+9.8 (∆ -2.2)

At the top of every month, my wife goes on a "long week" where she works 12 hour days for seven days in a row. It's a rough week for us both, but the trade off is good weeks for the rest of the month. Sometimes her hours are 7AM–7PM and sometimes they're 3PM-11PM (yes, I know that's not 12 hours, but these hours still happen during a long week which means I have to get Zoë up in the morning and put her down at night, which is a handful.)

Last week, when I realized my wife was doing her 3PM–11PM shift, my first thought was, "Oh man, I'm going to lose some weight." One of the advantages of her shift is that I have total control over my own dinners. Normally, I'd be cooking fish every night and she would gladly eat it, but with the pregnancy, any cooking smell makes her nauseated. Yet, while she's not at home, I can have Ahi Tuna tonight, Swordfish tomorrow night, and Salmon the night after that—all hail Trader Joe's.

Having just come back from vacation and missing my gym workouts, I committed to seven days of gym outings while still eating under my calorie budget. Currently, I weigh much less than I did in January so my daily calorie budget has dropped from 1,996 to 1,873. If I were to consistently eat less than 1,873 calories—regardless of any expended calories during my aerobic workouts—I'm certain I would lose a substantial amount of weight. (However, I'll soon run out of wiggle room on calories—The American College of Sports Medicine recommends men eat no less than 1,800 calories daily and women eat no less than 1,200 calories daily.)

I'm finally less than 10 pounds away from my target weight, which is a huge boost to my morale. The simple math of eating less and working out is working exactly as I anticipated.

Next milepost: +8 (my lowest recorded weight since November 2005)