u/RangerOver4913

I'm 5'8'', 42F. I got a Garmin watch and Cronometer app so I could start doing CICO. I lost about 10 pounds in ~4 months going for a 250-calorie deficit every day, from around 165 pounds to 155. I'm fairly active and easily get 11-12K steps per day, plus doing suggested daily workouts from the Garmin (usually 30-40-minute base runs).

Those first 10 pounds seemed really easy...like where has CICO been all my life when I've struggled with body image. (Granted I've never been majorly overweight but still had big self-image and self-confidence issues my entire adult life...also admittedly the Garmin and Cronometer make it a LOT easier to track.) I feel so good being 155 pounds, I don't think I've been this light since high school.

Trouble is when you lose weight, your basal metabolic rate drops, as does your daily recommend calorie intake. Now on rest days it is only 1300 calories. Even when I run and burn around 400 calories that I can eat back, I'm just ravenous. This has happened before CICO too when I was training for half-marathons--I start off feeling like I'm losing weight and then suddenly I get overwhelmed by a crazy high appetite. I'm hoping now that I'm using Cronometer and can better track my macros, that at least I can get more of my calories in proteins--I was eating waaaaaaay too little protein before. But the scale has been stuck at 155 for about a month now. I'd like to lose another 5 and then maintain.

Anyone else struggle with this? How did you overcome it?

Something changed in this app recently and it's not working as well as it used to. I saw another post on here recently about how the search function got all screwed up and you had to sort through a million brands before you could find generic raw foods, and that's pretty annoying . But now I've found that I've lost another important functionality...

I drink Costco soy milk a lot and I measure everything in grams with my food scale to keep it simple. I went to add soy milk today and it did it not show up in my recent items, which was weird. So I had to search for it, and when I found it, it no longer gave me the option to add the amount in grams! Oz or ml or cup only.

What gives? I really like Cronometer but if I'm having to constantly switch between units or convert units to log my food it's going to get really annoying really fast.

I use 110s all the time for squirrel trapping and have no problem opening them with my bare hands or at least pushing down against a cinderblock for support. I bought a 120 recently and I can't for the life of me get the thing open. I never use bigger body-grips so I don't have the opener tool. Sounds like I might need one? Or am I doing something wrong?

At one point in my struggles I got one side open and had the safety caught in the loop instead of the sidebar, then when I easily got the other side open, I couldn't open the jaws. So I figured maybe the safety shouldn't go in the loop. Undid it, and tried for half an hour to get one side squeezed open again and FAIL.

I have been trying to control Eastern Fox squirrels at my house and have had pretty decent success over the years with baited 110 traps. (Yes, it's all legal, and these are an invasive species where I live. They damage my trees.)

Like I said, the 110s work pretty well in that I have caught a LOT of squirrels with very little effort and no bycatch. They are baited and hung by two corners on the tree trunks. I have two problems:

1. They hardly ever kill instantly. I often have to go get a writhing squirrel and dispatch it some other way.

2. My neighbor hates me for it. Unfortunately the squirrels really like the big boxelder in my front yard and it's very visible to the neighbor. I try to only trap when I'm home so I can dispatch any writhing squirrels before she sees and freaks out, but today I was gone for 20 minutes, caught a squirrel, and she gave me an earful.

I don't care about #2 so much because what I'm doing is perfectly legal and necessary to protect my trees (and hers, if she had any understanding of the matter) but I'm definitely interested in ways I can be more discreet with my trapping. I'm considering buying a 120, would that theoretically be better at insta-killing than a 110? I've tried setting the traps along the fence and in a few other locations but the tree has been the best spot by far. I can't use a ground set without having to notify all neighbors within 1000 feet. Plus I don't want any bycatch.

Traps are baited with peanut butter. I've also tried blind sets along the fence but they've never worked.

Any advice??

Just came here to express how much I appreciate this app. I've been stuck slightly overweight for YEARS and downloaded the app specifically to try to lose a few pounds before vacation. I thought I was just cursed with slow metabolism and bad genes.

Turns out I was eating too much! And my macros were totally out of whack. I was eating way too much fat and nowhere near enough protein. Learned just how much my daily peanut butter and hummus habit (healthy fats but still... Fat!) were messing with my progress.

Roughly two months into using the app and I've lost almost 10 pounds, which is really all I wanted. And it was easy. Granted I was only going for a 250-calorie deficit every day and some days allowed myself to go over, but my macros are so much better. I can't believe it took me this long to figure out what the problem was!

OK so...got this Garmin 245 Forerunner second-hand. I've been using it for almost 2 months and it's been great--I'm mainly wanting to lose some weight, and alongside a calorie-tracking app I have so far been successful losing weight by charting CICO and keeping a calorie deficit.

About me: 41F, athletic-ish, I've been very disciplined about my exercise regime for decades. I'm one of those who thinks it's not a workout unless I'm sweating bullets. So I do a lot of home cardio (HIIT, kickboxing, cross-training, using videos) and the occasional outdoor jog. I know the Garmin sucks at accurately tracking HR for these but generally it says I'll burn 300-400 calories in a 45-minute home cardio session. And yeah I guess I'd then eat a bunch of food to keep from losing weight, lol (I learned from the calorie tracker that I was eating way too much fat and not enough protein, so I'm rectifying that.) So I've always carried a few extra pounds but had a RHR of about 40 or less.

For jogging, supposedly the HR readings are more accurate. It seems my tendency is to jog at threshold pace. In my history of lackadaisical (but hard-for-me) jogs, I'd run 4-5 miles at approx 9:30-10 min/mile pace (sometimes with hills), and feel like I had a pretty hard workout afterward. Then my joints and legs hurt and I wouldn't do it again for another week. Pretty standard. I'm used to that and just figured I was a crappy runner with bad joints.

So enter the "suggested workouts" feature on the watch. The very first one it gave me was a tempo run that felt pretty hard and I was satisfied with the workout afterward. But now it keeps telling me to do these "base" runs at a suuuuuuper slow pace. It told me to do it yesterday so I started but ended up spending half the jog at threshold pace anyway. Otherwise it just doesn't feel like a workout. Ya know?? So now it wants me to a base run AGAIN, only 40 minutes, at 10:45/mile pace.

It just...feels...so....unsatisfying. I guess I admit I'm mainly working out to burn calories so I can eat more. I enjoy jogging but have never figured I'd ever be a "runner"-- I don't enjoy races because I hate feeling competitive, I just like to run around and listen to my music and BONUS get to pig out a bit later on. But I also like the idea of following these suggested workouts because I know they're designed to make me a better runner and get me into better shape. Right? Like...if I follow these workouts, COULD I actually run 5-6 days a week without my knees and hips giving me excruciating pain afterward? And what about strength training, why doesn't Garmin ever recommend that, when everyone says it's important? How do you factor that crap in? What if I commit to these suggested workouts and never do HIIT (which I love) again?? How would a HIIT workout screw with Garmin's metrics?

AM I OVERTHINKING THIS 😄

Sorry, still figuring all this out!!!

Pics are the charts from yesterday's "base" (failure) run. Its recommendation was a 10:55 pace; I went at 10:06 average and it felt pretty easy.

https://preview.redd.it/t77sifxjzsxg1.png?width=1458&format=png&auto=webp&s=7f86bc048d99bca5ea1d91db05aa4fbb69f9f1f8

https://preview.redd.it/skahqhrfzsxg1.png?width=2648&format=png&auto=webp&s=a4201f449f5d7a8794f47a660adf1b7d0e1e92b6