, 2.07 miles, 39 minutes of activity

Monday, June 29th 4534 steps, 2.1 miles, 24 minutes activity. This makes no sense because I went for a walk in the morning for 30 ish minutes (I totally forgot to set my watch to log the workout.) AND I went swimming for 45 minutes so my fitness minutes should be 75 minutes minimum.

Tuesday, June 30th. 7,7722 steps, 3.54 miles, 157 minutes of activity. This makes sense as I went for a 25-minute walk that morning and swam for 46 minutes. I also did a lot of chores and moving around every hour or so, which made up for the rest of that activity.

Wednesday, July 1st. 6,845 steps 3.04 miles 58 active minutes. I went for a 25 minute walk and I also did a 30-minute resistance band full-body workout.

Thursday July 2nd. 4,068 steps 1.88 miles 0 active minutes.

This makes no sense at all because I did a bunch of cleaning and running up and down the stairs. I also did a 20-minute resistance band core training session, but I did forget to set my watch so I guess that’s why?

Friday July 3rd 3,636 steps, 1.68 miles, 34 active minutes.

Again, I don’t get it. I went for a 45-minute swim and while I did spend about 15 minutes talking to a lovely lady there about my experience with back issues and suggestions to treat her own, I only logged about 75 yards less than I usually log because we were walking laps in the pool while we talked. I even logged this in my watch so I don’t know why it shorted the workout.

Saturday July 4th 5782 steps, 2.68 miles, 47 active minutes.

James and I went for a lovely 40-minute walk to see the fireworks setups and watch them up close before the sun fully set. The rest of the day was cooking, prepping, cleaning, and having fun as a family so I guess the active minutes is pretty close.

37,070 49,208 steps- down 12,138 steps from the week before.

14.31 miles- down 8.18 miles from the week before.

359 active minutes (according to the minute’s tracker. According to my known workouts it should’ve been at least 430 minutes) Down 24 minutes (or 19 minutes, respectively.)

I am actually getting quite frustrated with the updates from Fitbit. Ever since the one they did mid-June, my numbers are completely whacked. I mean, if there was some consistency then I would say that the problem was me. (I am the kind of person who always assumes the problem is me until I can identify the actual issue.) But for the over a year that I’ve had Fitbit, 10K steps is about 5 miles. So that means that 2K steps is 1 mile. If you look at the steps and miles on my low step days that doesn’t quite match.

For over a year, James and I have been measuring our different steps. I always have about 2K steps more than him when we finish a walk. I take relatively short strides despite having long legs. Ever since that update, I am typically under by between 1,00 and 3,000 steps. That is a crazy fluctuation!

Before the update every time I was active for more than a few minutes it would register as an active minute. After 10 minutes it would log a workout and would count the whole active time. Now, if I forget to set it, it will start counting the workout after 10 minutes, shorting the workout. So if I go for a 40-minute walk, it will only count 30 minutes.

Sadly, if not for James’ tracking his workouts on a Samsung Smartwatch, we never would’ve known this. I have also found that somehow my physical workouts don’t seem to translate from Fitbit to Myfitnesspal correctly. Fitbit tracks your “calorie burn” which I ignore because it is ridiculously over the top (Example, on the day it said I had 0 active minutes it says I burned 3,309 calories because I walked 1.88 miles. On Sunday where I walked 2.07 miles and had 39 minutes of physical activity, it says I burned 3,473 calories. Tuesday when I went swimming it said I burned 5,405 calories! Myfitnesspal adjusts for those obscenely over the top numbers, for example on Tuesday Myfitnesspal estimated my caloric needs at 3,605. almost 2,000 calories less than Fitbit claimed my burn was. That is a crazy difference!

The struggle is that I can’t accurately measure my difference in calories so maintaining the right number of calories to keep from tanking my metabolism while still having enough deficit is so difficult. Especially when it seems that Fitbit tracks different workouts differently and yet doesn’t report those different workout forms to Myfitnesspal. So when Myfitnesspal lowers the calories it does it at an even rate.

What am I going to address this? I’m really not sure. Myfitnesspal doesn’t add caloric burn for weights or resistance band workouts because the amount of calories burned is completely dependent on how much muscle mass you have. So for now, I guess being aware of these issues is all I can really do.

Keto Day 42- Week 6 Food Data

So last week, I didn’t track daily but estimated that my weekly caloric intake was 12,000 calories.

Planning out my menu went much better though I do need to work on planning the menu in Myfitnesspal to get a better caloric count. Several days at the end of the week I underestimated the calories for the meals, but because I was behind uploading recipes I didn’t catch it until it was too late to fix.

Still, my daily average of 2,113 is a lot better than a daily average of 1,800.

A weekly under total of 4,027 comes out to an average daily caloric deficit of 575 calories which is right in the sweet zone most metabolism diets say you should be in to lose weight without killing your metabolism.

My macros were also pretty solid until I was feeling a bit snackish the end of the week and kept doing pork rinds which caused me to go over on my protein macros.

When I plan the diet this week, I think I will give myself a bit more cushion on the protein side and when I snack, I will focus on choosing more low-carb veg options, like salad or Catalina olives. I think my electrolytes got off a bit this week because I was struggling with leg cramps and charlie horses a lot at the beginning of the week but found that the pork rind binge seemed to help it. Eating pickles, pickled eggs, or Catalina olives should also help with that without causing my protein to go over.

Keto Day 45- Next Steps for Week 7

You know, I feel like this week was a pretty good week, all in all. I missed a couple of days walking and would like to get to the point where I am walking every day for at least 25 minutes.

I felt really great doing three days swimming and plan to do that again next week.

I am enjoying the resistence band workouts and will keep doing the two workouts a week which gives me two rest workout days between weights and swim.

I am shifting my daily walking goal down to 8,000 steps a day to see if that will motivate me to hit it more regularly.

I am going to spend more of today planning out my menu in myfitnesspal not just on the kitchen board and will plan appropriate snacks to help me stay better in tune with my daily macros.

I’m still looking for a keto dietitian who is covered under my insurance.

I may also start looking for a replacement for my Fitbit. This really makes me sad because for the most part, I have enjoyed my Fitbit. I suspect that it is a great starter tracker app and I’ve just outgrown it. It will probably take me a few months to pick which one I want to go with next.

Follow my Keto Journey

If you would like to see my Keto Journey, you can check that out here:

 Keto day 0 

Keto day 7

Keto Day 14

Keto Day 21

Keto Day 28

Keto Day 35

Have you tried the new MyFitnessPal recipe sharing I tried this week when I shared the Homemade Keto Meatballs recipe? If that works, I can share my keto meal plan as a spreadsheet with links to the recipes if anyone feels that would be beneficial? I know most of my friends aren’t as tall or large as I am so I’m not sure that would be beneficial for you. But if you think it would, let me know.

Otherwise you can just use my recipes to to build your own meal planning!

Until next time,

Stay inspired!