Progress

Day 115 - Saturday at the gym, originally uploaded by shobster.

If you're still checking my blog on a regular basis and reading the entries (and clicking on the ad!!! Click on the ad!!!), wow i admire you so much for bearing with my less than $0.02 worth of thoughts. But i'm going to have to apologize because in my head it's looking as though this thing is about to turn into a documentation of my journey trying to lose weight. But what can i say, that's just my big thing right now - aside from school that is, but i won't bore you even more with my PCR reactions and grant proposals, so... The lesser evil.

So, yeah. This photo is old (i.e. it was taken 3 days ago), but it's sorta related to my theme today on my progress in working out and losing weight so i'm gonna go ahead and use it anyway. If you remember the first time Matt and i set a goal for our weight loss, i was 165.3 lbs and i wanted to lose 1 lb. a week. Fast forward a week later (that's 4 swim sessions and a week of eating healthy), i weighed 166 lbs. Great job for not losing weight!!! Of course the optimistic side of me was going "Oh whatever, i know i'm feeling so much better about myself already so i won't get too hung up on the numbers," but in all honesty deep down i was thinking, "WTF?!?! What did i do wrong? It worked so well the last time, the swimming+portion control combo!!!"

But this goes to show just how body weight is governed by so many different, often inexplicable things (e.g. water retention, what i ate, did i cr*p, are the stars aligning, etc.): Two days later - Saturday last week, that is - i weighed myself again and i was 162.3 lbs. Dude, did i really lose 3.7 lbs in two days? Is that even humanly possible? But yeah, fast forward again to today, and i still weighed sorta the same (i was 162.2 lbs) so i guess i really did lose that much. Hellz yeah!!!!

Oh, and my time at the pool was also getting so much better. I was sooo close to cracking 29 minutes today, if it wasn't for the pool being uber crowded (there were like 5 people in my lane when i started and about 3 when i left). That's a 39 seconds improvement since Saturday! I'm super excited. I wonder if i'd be able to squeeze in an entire lap altogether within 30 minutes' time by the end of this week...

Oh, if you're wondering what's transpired between Ben and me since my last post... Of course we kissed and made up. :-) The only major fight that we've had since we started dating, i couldn't stay mad at him for too long... It was the same thing this time. To be honest i know that this last fight was not just because of him not thinking before he speaks, but also because i was being overly sensitive towards his words. In retrospect i know it could have been avoided if only i had kept my cool. So, no i'm not mad at him anymore. He can call me slow any day now, won't hurt me. I'm over it. He's over it. Things are once again peachy keen between us. We went autocrossing again last Sunday and it was tons of fun. I LOVE MY BOY!!!!!

On a side note... The math of weight loss:

Today i found out that it takes about 3500 calories to burn a pound of body fat, so if i wanted to lose 1 lbs. in a week i need to cut my calorie intake by about (3500/7 = 500) calories off of my daily calorie needs. Well, what's my daily calorie needs? I did some snooping on Google (it took like two clicks, so it's not detective work really) and according to some BMR calculator, my BMR is 1538.3. If i keep up to this moderately active lifestyle of 3 - 5 days of exercise a week, then according to some dude named Harris Benedict (hey if you get your name immortalized in a frequently cited equation then you can't be that wrong, right?) my daily calorie need is (BMR * 1.55 = 2384.6) calories. That's how many calories i need to maintain my weight. Right now i think i'm putting myself on ~1400 calorie diet give or take (i'm not really counting, plus i cheat on mini snacks), so i'm slashing my intake by ~984.6 calories, which means in a week i'll be cutting (984.6 * 7 = 6892.2) calories, which equates to about 1.97 lbs of body fat burned per week. Now, i know that these numbers are nowhere near Exact, and every one will differ in how their body response to a weight loss regime so i'm not hanging by these numbers, but still i think it's a good reference point to compare to...

Anyways. On with the march towards weight loss!!!!