Gained 6 pounds but not worried

  I went to see Dorothy Mason the nurse practioner, and I got weighed in the process.   Now I haven't weighed myself since I stopped trying so hard to diet.   I came in at 205 pounds.

   So I have gained some weight back, but I knew that was coming.   So far I'm sticking to the plan of eating more frequently and a lot more, but keeping exercise up to a reasonable but not crazy level.

  Instead of 20,000 or 30,000 I'm doing more like 12,000.      The plan is to get my metabolism out of starvation mode so my quality of life can rise a bit.     I would like my rest metabolism to get back to a wasteful state and hopefully I won't be gaining all that fat back, but getting some back is inevitable.

  To help increase the burning I'm trying the Steve technique of munching on stuff here and there all day.    The body responds to eating with a 'thermic' effect, which raises the metabolism in order to run the digestion process.    

  The greatest thermic effect is gained by eating protein.   I would love to munch on turkey or chicken because the calories are so low.  The problem is that lunch meat is expensive.    A package that would last me two days costs $2 to $3.   I'm not going to spend $3 on a snack for every day and then plunk down $6 for my wegmans salad on top of that.

  The one thing I don't want to do is eat fat, because the energy content is so high that I'm sure I would be shooting myself in the foot.   The body finds it extremely easy to make body fat out of fat intake.    So protein would be my first choice,  carbs would be my second...

  I'm wondering if I can find a soy snack that is low cal high protein for me to snack on that isn't so expensive?

Switching Modes

   Having weighed myself on Friday, 10 Apr 2009,  and come in at 199.5 lbs, I have decided to change to a hopefully less arduous plan.

  I think that by limiting my intake I had slowed my metabolism quite a bit, which was ok because I was burning so many with lots of exercise.

  But I think what I will do now is to up the calories to something closer to my calculated daily rest energy, which is about 2000 calories.  But at the same time, I want to walk 5 to 10 miles per day to keep the weight loss going.

Home Stretch

Now I'm in the home stretch.   Having gotten down to 204.4 last weigh in, and thus becoming normal weight, I did not want to get on the scale the next day and hear that sad music tone before it tells you that you're overweight.

  So I took a few days off the weigh-ins and worked super hard at walking.   So I did running on Wednesday morning and also did 100 min of treadmill every night, and tried to keep very vigilant on the number of calories I was consuming.

  The result:    4.4 pounds lighter than last time.   I am exactly 200 pounds!

  Molly has been a great help there.   She's stopped putting a big plate of meat next to me at dinner, and is always making a salad for me to fill up on.   I think her efforts to help me plus the 100 min of treadmill is what really did it.

  So my new goal is 195 pounds.     I will officially end my diet there.   That would be 25 pounds lighter than when I started this blog.     Unfortunately I will still have a lot of body fat, and I won't have my 6 pack at 195 pounds, but I'm tired of having my whole life focused around weightloss.

   I will go on for a while trying to keep under 200 as I get back to a more normal life.    Maybe this summer I will try for lower, like 180.  It would be easier then because of all the opportunities for running and biking in the outdoors.

  So...   5 pounds.   I'll bet I could do it in two weeks if I keep with the extreme effort.   Salads and walking to Wegmans and 100 min treadmill every night.   2 weeks then I'm done.   That seems doable.

Finally!

Yesterday I was so bummed out that a week of intense effort had yielded nothing.   But I concluded that I should not give up or change strategy, because it had to work.

Well, I guess it did.  This morning my weight had dropped 2.4 lbs.

  And for the first time, my BMI is now in the Normal range!   The picture shows my current BMI in the normal range, and my previous BMI in the dreaded overweight range.

   The weight was 204.4 lbs.   As a final goal, I think that 195 lbs would be a good target.   Then I can let my weight drift back up to 200 when I finally relax.

  But already I think I can ease up a little bit.    If I can strive for 1.5 lb per week for April and May, then I would be at my goal for June.

So assuming I have a base metabolism rate of 1200 Calories per day, and I can exercise an average of 700 Calories per day that means I need to eat less than 1900 Calories.

700 Calories would be walking/running 6 miles.    My Dennis walk is usually 2 miles, and my Wegmans walk is usually 3 miles,  and 60 min on the treadmill is about 3 miles.   Doing all of those would get me 8 miles or 944 Calories.

Then I can go running twice a week, too.

To lose 1.5 lbs per week requires a daily deficit of 750 Calories, so I need to keep my intake below 1250 Calories.

That means limiting my dressing on my salads, so they are closer to 250 insteat of 400.   And no snacking on nuts, because they are really high in calories.

Keeping dinner time down to 1000 calories is the tough part for me.   Keeping the calories down that low for 2 months is probably totally impossible for me.   I can make myself exercise, and I can only get a salad when I go to Wegmans, but I cannot sit at the dinner table and not eat any more when I pass the 1000 Calorie mark.   Oh well.

Goal = 195 lbs in 8 weeks.

207 Still

  So last week I walked/ran about 10 to 13.5 miles per day.  At 118 Calories per mile, that should be 1180 to 1593 Calories per day.

  Everyday I have had no breakfast and a 210 Calories salad with 180 calories of dressing.  That's 390 calories.   

  So the big question is, how many calories do I eat at dinner time?    Assume that I'm using 1500 Calories per day for normal body operations,  then an average of 1386 Calories of exercise on top of that, then I should be burning  2886.5 calories per day.

 So if I am not losing any weight, then how much must I be eating for dinner?

2886.5 - 390 = 2500

I think I'm probably eating closer to 1200 calories at dinner time.   So I should be losing about 1300 Calories worth of fat every day, or  1300/3500 = .37 lbs of fat every day, or 2.5 lbs per week.

But I'm not so what is going on?

I probably am not buring 1500 Calories per day for operating expenses.

I probably am eating more than 1200 Calories at dinner time.

Even still,  I don't know how much you can modify these numbers to make the zero-weight loss make sense.

OK, so I just went to the following website to calculate my resting metabolism rate:

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

ha ha ha, guess what it says my daily Calorie use would be if I stayed in bed all day?

2008 Calories per day!

http://www.hussmanfitness.org/bmrcalc.htm

  Ok, so there are two completely different sites which list my BMR as 2000 Calories a day.

So even if I did NOTHING, then I could eat 400 for lunch and 1600 calories for dinner to keep the same weight.

The 118 Calories per mile of walking seems like a very stingy estimate.   Walking 30 miles to burn a pound of fat is daunting.  So I don't think that is wrong either.   And the math for how much I'm exercising is based on a speed of 3mph * #hours walking, and that isn't going to be off by much either.

So a McDonald's Quarter Pounder is 535 calories.  So if I'm eating 1600 calories per dinner, that would be like eating 3 Quarter Pounders.  So let's go with that.   I am eating 1600 calories for dinner.   I am eating 400 Calories for lunch.   And I'm exerciseing 1300 calories per day.  And my BMR is very low, let's cut it in half, or 1000 Calories per day.

Input  2000 Cal/Day

Output   1000 + 1300   (BMR + Exercise) = 2300

So if my BMR is 1/2 what is should be, and I pig out every day at dinner time.  I should still be losing a pound of fat every  11.6 days.

Is there any question that I have this virus?

http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20070820/obesity-virus-more-bigger-fat-cells

ok, well I think the best thing to do is stick to the plan.   The numbers say this simply must work.  There is a lower limit to the BMR no matter how much the body tries to conserve.   I can't see myself eating less lunch or dinner, because I simply will not be able to stick to it.   So, for another week I will stay the course, and hope for the best.

Failure

  I gained tons of weight this weekend.  I'm at 209.2,  almost back up to 210 pounds.

  I should have just layed around and eaten doughnuts and pizza.   What was I thinking with my ten miles of hiking and 17 miles of biking, and eating bags of carrots when I was hungry?

  ok, I did eat eat some Cheeto-like things, and there were some m&m's set out in a bowl that I was unable to ignore.  And I ate some chips.    But those were all limited little munchings, not a whole-bag binge kind of thing that I felt guilty about.

  But the facts are the facts.   Despite an average exercise level which is more than ANYBODY I KNOW, it is simply not enough to keep up with my endless hunger, despite a pretty good effort at diet control.

  I was tempted to take a picture of all the snack foods in the kitchen and dining room this weekend.   3 bags of chips, peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies,  M&M candies,  zinger-like things,  cupcakes,  cashews,   yogurt covered raisins, and several pizzas.   I *love* all those foods.    I'll admit my annoyance at the sight of it. 

   I don't particularly covet celery and spinach and raw carrots.      

   So, I failed.   Trying to eat just a little of this, and little of that, and little bit of bad stuff added up to a giant step backwards on my quest for normal weight.   Trying to not eat that stuff when I'm hungry just doesn't work for me.   Atkins worked for me because I could eat foods I liked when I was hungry, I just couldn't eat things with carbs.

   What I'm going to do now?  I strayed from Atkins and tried the exercise approach because I found that Atkins is not a good way to go if you want to build some muscle.   But perhaps Atkins is the only way I can lose.

206.8 must be patient

   I went to the community center last night and used their rowing machine and their arm pain machine.     I planned to bring my pad to sit on, but forgot it.   I was trying to be very careful not to hurt my tailbone this time (last time I wore right through the skin), but this morning I found that I was not careful enough.  Ouch.

  Besides that, the rowing was good exercise.   I can burn calories at over 1000 per hour, but then I could only 20 min because my backside hurt so much.   But I did manage to burn over 300.  Then I did the arm machine which was almost pure torture for 8 out of the 10 minutes.    I used a whopping 60 calories!  Enough for 1/2 a coors light.

  The treadmill is a much better deal as far as calories used verses unpleasantness.    But I knew I'd be running in the morning and didn't want to tire my legs out the night before.

  And I did run this morning.   I almost didn't, since I stayed up until almost 1am working on a new City of Heroes story arc.  It was way fun, but that meant only 4 hours or so of sleep.    My rationalization for not going was that my heart palpitations seem more frequent when I get less sleep, so I'd better not run today!   But that would mean running on Friday morning, which may make me extra tired Friday night, I got up and went anyway.    No heart pain or strangeness of any kind happend.

  I did 4 min warm up at about 6mph, then 18 min at high intensity, which is probably between 8 and 9 mph.  Then 11 more min at 6mph again.   We will count that as 4 miles.   I'm hoping to do twelve miles today as it will be a weight-loss day.    My body has to refill leg, back and arm glycogen today, and I'm going to let fat do that.    Hopefully I will be saying goodbye to another 1/2 pound.   Going to have to avoid pigging out at dinner.