Early Retirement Extreme Forums

DW and her dietitian friends were complaining about the fact that their trade association, the fancily-named Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, just picked Andy Cohen (of Real Housewives fame) to be the keynote speaker at their annual meeting, which would seem an odd choice unless you viewed the ...

Built-in flexibility is key. So my method is ...rigid like a system but also flexible at the end of the day to take decision fatigue into account. Works for M-F job schedule and also weekends. Nothing sucks more than running out of calories by 3pm or 4pm and then having to restrain yourself the ...

Interesting thread; I'm just getting caught up.

I've been struggling trying to drop about 25lbs as a married 47-year-old family man, having already locked in things like dropping alcohol entirely, averaging 12K+ steps/day, and regular barbell training. It's annoying me that I'm stuck at ~185, but ...

One of my dreams (feverish fantasies, really) is how some day there will be "professors of stupidity". There's so little research and study done when it comes to bad thinking that even simple stuff like behavioral economics wins Nobel prizes. ERE is not rocket science per se. What makes it ...

jacob wrote: ↑

Sat May 10, 2025 6:12 am

(*) I get a reminder of this when one of our higher spending forumites (lets say >$6,000/month) are kind enough to post details of their budget.

I'm glad to be of some use here.

May 4 - May 10:

- 12,706 steps per day average
- 3,080 calories expended per day average
- 2,098 calories consumed per day average
- 982 average calorie deficit
- 6,876 actual* total calorie deficit for the week

* Again, this is mostly just a semi-educated guess.

The weight scale is mostly ...

Most people undercount their calories.

No doubt I'm undercounting caloric intake (I HATE tracking calories) and probably also overcounting caloric expenditure. That said, another indicator of progress is that the bodyweight exercises I work into my strength training program as accessory type ...

chenda wrote: ↑

Mon May 05, 2025 2:55 pm

low level sports

How dare you!!!

chenda wrote: ↑

Mon May 05, 2025 1:43 pm

Why ?

The sh*@ parents say and do at a kid's soccer game--directed at the ref, the other parents, the other team's kids, their own kids--it's pearl-clutching conduct to say the least.

I'm interested in how you're calculating/tracking your calorie expenditures, because from what I know it varies a lot between people.

I'm wearing for a fitbit for this little run at getting into the 160s. So the calorie expenditure number is coming from whatever algorithm fitbit is using. I don ...

April 27 - May 3:

- 13,411 steps per day average
- 3,213 calories expended per day average
- 2,296 calories consumed per day average
- 917 average calorie deficit
- 6,421 actual* total calorie deficit for the week

* Again, this is mostly just a semi-educated guess.

Still no significant movement ...

Your note on charter schools was also on the money.

I know I complained about this on my own journal before, but our "charter" school--which is supposed to be an entirely lottery-based system, with no merit component--has less than 10 percent on free/reduced lunch, whereas our "neighborhood ...

The only thing I saw missing from @Jacob's pretty convincing forecast for 'Merica is that I suspect we'll see the internal variation @Jacob mentions become more and more geographically dispersed (remote work, online schooling for kiddos, etc.)--so much less State X v. State Y or County A v. County B ...

April 20-26:

- 18,360 steps per day average
- 3,913 calories expended per day average
- 2,320 calories consumed per day average
- 1,593 average calorie deficit
- 11,152 actual* total calorie deficit for the week

* Again, this is mostly just a semi-educated guess.

These numbers were skewed pretty ...

The other thing to be mindful of is metabolic adaptation when running a prolonged caloric deficit.

It's a concern, for sure. Honestly, with alcohol removed, I find for the first time in my life that I'm having to figure out how to get more calories in. As in, at the end of the day, I often find ...

The fact that I currently find myself even 70% in agreement with others who describe themselves as "moderates" (David Brooks being somebody else I've been nodding in agreement with lately) is likely both a sign of the times and the extent to which all of us (even me!) tend to veer a bit more ...

I've actually found that the problem is more towards the opposite. Most of the older men I meet on dating apps are extremely well-established in "place" and unlikely to be budged.

I don't doubt that is the case, but I'm talking about the utility of dating apps for people in their early 20s, a ...

This is all very well said.

It's not the "what makes a marriage work" advice/wisdom that has changed; not in the least. But, what most certainly has changed is where one finds a suitable mate to marry.


I think dating apps get a bad rap by people who either dated before they were mainstream ...

Thanks both!

Having said that, your deficit seems a bit too high. I wouldn’t exceed a deficit of 6300 calories a week since that equates to 1.8 lbs. I also wouldn’t aim to lose 1% a week for longer than 4-6 weeks before having a maintenance period of the same length that you were in a deficit ...

To illustrate with an anecdote, I (and my closest friends) all married people that we went to high school with. This is true of DW's siblings as well, and it was almost true for my own sister. That was simply what one did in my little stretch of redneck paradise in the 90s--sure, you went to college ...