0 (∆ -0.6) || 21.8%

Yeah!! I did it: I lost it all. (Pic to come.)

This is the end of a long journey, and I'm sort of shocked I really lost all the weight I set out to—a total of 33.5 pounds since January 19th. I overshot of my original target deadline by two and a half weeks, but given how many years I've been trying to lose weight, who cares!! Over seven months, I lost an average of 0.1 pound/day and 1 pound/week. Sweet.

Currently, I have 21.8% body fat, so I'm aiming to bring that down to under 20%, and then later to around 17%. No deadline for that per se. Just living healthfully now... after seven months, my eating habits have been firmly established, so it shouldn't be too hard to get slimmer and more fit as time goes on.

From this point forward on, I'll be using my body fat percentage as another central indicator of my progress.

No matter what—the race is over, and I won. Huzzah!!!

+0.6 (∆ -1.2)

It took some extra effort in the last stretch, but I finally dipped under 160 lbs., which technically makes me 25.0 BMI and thus... Normal Weight! Woo hoo!

I should go celebrate by binge drinking all night... or maybe not? Heh heh.

As far as I can tell, since weight can be either muscle or fat—which both fluctuate—the more important measurement than BMI is body fat percentage. When I started this whole program, I was at 28.9% body fat (according to my scale which isn't a highly accurate measurement), which means I was carrying 55.6 pounds of pure fat. Now I'm at 21.9% body fat, which means I'm still carrying around 34.9 lbs of fat, a net loss of 20.6 pounds of fat. According to the BMI, 34.9 lbs of fat is a normal amount of fat, but the BMI is a bit of a hack. According to the American Council on Exercise, body fat percentages break down like this:


So my next goal is to get my body fat percentage below 20%, and then to 17%. I don't have dates for that yet, just whenever I get to them. I have faith now that I'll get to them eventually. If I hit a wall, I might get more regimented in my approach.

Either way, I think I'll celebrate... by losing more weight. Truth be told, when you finally figure out a method that works to shed weight, it's a little addictive. And almost fun.

+1.8 (∆ +0.4)

Well, the day is finally here—the end of my seven month plan to lose weight—and I can unequivocally say it's been a success. Not only am I celebrating my birthday, but I'm literally lighter than I've been in years. Huzzah!

If you've been with me since the beginning, then you already know I was over 30 pounds overweight at the beginning of this year. With a BMI of 30.1, I was technically obese... and that was, pardon the pun, the straw that broke the camel's back. It was time to take back ownership over my weight. I had allowed things to get out of control. Me. Nobody else. No more excuses.

Admittedly, it was a difficult road to take, especially in the beginning. I had to stare down my late night hunger pangs, finally face the stress and dormant feelings I'd been sedating with food, get a realistic grip on just how caloric fast food is, and accept the disappointment from not getting results fast enough. There were ample opportunities to quit. But I stayed on it. I'd been trying for over a decade to get to a slimmer and healthier version of myself and after years of knowing (and even advocating) the simple math behind losing weight—eating less food and working out more—I decided to take my own advice. Maybe I just needed time to let go of the delusion that eating recklessly would let me remain happy. Who knows? What I do know is that my original plan has worked.

So how did I do it?

I used a lot of aides to track my progress: a scale, my blog, spreadsheets, a thorough understanding of nutrition labels, but above all were a few crucial applications on my iPhone. I used three apps in particular every day—Weightbot, VitalsView, and Lose It!. (I'll post reviews and screencaps of VitalsView and Lose It! later.)


Of the three, my favorite app has been Weightbot, which you can buy at the Apple's iTunes for only $1.99. Given how often I've used it, and how much value I've gotten out of it, it has surely paid for itself a thousand times over.

Weightbot is simply designed, easy and fun to use, and delivers all the essential stats to track weight in both numeric and graphic formats. The first thing I've done every morning since January is make a trip to the bathroom, step on the scale and input my data into Weightbot.

Below is a slideshow of actual screencaps from my iPhone:

Note how Weightbot automatically updates the graph's top weight number—at first this seems to skew the results from month to month but (I think) it also gives you more motivation because each month illustrates an increasingly drastic weight loss as the weight comes closer to the goal line.

As you look over each month, you'll also see how my weight drops slowly. As I said on Tuesday, it's far more inspirational to visually see a month's worth of data because it shows how the weight is slowly sliding off. The ideal goal should always be to lose weight and keep it off, although this is a common trap many fall into: everyone wants to lose as much weight as possible, so they'll go with some random diet and then a few months later, go off the diet again... and usually back into their old eating habits. That kind of see-saw dieting is a horrible way to have long-term weight loss—instead, it's way better to shoot for only 1 pound of weight loss per week. That's a small change, but a feasible one. It might take some perseverance and resolve, but if you really want to lose weight permanently, then you should be prepared to accept that the process will not be a series of quick sprints, but one long marathon of small steps. Which is better, really, since it's more realistic to go from 3 doughnuts a week to 2, than from 3 doughnuts to none at all.

If there were one key to this entire program, it was not thinking too much about the end goal. I've changed my eating habits so drastically since January that if you had told me in January I'd be eating mostly produce for lunch now, I'd have flat out rejected it as a lie. More importantly, it could have completely demoralized me—I might have told myself that I wasn't ready to give up my guilty pleasures like beer, butter, sour cream, and cheese, and abandoned the program before I even started it. But I still have beer, butter, sour cream, and cheese. I still eat doughnuts and Chipotle burritos. Last night, I even had ice cream. So my eating hasn't changed from January—I still eat all the things I used to, just in more appropriate portion sizes.

Here, for the record, are the final statistics. I'm sure this is what you've all been waiting for:

Time Span: January 19, 2009–August 21, 2009
Total time: 7 months (214 days)
Starting Weight: 192.5 lbs
Goal Weight: 159 lbs
End Weight: 160.8 lbs
Total Weight Loss: 31.7 lbs
Difference between Goal Weight and End Weight: +1.8 lbs
Average Weight Loss per Week: -1.0 lb
Average Weight Loss per Month: -4.4 lbs

And finally:

+1.8 (∆ -31.7 lbs)

It's not magic. There is no One True Diet. There is no wunder-pill to make the fat melt off. I can say from personal experience that the key to losing weight and living a healthy life is simple math:

Eat Less. Work Out.

The hard part is 1) accepting that axiom as true, and 2) be willing to figure out how much you really do eat.

So, if you're feeling inspired and want to lose some weight yourself, I offer you a simple challenge to make a step in the right direction.

1. Don't change your eating habits for 1 week. Don't do any exercise or activity you wouldn't normally do.
   
2. Record everything you eat—everything. Record the portion size (buy a measuring cup if you don't have one), and record the calories per portion size from the respective nutrition label (go here to find a good online calorie counting site). If you're feeling extra diligent, maybe record when you eat, too. Don't change what you eat because you're measuring it... that will change your results; your job at this point is to just sit back and observe your eating habits with a detached scientific eye.
   
3. Don't feel guilty about anything—this is a crucial point. It's easy to get depressed when you're faced with how many calories you actually eat (and depression tends to make us to eat more), so stay cool. Knowledge is power, and you should feel satisfied that you're gaining new knowledge about yourself, no matter what that knowledge is.
   
4. Go here to find out your BMR, or Basal Metabolic Rate). Your BMR calculates how much energy you expend by doing nothing at all.
   
5. Go here to calculate how many calories you should be eating daily to maintain your current weight (this is called your TDEE, or Total Daily Energy Expenditure. If you're eating more calories than your TDEE, you'll gain weight. If you eat less, you'll lose weight. If your goal is to lose 1 pound a week, and 1 pound is equal to 3500 calories, the end goal is to reduce your TDEE by 500 calories (i.e., 500 calories X 7 days = 3500 calories / week).
   
6. Choose on your own what can be nixed from your food that will get you closer to that daily calorie intake. You don't want to go cold turkey just yet (although if that's more to your temperament, go for it)—just make small steps. Above all, keep educating yourself about what kinds of food are overly caloric and gradually weed them out. If you're going back for thirds, can you go back for only seconds? Once you're used to only going back for seconds, can you not go back for seconds at all? It's a gradual shift. Don't try to run the whole race in one day.
   
7. Over time, aim to get your calorie intake closer to that TDEE. Once your calories dip below that TDEE, you'll start to lose weight. If you can get your TDEE reduced by 500 calories per day (on average), then you will lose a pound a week.
   
8. Remember that weight fluctuates by as much as 4 pounds in a day. You will only see measurable results over time, and the longer the time period, the better.
   
9. Find a gym that you really like. Choose a simple workout—5 or 10 minutes at first. Go once a week, then twice, then three times, etc. Go just to get in the habit of going. Reward yourself by sitting in the spa for 30 minutes. Once you're ready to do more challenging workouts, you will; your body will know when it wants to do more. The important thing is to go slow enough that you aren't disappointed if you stop. Can you walk for 10 minutes at a snail's pace? If not, how about 5?

If this has been useful to you in any way, please let me know by shooting me an email to ross AT rosspruden DOT com. And, you know, pass it on to others, too. :)

+1.4 (∆ -4)

I've lost four pounds in 24 hours. I wish that were a joke, but it's not.

Oddly, those four pounds weren't my body's actual weight, but that excess slough which fluctuates one's weight from day to day. This sort of sudden ebb and flow ought to perfectly illustrate the insanity of putting too much importance on your weight from one day to the next. If you're trying to lose only 5 pounds, an error margin of +/- 4 pounds yields unpredictable and unsatisfying results.

Today's quote goes to Renée, whom I caught complaining about her weight on Facebook: "Now, how does this work? I decrease food & alcohol intake, exercise regularly, eat LOTS of fruits & veggies...and still hover around 135lbs. Gaack! WTH? And don't say it's because I'm getting older!" When I asked her if she'd been counting her calories, she said, "I will NOT count calories! That would take the fun right out of eating and drinking."

Well, I dunno... this weekend, I had at least four beers, 3 chocolate chip cookies, an ice cream scoop, and some of the best dining I've had in months. Okay, maybe I wasn't bingeing as much asdaisy, but it was still fun.

Despite all that, I can relate to Renée's plight: we all secretly know what our problems are, we simply choose not to face them because our newfound knowledge would logically dictate we change. Change is painful, change sucks. The old way is more comfortable—we purposefully choose ignorance because we like having fun. I know. I've been there.

But, Renée—don't be so brazen to complain about trashing your car when you won't even look at a map.

+5.4 (∆ +3.4)

Got back from Waterford Watsonville last night. Walks on the beach, kite-flying, Pixar flicks (Cars, Monsters Inc.) whilst cooking, delicious dinners, cold beers, 2 hour naps, and about 90 minutes a day of kid-free time. Sadly, our vacation highlight was going to bed at 9:30 every night.

I also have three days before this weight loss challenge comes to a close. I have to laugh when I see a 3.4 pound weight gain since my last missive, but I attribute almost all of that to being "topheavy"; a second measurement later in the day read +2.8, (instead of +5.4). One satisfaction of faithfully tracking weight over so many months is knowing that when weight wildly ascends, you can sense it's probably a temporary thing—tracking an overall weight trend over a week or month is far more important than any day's weight in particular. All you really need to know is if the weight at the end of the month is lower than the beginning, you're making progress. In all seven months but one, my weight has always been lower at the end of that month. In that other month, it was only higher at the end because I'd had several cumulative setbacks (a three week out-of-town visitor an opportunity to have tons of bad food, the worst flu I've had in years, and a long stretch without getting to the gym).

Despite all my overt claims, my goal has never really been to just lose +33.5 pounds. More important than that was to nestle into a sane way of living so I could 1) stop gaining more weight, 2) lose some weight (10-15 pounds), 3) live more healthfully, and 4) feel better about my mind and body. If I weighed +33.5 pounds and could still run up stairs without losing my breath or worrying if I'm going to have a heart attack or get diabetes before I hit 50, then I wouldn't have anything to worry about. Sadly, +33.5 was not a safe lifestyle, so I'm thankful that the journey has given me the itch to learn more about nutrition and fitness. Slow and steady, slow and steady...

And so, even if I don't hit my exact mark of +0 by this Friday, I'll still have scored an enormous win because the real measure of my victory is in learning how much food I eat in one sitting, and how my body works to burn fat and build muscle. Once you learn how it all works, it gets a lot easier to nurture the kinds of results you want to see.

Make sure you read Friday's post. I'll be posting tons of screenshots of all the spreadsheets and iPhone apps I've been using to track my progress.

+2.0 (∆ -0.2)

on holiday. typing from computer that has no double-u key, shift key, or the at symbol. makes surfing kind of hard.

despite being surrounded by opportunities to binge, happily i have friends that eat sensibly. 2 beers max are feasible under the calories i'm consuming.

hoping to still hit my goal by my birthday...

+2.2 (∆ -1)

And dropping...

+3.2 (∆ -0.4)

And dropping...

As I creep closer to my goal weight, every drop in weight is another record. Based on what I ate yesterday, I'm not surprised that I've lost some poundage:

Breakfast:

• 1 small bowl of grape nuts with soy milk—375 calories

Lunch:

• 1 (leftover) serving of pasta with seafood, broccoli, zucchini and Parmesan cheese—500 calories
• 1 diet A&W Root Beer—0 calories

Dinner:

• 1 large bowl of gazpacho with shellfish toppings—300 calories
• 2 slices of sourdough bread—300 calories

Late night Netflix accompaniment:

• 1 Newcastle beer—250 calories

= 1725 calories total

I'm sure I had a few snacks in there, but they wouldn't amount to more than 100-200 calories. Oddly, the gazpacho's bowl was so large that, combined with absorbant sourdough slices, I was completely stuffed... on only 600 calories. Wow.

+3.6 (∆ -1.6)

Well, I'm officially my lowest weight in a decade. I couldn't possible say how happy that makes me. Accomplishing something as... well, something as "simple" as losing weight fills me with a renewed sense of self in everything I do. Based on how many years I've been trying to lose weight, it's obviously not simple, so approaching the finish line with a smile on my face is gratifying, to say the least.

Truthfully, my weight has not steadily been inching downwards—quite the contrary, my weight has bounced up and down like a Happy Fun Ball. I weighed more at the end of June than at the beginning. (Looking over the year's data, I can see I weigh less at the end of every month, so I am making steady progress overall; thus, in the grand scheme of things, June's discouraging data is really not so discouraging after all.) One thing that finally forced me to get back on track is knowing that my birthday isn't that far away. At a rate of 1 pound per week, I have about 24 days to go before I should have reached my goal weight... and only 18 days to do it. Focus, dude.

What's so weird is that I'm starting to get a perverse thrill from the faint hunger in my belly. I'm not inching towards anorexia by any measure, but when you're eating only 1800 calories a day, you're bound to have a perpetual appetite. It's only through months of eating less food that I've developed a habit of living with less food. In January, I'd never have been able to withstand this faint hunger, but now my brain interprets it as a tangible reminder that I'm back in control of my waistline.

As Sara put it, "I plan on getting fitter as I get older."

(Bonus: Today, I register only 22.8% body fat. That's down from 28.9% on January 31. My end goal is under 20%.)

+5.2 (∆ -0.2)

Last night was game night, by which I mean Counter-Strike. I was first introduced to Counter-Strike in 2000 and have been playing every Wednesday with the same group ever since. We used to meet up and play after business hours but now we've evolved to play remotely via Steam.

One staple of CS night is beer. I usually imbibe at least one hops before the night is through and, on rare occasions, have even gone through five or six Newcastles if I'm at a friend's house during game night. (Bizarrely, the best game night I ever had was after five beers. Go figure.)

Anyway, last night I chose not to have any brewski, not because I didn't want to, or even that I was sick (I think I'm still a little sick from this flu I got last week), but because I didn't want to consume the calories. Wow. That's a major departure from the guy I used to be who'd binge with no care for tomorrow.

It's worth adding that I still drink beer, and that I sill enjoy myself with more than one... but until I lose these last five pounds, I've informally chosen to go off the wagon. Don't worry—I'm still kind of looking at myself and going, "Who are you?"

+5.4 (∆ -1)

It hit me sometime when I was putting on my climbing harness at Pipeworks—I had already been at my own gym earlier in the day. And now I was at another gym? Seriously? Who am I?

+6.4 (∆ -0.8)

Tough month for me, I'll admit. These last few pounds have been challenging... I think I'll have to measure every calorie I ingest to whittle away to the finish line. If the minimum daily calorie intake for men is 1800, then I'll have to count everything which goes into my body. Due to visitors in town, and the flu that hit our house pretty badly, it's been impossible to get to the gym to do any workouts for about two weeks—right now, the only possibility to lose weight is to eat less.

Along those lines, I read a fascinating article on NPR about how a common measurement for weight—the Body Mass Index—is categorically obsolete. Since I've been using BMI as a central tool to gauge my progress (+0 is my weight calculated from a normal BMI), of course I was very interested in reading the article.

It usually takes a lot for me to make a sweeping dismissal of anything already in the status quo; in a modern age where sensible people avoid superstitious nonsense like praying to a deity for rain, my gut feeling suggests that if something has made it into the status quo, there's probably a good reason for it to be there. Of course, everything is subject to common sense... I'm just saying that the status quo is not to be dismantled willy nilly without some sensible logic. NPR isn't a conspiracy-theory organization, so I'm always open to hearing their reasonable analysis; if it makes sense to me, I'm willing to go along with it as well. While still an interesting and somewhat useful measurement of healthy body weight, BMI is not the panacea to me that it once was. Body fat percentage seems a more accurate marker of healthy body weight.

Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus
by Keith Devlin

The BMI Formula
BMI = weight in pounds/(height in inches x height in inches) x 703

The 703 is to convert the index from the original metric version of the formula.

CDC Recommendations:

Below 18.5 = Underweight
18.5 to 24.9 = Ideal
25.0 to 29.9 = Overweight
30.0 and above = Obese

Weekend Edition Saturday, July 4, 2009 • Americans keep putting on the pounds — at least according to a report released this week from the Trust for America's Health. The study found that nearly two-thirds of states now have adult obesity rates above 25 percent.

But you may want to take those findings — and your next meal — with a grain of salt, because they're based on a calculation called the body mass index, or BMI.

As the Weekend Edition math guy, I spoke to Scott Simon and told him the body mass index fails on 10 grounds:

1. The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.

The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician, not a physician. He produced the formula to give a quick and easy way to measure the degree of obesity of the general population to assist the government in allocating resources. In other words, it is a 200-year-old hack.

2. It is scientifically nonsensical.

There is no physiological reason to square a person's height (Quetelet had to square the height to get a formula that matched the overall data. If you can't fix the data, rig the formula!). Moreover, it ignores waist size, which is a clear indicator of obesity level.

3. It is physiologically wrong.

It makes no allowance for the relative proportions of bone, muscle and fat in the body. But bone is denser than muscle and twice as dense as fat, so a person with strong bones, good muscle tone and low fat will have a high BMI. Thus, athletes and fit, health-conscious movie stars who work out a lot tend to find themselves classified as overweight or even obese.

4. It gets the logic wrong.

The CDC says on its Web site that "the BMI is a reliable indicator of body fatness for people." This is a fundamental error of logic. For example, if I tell you my birthday present is a bicycle, you can conclude that my present has wheels. That's correct logic. But it does not work the other way round. If I tell you my birthday present has wheels, you cannot conclude I got a bicycle. I could have received a car. Because of how Quetelet came up with it, if a person is fat or obese, he or she will have a high BMI. But as with my birthday present, it doesn't work the other way round. A high BMI does not mean an individual is even overweight, let alone obese. It could mean the person is fit and healthy, with very little fat.

5. It's bad statistics.

Because the majority of people today (and in Quetelet's time) lead fairly sedentary lives and are not particularly active, the formula tacitly assumes low muscle mass and high relative fat content. It applies moderately well when applied to such people because it was formulated by focusing on them. But it gives exactly the wrong answer for a large and significant section of the population, namely the lean, fit and healthy. Quetelet is also the person who came up with the idea of "the average man." That's a useful concept, but if you try to apply it to any one person, you come up with the absurdity of a person with 2.4 children. Averages measure entire populations and often don't apply to individuals.

6. It is lying by scientific authority.

Because the BMI is a single number between 1 and 100 (like a percentage) that comes from a mathematical formula, it carries an air of scientific authority. But it is mathematical snake oil.

7. It suggests there are distinct categories of underweight, ideal, overweight and obese, with sharp boundaries that hinge on a decimal place.

That's total nonsense.

8. It makes the more cynical members of society suspect that the medical insurance industry lobbies for the continued use of the BMI to keep their profits high.

Insurance companies sometimes charge higher premiums for people with a high BMI. Among such people are all those fit individuals with good bone and muscle and little fat, who will live long, healthy lives during which they will have to pay those greater premiums.

9. Continued reliance on the BMI means doctors don't feel the need to use one of the more scientifically sound methods that are available to measure obesity levels.

Those alternatives cost a little bit more, but they give far more reliable results.

10. It embarrasses the U.S.

It is embarrassing for one of the most scientifically, technologically and medicinally advanced nations in the world to base advice on how to prevent one of the leading causes of poor health and premature death (obesity) on a 200-year-old numerical hack developed by a mathematician who was not even an expert in what little was known about the human body back then. Link.

+7.2 (∆ -1.4)

It's official—I finally dipped below my lowest recorded weight in five years. Woot!

+8.6 (∆ -2.2)

Nothing since April 18th and a loss of only 2.2 pounds? WTF, right?

May was rough. I caught some kind of weird virus that made all my muscles furiously ache for about two weeks. When I went back to the gym because (I thought) I was feeling better, my ass got kicked again. So, basically, three weeks were shot right there.

Having said that, I did go to Reno last week with the fam and went to three all-you-can-eat buffets and still managed to lose weight! No matter how you slice it, that's a huge win. Anytime you escape a den of sin like Reno and at least break even—either financially or gastronomically—you're ahead of the game.

79 more days until my birthday, the self-imposed deadline. Do you think I can get to +0 by then?

Also: I'm only 0.6 away from dipping below my lowest recorded weight in four years!

+10.8 (∆ +1)

Anyone see a pattern?

+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)

+12 (∆ -3.6)

Three areas where I typically binge: vacation, road trips, and film shoots. And in the last two weeks, I had a road trip, vacation, another road trip... and a film shoot. After all that sated temptation, I was extremely reluctant to step on the scale.

My lowest weight before going on vacation was +12, so I was afraid I'd have jumped back to +16 or higher after the film shoot wrapped. Fortunately, my weight stayed down. Perhaps my months of improved eating habits kicked in; I'm consciously aware I'm eating more fruit than I used to, which always helps. I didn't want to punish myself by not indulging in ice cream or fatty things. I simply had less of them than I used to.

I must admit—I did take my scale on vacation just to remind me not to go hog wild. Obviously, it worked.

This month, I'm aiming for below +10. Because that would be freakin' awesome.

+15.6 (∆ -0.4)

Yesterday, I sort of binged. I had a huge carb load—for lunch, a white flower tortilla with refried beans, cheese, and multigrain pilaf and, for dinner, Chesseburger Mac & Cheese Hamburger Helper. Usually, I would never have Hamburger Helper but my wife had a hankering, so what's a guy to do? Besides, my "eating less" isn't regulated by what I eat, just by how much I eat. I still squeaked under my daily calorie quota, but barely.

Last night and this morning, though, I felt awful. Though I'd had enough sleep, I still felt as if I'd been out drinking the night before. White flour, I thought. Could I be having a white flour hangover? White flour affects my wife to such a degree that if she eats a huge plate of white flour pasta, she has been known to fall asleep at the table. Maybe the same was happening to me?

In any event, the massive carb load got me worried, if only because my weight tends to spike about two days after I have a huge amount of food. So today, as an antidote to my bingeing yesterday, I kicked ass at the gym (524 calories!!! Woo hoo!) and had a very very light lunch.

But it's the lunch itself that really gave me pause:

• Honey Wheat Bread, 2 slices—180 calories
  
• Salame, 4 slices—100 calories
  
• Light Mayo, 1 tablespoon—35 calories
  
• Yellow Mustard, 2 teaspoons—7 calories
  
• Tomato slices, 1/3 of a whole—12 calories
  
• Red Leaf Lettuce, 1/2 cup—2 calories
  
• Red Bell Pepper, 1 cup—29 calories
  
• Soy milk, 1 serving—80 calories

Total calories: 424

I look at that kind of meal, and I think, Holy shit. Seriously? What have I turned into?? Two months ago, that same sandwich would have had twice as much meat, thick slices of cheddar, a bowl of soup on the side, and chips, nearly double the current calorie load. However, not only is the above meal completely nutritious, I found it totally filling, too. The bell pepper is my crunchy substitute for chips, and turns out to be far more flavorful. I know my eating habits have irrevocably changed when I'm making these kinds of conscious choices... and enjoying them. Two months ago, if you'd have told me I'd be full on only 424 calories of lunch, without chips, I flat out would not have believed you.

+16 (∆ -0.8)

I've been having a friendly banter with my friend Austin who's also on a weight loss program of his own called "Pounds & Inches". To be honest, I haven't read the manual he sent me about it (yet), so I can't legitimately comment on it. It seems to be working for him and I'm always a strong advocate for doing whatever works for you.

Nevertheless, I remain skeptical whenever I hear of a sudden weight loss (17.5 lbs) in such a short amount of time (less than 2 weeks). As I understand it, a sharp weight loss—though instantly and enormously gratifying—is a shortcut to long-term weight loss and statistically not sustainable, i.e., without realistic expectations, people stop seeing results fast enough and tend to relapse into their old eating and sedentary lifestyle.

In my opinion, baby steps work better. Small, nearly imperceptible changes to eating and exercise stand a better long-term chance of becoming permanent because you have time to adopt them into your life. For example, when I first went to the gym, it was only twice a week for 15 minutes. Now I go 6-7 days every week, for an hour or more. Had you told me back in January that I would end up wanting to go to the gym for as much and as long as I do now, not only would I not have believed you, but I'd have only focussed on the down sides: ...but that's so much time "wasted" at the gym... and I'll probably be so tired all the time from going so much... and what do I think about when I'm on the treadmill for an hour? and so on and so on. Instead, I limited my goals to something simple which I knew I could handle. And sometime after that, I raised the bar a little, and then a little more...

It got me thinking, though. What exactly has been my experience with weight loss? Haven't I also lost a ton of weight in the first few weeks? What's my average weight loss per week? At Day 50, my average weekly weight loss was 2.45 lbs. That seemed like a lot, but maybe there was more than one pattern at work... so I plotted out my weight loss since January 19:



If you look carefully, there are two trends on this chart—the first goes from January 19th to February 9th, where I lose a lot of weight in only 3 weeks. The next trend is everything after that. Here's how the two trends break down:

Time Span	1/19-2/9	2/10-3/12
Days	21	30
Starting Weight	+33.5	+21.6
Ending Weight	+20.0	+16.0
Total Weight Loss	-13.5	-5.60
Average Loss/Day	-0.64	-0.19
Average Loss/Week	-4.50	-1.31

It's typical in the early stage of any new eating program to drop a lot of water weight, so an initial weight loss of 4.5 lbs / week was expected. Though sometimes frustrating, the comparatively "slow" weight loss of 1.31 lbs/week starting on February 10 is exactly the rate I want to maintain until August... because by August, all my new eating and exercise habits will have forever become solidified as part of my new lifestyle.

Day 50: ∆ -17.5

I've been eating less and working out for 50 days now, and here are the numbers:

Total Days: 50
Total Weeks: 7.14
Starting Weight: +33.5 lbs
Total Weight Loss: -17.5 lbs
Current Weight: +16 lbs
% Complete Toward Goal Weight: 52.23%
Average Loss/Week: 2.45 lbs

My goal was at least one pound weight loss per week on average, so I'm doing much better than I expected. The best part in this whole endeavor is that I'm not doing anything complicated—I'm just counting calories.

Rock on! August 21st, here I come!!