Friday:  275.4 lbs., burned 3537 calories, consumed 1517.
Today:  274.6 lbs., Activities:  4.6 miles on my real bike.

Hey I got another comment - I get so excited when I get comments to this blog thing!  This comment was another question…

 Megan asked:  “how do u burn almost 3000 calories in one day tell me how!”

I’d be very happy to explain how, because I just recently came to understand how the whole calorie-math-thing works and I’m really excited about it because it makes SENSE and OMG my whole life I have struggled with weight gain that made no sense to me and diets that made no sense because I walked around feeling like I was starving and still didn’t lose any weight.  And now that I know how the math works, I know why. 

So here’s my version of CALORIE MATH 101…

CALORIES.  Okay, the word “calorie” is a measurement word, just like “inch” or “gallon” or “watt” are all measurement words - but while those words measure length,  liquid and electrical power, what exactly does a calorie measure?  One might think it measures some weird fat-creating element in food, but actually, calorie is a measurement of heat.  Weird, huh?  Because of how the body oxidizes food into fuel, when the word is applied to food, a calorie is a measurement of fuel or energy value. 

FUEL.  Okay, so if you’re measuring the fuel value of your food, think of it as the gasoline that powers your body - and your body is a complex machine with many pre-programmed automatic settings - like how fast we burn our fuel - also known as our metabolic rate, or metabolism. 

BASAL METABOLIC RATE.  Our bodies burn calories all day, every day, even when we’re not “doing” anything.  Think of it like the gas that your car burns when it’s idling… the car’s not moving, not going anywhere, but it’s burning fuel nevertheless.  Your basal metabolic rate is the total number of calories your body burns given your daily lifestyle.  It’s different for everyone and can vary greatly, based upon many factors including how active one’s “usual” daily lifestyle is.  Someone who works in construction, climbing ladders and lifting building materials might have a basal rate of 5,000 or more while someone who sits in front of a computer all day might have a basal rate of 2,500 or even less.

THE MATH.  If you can determine (in the ballpark) what your basal metabolic rate is, then you can use math to lose weight!  Fitday.com has a feature which calculates approximate basal rate - and though I find it’s not totally accurate for me - it’s a good place to start.  Once you know your basal rate, then you can adjust your fuel intake to result in weight loss.  If you burn more calories than you consume, then your body will burn the stored fat.  For example:

        Daily calories eaten:                 1800 calories
        Daily basal metabolic rate:   - 2300 calories
                                                                     —————-
        Stored fuel utilized:                     500 calories 

        500 calories x  7 days =  3500 stored fuel calories per week
        (3500 stored fuel calories = 1 pound of fat)
                                                              
Notice that this weight loss is achieved with basal calories only.  No additional effort, no additional exercise.  Just eating less than you burn.  If you want to step it up, though, you can lose weight faster by adding additional activity into your day.  Fitday.com also has a feature to tell you how many calories each activity burns.

        Daily calories eaten:                 1800 calories
        Daily basal metabolic rate:   - 2300 calories
        Additional calories burned:  -   500 calories
                                                                     —————-
        Stored fuel utilized:                    1000 calories 

        1000 calories x  7 days =  7000 stored fuel calories per week
        (7000 stored fuel calories = 2 pounds of fat)

SO… without lowering your food intake, you can double your rate of weight-loss by just burning a few more calories each day.  You can burn 500 calories lots of ways:  40 minutes of swimming (vigorous) laps, 40 minutes of bicycle-riding (14-16 mph), or 2 hours of (brisk) walking.

WEIRD SETTINGS.  Like I said earlier, our bodies are machines with pre-programmed settings.  One of those setting is the OMG-I’M-STARVING setting.  Okay, it’s not really called that, but it’s an automatic response that occurs when daily caloric intake drops too low - and what happens is that the metabolism is lowered to conserve stored fuel.  So, all those times that I went on 800-to-1000-calorie diets, I was walking around feeling hungry all the time - and meanwhile my basal metabolic rate had dropped from my normal rate of 2300 down to probably 1200 or so, so I was barely seeing any results!

Other weird automatic settings can actually be helpful.  There are things we can do which can actually raise our basal metabolic rate.  Here are some:

- Eat breakfast.
- Eat smaller meals, more frequently during the day.
- Eat early.  The metabolic rate drops, and continues to drop, the later it gets.
- Muscle burns calories, fat does not.  The more muscle you develop, the higher the basal rate.
- Either don’t procrastinate, or don’t age.  The older you get, the lower the basal rate, so do it now!!!
- Eat lean pure protein - 30% of its calories are used during digestion.
- Fiber also makes the body work during digestion.
- Get enough sleep.  Sleep-deprivation will dial the metabolic rate down.

So, Megan, to answer your question… Fitday.com says that my basal metabolic rate is 2300.  If I go for a 1-hour bike-ride, I will burn an additional 700 calories, bringing me to a total of 3000 calories burned in one day.

I’ve always been a sucker for math! 

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Wednesday:  274.4 lbs., burned 2827, consumed 1458.
Thursday:  275.4 lbs., burned 2305, consumed 1528.
Today:  275.4 lbs., Activities:  8.75 miles on my real bike.

This afternoon my husband and I went to Home Depot and as soon as we left, Mike said, “Damn!  I forgot to get a new fuel filter for the lawnmower!”  It was almost time for him to go to work, so I offered to go get it for him that evening after my workday was over.  “Kevin and I will ride to Home Depot on our bikes,” I said. 

“You wanna ride all the way there on your bike?”  This is coming from the guy who was with me last Saturday when we went for a leisurely 14-mile bike ride. 

I rolled my eyes at him.  “Home Depot is only maybe 4 miles from our house - I think I can handle it.”  So at about 6:00, Kevin and I set out, headed south.  We took a route I’d never taken on a bike before, and it was a bit of a challenge - a couple hills, not too steep, just long continuous up-grades but I kept my speed up and we were there so quickly that I couldn’t believe it had actually been 4-and-a-quarter miles.  Awesome!

On the way home, I gave Kevin choices for dinner:  Stop at Applebee’s and have a sit-down-be-waited on dinner of grilled chicken -or- stop at Taco Bell and chow down on soft tacos -or- ride home and order barbeque chicken pizza.  He opted for the pizza.  Yummm.  By the way, Papa John’s BBQ pizza with thin crust and light cheese is less than 200 calories per slice and it is yummm-o.

Before I started writing this, I entered my weight and exercise on my ummm…. weight and exercise page (lol) (see link at top of this page) and I thought to myself, “I wonder how many miles I’ve gone so far this month?”  So I added it up.  Between the exercise bike and the real bike, I’ve clocked 72.79 miles since April 1.  Woohoo!  I’m gonna keep watching it, I’d like to make 100 miles in a month, that’d be what, an average of 3 miles per day?  Given all the days I haven’t ridden anywhere, I think that’d be a great jumping-off point.  Then I’d have a number to strive to beat next month!  Yeahhhh!

Six days ago, I weighed in at 273.2, exactly 12 lbs. down from where I started.  Since then, I’ve not again seen that number or even anything close to it, but I’ve been getting plenty of exercise and am without a doubt swollen, I can feel it in my knees.  I’m not discouraged, not at all… Weight is not the only indicator of progress.  Measurements, in fact, are much more precise.

In addition to FitDay, I have a free account at www.weighttracker.info because they have an “inch-minder,” a place to record and store your measurements and reports you can look at to see your progress.  Here’s where I am right now:

Chest - lost .25 inch
Waist - lost 1.0 inch
Abdomen - lost 1.5 inches
Hips - lost 2.0 inches
Upper arm - lost .5 inch
Forearm - lost .5 inch
Thigh - lost 1.5 inches
Calf - lost .5 inch
Neck - lost 1.25 inches
—————————-
Total inches lost:  9.0 inches

The numbers make total sense because my exercise has been primarily the bike-riding, so I’ve lost more inches from the waist-down - except my calves which are visibly gaining muscle.  (Wooohooo I have visible muscles!!!  LOL)  I’m pretty happy about the loss in the neck, since I have a very, very pronounced double-chin (inherited from my mother) which I’ve always had - and it’s bigger now than ever.  I’m happy to see any amount of loss there.

I still keep picturing margarine.  Not the kind in a bowl, the kind in a stick.  The kind that comes in one-pound packages.  I held one of the one-pound packages up to my belly the other day and said, I’ve lost approximately twelve of these.  Twelve.  OMG.

Now I just need to do that (lose 12 lbs.) about 9 more times.  That would put me in the 160’s and I’d be very good with that. 

I can do that.

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Monday:  275.2 lbs., burned 3712, consumed 1449.
Today:  274.2 lbs., Activities:  4 miles on the exercise bike.

The only diet that ever resulted in weightloss for me was the one my dad put me on when I was 15.

I was the youngest of six kids and I guess my father was concerned for me - none of his other children had become overweight.  My mother, after birthing six babies, had packed on an extra hundred pounds or so, but after she went to work when I started kindergarten, she lost most of it.  In any case, it was 1976, and my dad came across some crazy fad diet (probably in a magazine) that no one else had ever heard of but it sounded interesting so he bought it through the mail.  I remember that it came in a package with a small pamphlet explaining the plan and a chart that included drawings to explain how the plan’s accompanying exercises were done.

I decided since he bought it just for me, that I’d actually do it.  I’d try this plan.  I read the pamphlet and had never before heard the concepts that it described but it all sounded logical to me.  The plan was simple:  Delete carbs from your diet.  Completely.  Eat meats and cheese.  After a few weeks on the plan, small amounts of carbs could be added back in.  Very small.  I lost about 40 lbs. in three months.

I don’t know very much about how a diet without carbs could cause weightloss, but I do know how a diet that includes less calorie intake plus daily exercise could cause weightloss.  I haven’t thought about that experience for a long time, but I was thinking about it today.  I totally STARVED while I was on that diet~!  I was constantly hungry and therefore very uncomfortable.  I did stick with it for a while, but only because my dad wanted me to.

It took me a while, but yes, I gained all that weight back.

Since then, I have gone on “diets” a few times, but not as many times as you’d think.  I didn’t like the whole dieting/starving sensations so therefore I’ve avoided having them by avoiding dieting.  In the past 30 years, I have probably spent a total of five, maybe six weeks on a diet.

None of those times I tried to diet though was ANYTHING like what I’m doing now.  I’m not trying to starve myself because I know I won’t stick to that.  I won’t.   For me, 1500-something calories per day is enough - most days.  I don’t walk around feeling hungry and deprived.  I can eat out at a restaurant and usually I can find something on the menu that will fit within my total calories for the day.  Usually.

I made a list of the foods that I was eating back then, when I was on the Carb diet, and entered them into FitDay so I could see how many calories I was eating.  800-1000!  Oh my!  No WONDER I lost weight!  I think it had more to do with the number of calories inguested than the whole count-the-carbs thing.  I could be wrong.

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Sunday:  274.8 lbs., burned 2653, consumed 1577.
Today:  275.2 lbs., Activities:  10 miles on the real bike!

My son is evil!  I talked him into going bike-riding tonight, telling him that he could be in charge, he could pick our route, he could decide where we rode and for how long.  LOL, he took me to the next town, five miles away!

It was an awesome ride, though!  I complained (whined) for the first half-hour because we were riding against the wind and my thighs were screaming at me, “WHAT do you THINK you’re DOING?!?!?”  But then my muscles finally warmed up and I was able to pick up some speed even with the wind to fight against.  Kevin and I were both in funny silly moods and we laughed a lot.  A LOT!!  It was very cool.

We stopped at a grocery store (which is more than 4 miles from our house) and he put in an application to work there.  I made the comment, “Well, you’d certainly get your daily workout if you got the job here!” and he was all excited about that.  He remembers when his older brother was working at a fast-food restaurant before he got his car, he used to ride his bike there everyday.  Eric lost about 30 pounds during that time, just from all the bike-riding he was doing!  So now Kevin really REALLY wants that job in the next town!

Anyway, the ride with my son was fun and the two-hours of exercise were good for me!

550 

Saturday:  273.2 lbs., burned 4746, consumed 1494.
Today:  274.8 lbs., Activities:  3.14 miles on the real bike.

Riding around on my bike, I’m out there in the public, on display for all to see.

Given that my job requires a good amount of public speaking and that I love getting up in front of a group of people to teach a class, you’d think that I would not be shy about riding down the side of a street on my bicycle — but I am.  Okay, maybe “shy” isn’t the right word.  Cautious is closer.  I  love riding out there in the breeze, experiencing the scents and scenes that you miss from inside a car - but I’m cautiously intimidated by who I might meet up with out there.

Not thieves or robbers.  No, meeting up with your typical mugger-type never even occurred to me.  No, it’s a different kind of bad guy I’m cautious about. 

There are a few people out there in the general public (very few, thank God) that feel it necessary to somehow comment on the outward appearance of anyone who weighs more than they deem acceptable.  A while back it was a man - a full grown man - who called me “Hippo!”  Last week it was a guy in a pickup truck who pointed and laughed at me, right to my face.  And then this week it was a teenager who pointed and shouted, “Hoooooooly CRAP!”

I have been overweight since I was nine years old.  You’d think I’d be immune to this type of attention by now.  But I’m not.  And I never will be.

I am going to lose this weight.  It might take me a year, it might take me two, but I definitely WILL be healthy and fit.  But I’m not doing it for the jerks of the world that would humiliate me for daring to appear in public in my big ugly fat suit.  I’m doing it because I want to feel good, to feel healthy, to feel fit, to feel comfortable in my own skin, not because of how people look at me, but because of how I FEEL.

It’s just kind of sad that this type of discrimination against a whole class of people is still so prevalent.  No, the “overweight people class” is not a protected one, but in my opinion it should be.  It’s not okay to shout out your car window at a group of people who are part of a minority ethnic group.  It’s not okay to pay someone less or pass someone up for a promotion because they have a disability.  And it’s not okay to not consider hiring someone – just because they are fat.  “Oh if she’s fat, she must be lazy.”  Makes about as much sense as judging someone’s intelligence by their skin color.  Fat does NOT equal lazy.

*Sigh*   *Stepping off soap box.*

532

Yesterday:  274.4 lbs., burned 2300, consumed 1529.
Today:  273.2 lbs., Activities:  14.4 miles on the real bike.

Yesterday, fitbefore40 asked me a question in a comment to my blog, so today I’m gonna answer that question.

I have a question for you, have you asked a medical professional about the safety of continuously eating fewer calories than you are burning off? I’m just wondering how long you can do this without doing any harm to yourself…I’ve heard that undercutting your daily calorie requirements by 500 is reasonable (which would lead to a pound a week lost) but you seem to me going a lot more than that. Thanks for answering this for me and again I wish you much success 

Thanks for the encouragement, fb40, and for your concern.  :)  When I first read your question I actually read it wrong - but then I went back and read it again and saw the word “requirements,” aha!  I’m assuming that by “daily calorie requirements” you mean “the amount of calories a person needs to consume to maintain their current weight, at their current level of activity.”  If so, then yes, what you heard is correct.  If a person eats 500 calories less each day than the amount of calories their body needs to consume to maintain current weight at current level of activity - then after a week, their body will have utilized 3500 calories of stored fat, which is equal to one pound.

As to your question - yes, I did speak with my doctor.

Before I tell what she said, I just want to clarify a little something.  I have Graves Disease, an autoimmune disorder that affects my thyroid gland.  I have to take pills every single day or my thyroid will get all wacky and when that happens I get very sick.  The pills turn my metabolism WAY down.

I have my account at FitDay set at “sedentary/bed-bound” because that’s the lowest option they offer.  So when I post that I burned 2300 calories - that’s what FitDay says that I burn at my current weight — if I stayed in bed all day.  I don’t stay in bed all day, I work a full-time job - but even so, that figure is probably a bit overstated.  According to the spreadsheet I keep, it’s probably more like about 1900.

So — if I do nothing different — no exercise, just my daily grind at the office — I will maintain my current weight if I eat 1900 calories a day.  I generally stay right within the 1400-1600 calorie range.  I have had a few days when I “forgot” to eat and dropped below that range, and quite a few days when I went above. 

So here’s what I say:

- Don’t eat less than 1200 calories a day — as a habit.  If you habitually eat below that level, your body will assume that starvation is imminent and its metabolism will shut down to conserve stored fat.
- Eat more whole foods.
- Get moving.  Start slow if you need to.  Listen to your body.  If it hurts or if it’s swollen, let it heal.  Then do it again and push a little harder, farther, faster.
- Eat a little less than your body needs for maintaining your current weight and level of activity - then crank up the activities and burn off that stored energy faster. 

For me with my funky metabolism, it doesn’t exactly burn fast either way.  I’ve been doing this for 14 weeks and I’ve lost 12 lbs. so far.  Works out to LESS than a pound a week.  I didn’t really exercise, though, the first 4 weeks - and guess what - I didn’t really lose any weight either.

Okay, here it is, what my doctor said:

“Go for it, Eileen.”

She was very supportive.  She said as long as I didn’t starve myself, that I could exercise as much as I wanted.

513

Sunday:  275.8 lbs., burned 2307, consumed 1476.
Monday:  No weigh-in, burned 2307, consumed 1440.
Tuesday:  274.4 lbs., burned 2300, consumed 1459.
Wednesday:  274.2 lbs., burned 2591, consumed 1343.
Yesterday:  273.8 lbs., burned 2297, consumed 1206.
Today:  274.4 lbs., Activities:  Performance Report at work.

Okay, so I don’t know how many extra calories are burned when a person is under pressure and feeling stressed, but if it’s true and there really are extra calories burned, then tomorrow I should wake up weighing about 120.  Today was WAY stressful.

The outcome was good, though.  We got our federal performance report in on time — with more than an hour to spare — so it’s all good.  Whew.

So after my workday was over I was just thinking it would be a good time for a nap, when my daughter reminded me that tonight was her prom.  Oh yeah.  What followed was the seemingly required battle of wills which soon accelerated into something even more unpleasant.  Finally, though, we found a place where we could enjoy a peaceful truce while I helped her to get ready.   Now it’s coming up on time to pick her up — and so my day is not yet over after all. 

I hope she is having a good time though!

496

Yesterday:  No weigh-in, burned 4820, consumed 1599.
Today:  276.4 lbs., Activities:  None.  Was a total bum.

Hubby and I totally took the day off today.  We had stuff we needed to do but, guess what, guess the need wasn’t all that pressing because we didn’t do any of it.  We laid in bed and watched TV between trading snores.  It was sinful.  It was decadent.  It was wonderful.

So, no exercise today but I figure we earned a day off. 

I was not exactly surprised at the weigh-in today.  I can feel that I’m swollen and so I’m carrying the weight of that water.  Besides that, I have no doubt that I gained some muscle.  Oh, there are so many ways to justify a disappointing weigh-in!  But it’s okay, I’m not derailing or anything.  I am still psyched about how GOOD it felt to do 25 miles of bicycling in two days. 

Wooohooo 25 miles!  That is a decent total for a THIN person, so it is totally amazing for a person who is carrying around an extra HUNDRED pounds!!  I would like to see a thin person ride a bicycle carrying 100 lbs. worth of weights and go 25 miles in two days.  Ha!

People who look at me and how short and fat I am don’t believe that I can actually ride that long and that far.  At one of the conferences I went to, I went down to the hotel’s gym in the early morning and clocked 5 miles on one of their exercise bikes.  I mentioned something about it later in the day and one of the ladies nearby said, “YOU did five miles on an exercise bike?!”  “Yes,” I nodded, “this morning before breakfast.”  She gave me a look that clearly said she didn’t believe me. 

Ha!  Five miles is nothin’, lady.

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Hit counter web design gallery.

Tuesday:  278.6 lbs., burned 2499, consumed 1393.
Wednesday:  No weigh-in, burned 2322, consumed 1216.
Yesterday:  No weigh-in, burned 4432, consumed 1359.
Today:  No weigh-in, Activities:  Bicycled 13+ miles.

Ohhhhh man!  I am tired (after all it’s after 2am) but still SO pumped!  The last two days have been real slices of heaven - which is a weird thing to say, given what we did, lol.

Wednesday afternoon we left.  I announced to the staff at my work that I was taking the rest of the week off as vacation time and … we left.  We put Hubby’s and Son’s bikes on the carrier on the back of the Jeep and we drove away, unsure of our actual eventual destination.  I had printed some stuff I found on the web but we hadn’t actually made any solid decisions about where we were going.  We just knew these things to be true:

1.)  We needed at least a couple days to get away.
2.)  We wanted to ride our bikes somewhere other than in our own neighborhood.
3.)  I needed a new bicycle.

In our quest for my replacement bike, I had come across only one 26″ model that I could actually maybe ride without killing myself.  I still couldn’t actually reach the ground beneath me, but it was close, or at least closer than all the other models I’d seen.  So on our way out of town, we stopped and bought the bike.  It joined the other two bikes on the carrier as we headed east out of town, out of the county we live in.

We didn’t stop going east until we got to the other end of the adjoining county, in a small town about 50-some miles from home.  There were several parks in that general area that had bike trails but only two that had paved ones.  So we stayed that first night at a hotel not too far away, with the expectation that we’d ride the next day.

And we did.  Yesterday we picked one of the parks and rode its paved bike trail loop.  The sites I’d found online hadn’t told how long the paved bike trail was.  As we passed between pines and palmettos and breathed in the scent of a forest in bloom, we were amazed at the tranquility and peace.  It was beyond beautiful, the scenery along this lovely trail.  And we soon found out that the trail itself was only 1.5 miles long.  A rather short, but lovely route.

At my suggestion, we ventured out onto the shoulder of the highway to explore.  Why load the bikes back up onto the carrier when we can just ride our bikes?  So we explored the surrounding area, and logged over 10 miles.

It was so good, we didn’t want to go home.  So we found a nice hotel and settled in to stay another night.  After dinner we spent time in both the pool and the jacuzzi, and it was so great that this morning we decided to do it again (the pool and jacuzzi, lol).   We had lunch and then rode our bikes around the surrounding area, then loaded them up and headed out to the other park that had paved bike trails.  This one, though, did tell on their website how long their trails were.  The loop itself is 7 miles long and then there’s a 2-mile leg that goes to another highway/entrance. 

We clocked another 13+ miles today!  :oD

So yeah, I’m exhausted, but in a really good way!  We burned some major calories over the past two days!  Yeeeeeahhhhh!!

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