Saturday, January 31, 2009

Still losing

Had a great lunch yesterday. Could have gone for the burger but had the blackened mahi mahi with new potatoes, vegetables and garlic pizza bread. I even had a pint of tasty red beer. 

I guess I can handle about 1,300-1,500 calories and not falter too bad. Day to day weighing is bad because your body retains water based upon the salt content of what you eat and the weather. Plus, wait for this.... bowel movements. If you don't go, you don't lose much weight! One thing about this diet, you learn a lot about your body. I haven't added a column for bowel movements yet. Stay tuned...

Friday, January 30, 2009

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Thinking about the Super Bowl

Click on the chart to see a larger version

I'm worried about the Super Bowl. I've already decided that I'm going to eat the chips & dip, drink beer and enjoy the day. What I'm worried about is whether or not I'll fall off the wagon completely. 

As I was driving to lunch today I was thinking about splurging and eating something like tacos or spaghetti or pizza or maybe a yogurt for dessert. But I fought the urge and went to Subway, like Jared, and had the Veggie Delight. 230 calories. Plus it's fairly cheap if I buy the $5 foot-long and eat the other half for dinner. Since I budget 333 calories for each meal, the Veggie Delight works perfect. 

Today I only dropped 0.2 lbs. I believe this is because I made stir fry last night and I'm pretty sure the salt that I added and the soy sauce caused me to retain water. Once my system calms down today, I'm projecting a good weigh-in tomorrow. 

btw, I heard cookies calling my name last night and I resisted them. Bad cookies!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Feeling good

The belt is moving through the notches. 

I didn't have any blips in the weight loss area after the weekend even though I had blips in the calorie intake area. Not as big a blip as the previous weekend. The nice thing about tracking this info now is that I know what effects calorie intake has. Eventually it will become intuitive. I'll know what I can eat and what I can't.

Once I start my running in March, I'll be better off and I'll know my "maintain weight" number of calories. Once I offset the with exercise I'll be able to indulge in my favorite foods... in moderation!

You may notice that the waist and hip measurements are missing. I don't get to measure everyday so I just copy the numbers from the day before. Well, I must be losing inches because my body fat percentage was going up and that's wrong! I need to try to measure today to get a good body fat percentage reading.

I'm thinking I should do a review of the software programs I've come across during my little adventure...

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Milestone!



Milestone day! I'm officially down 10 pounds! 15.3 pounds to go. New target date is February 17.

The Technology
I've been playing around with a number of programs, all free. I started on my iPod Touch with a simple program called WeightTrack, a free app available in the iTunes store. It does one thing only and you can guess what that is by it's name. I've been using it on and off since July but I only started getting serious about this in January.

Yeah, January is the month everyone embarks on achieving the goals they set in their New Year's resolutions. In part, that's what I'm doing but I also am motivated more than that. This is a year of many goals for me but this Blog is dedicated to just one, getting healthy.

Around Christmas I discovered that LiveStrong.com has a feature called, "The Daily Plate." With The Daily Plate ("DP") you can track your weight, exercises and food intake. The best thing about DP is that it has every type of food I search for. From McDonald's, which I'm not eating anymore, to every packaged food you find at the grocery store. I recently discovered a feature that lets you enter your own items, which explains why I have a bit of a problem with multiple entries for certain items like 3 types of naval oranges with 3 different calorie counts. My attention to detail wants me to find the exact number of calories I'm eating but then I realize that 10 calories here or there out of 1,000 isn't going to make much difference.

I downloaded the LiveStrong app to my Touch and now, armed with a logging and tracking device in my pocket, I set out to lose 25 pounds on a 1,000 calorie per day diet. After 5 days I created a spreadsheet to track my progress and since I can't be satisfied with just a log, I created some forecasting formulas.

My projected goal is calculated based upon a 5 day rolling average of weight loss from the previous 5 days and then projected out to find the day that I will reach a BMI of less than 25. More on BMI later. After searching the Internet a bit to find the BMI formula, I also discovered a formula for BMR and WHR. More on those later as well. So my spreadsheet expanded and I'll be able to use this as I set new goals going forward. 

You'll see that not every day is 1,000 or under. I discovered that I can maintain my weight loss if I keep it under 1,300 calories per day, although I still shoot for 1,000 each day.

Now I have to look at my spreadsheet and figure out how I could lose 1.4 pounds in a day but my body fat percentage went up from 27% to 28%. Must be an error in my formulas.

Monday, January 26, 2009

A little late

Well, I started my latest fitness kick on January 12, and I'm just now getting to creating a blog to track my progress. I tried Facebook and Windows Live Space but those sites don't suit my needs as well as this place.

I'll post a chart daily as I track my progress with this first phase.

Phase 1: Lose enough weight to reach "Normal" on the BMI Chart. For my height, that's 183 lbs. I started at 209.2, and I'm now at 200.6. Although I weighed 212.4 on January 6. That was my highest recorded weight to date. I say, "recorded" because I didn't weigh myself every day. My current projected target is February 18, when I reach a BMI of 24.9.

This time I am watching my calories rather than carbs as I did on previous diets. This means I eat more fruits and vegetables and much less fat. I'll miss my ribeye steaks but moderation is a virtue. A big, fat juicy ribeye will be my reward for progress!

Weekends are the toughest times because I'm around food. Weekends create blips on my chart. ;^)

Phase 2: Begin a running regiment again. I had to stop running when I discovered I had a bad case of metabolic arthritis. Very painful and caused by too much uric acid. So I now eat less protein, which means less steak and a whole list of foods that I was eating. 

Once I am able to run consistantly 3 - 4 times per week, I'll participate in my 1st 5K. I'm not sure which one I'll choose. Once I'm back running I'll start a training program and find a 5K that corresponds.

Phase 3: Back on the bike. Mountain and road. I'd like to train for a cyclo-cross. Stay tuned.

Phase 4: Not sure yet. 10K? 1/2 Marathon? Marathon?

WHY? Shouldn't we all be fit and healthy? I'm aided by technology. I can track my calories and my progress very easily with handheld devices such as my iPod Touch, BlackBerry Storm and my laptop. I embrace technology and believe it can help me be healthier so I live much longer. Now, what do I do about gin  and cigars. Quite a contradictory set of blogs, wouldn't you say?