Monday, January 12, 2009

Week 1

Today I weighed in at 208.0, 4 pounds less than my weigh-in last week when I was 212. This is within the amount I normally vary so I can't claim any credit yet.

Like Celery Please wrote earlier, the thing is to eat less and exercise more. The main item I cut out when I diet is soda. I love the stuff and drink a lot of it. It's not really all that caloric--there's less calories in soda than in comparable fluids like fruit juices---but even 120 calories per 12 ounces adds up when you drink 5 or 6 a day. 5 * 120 calories = 600 calories a day * 7 = 3,120 calories a week. That's almost a pound of fat (3,500 calories) as long as you don't replace the soda calories with anything else. In my case, I go with water so there's no additional calories.

By eliminating soda, I figure to lose 3.5 pounds a month, on average, and by doing more hiking I hope to drop another half pound. Like how I'm rounding that to change my 3.5 to 4? So I hope to drop 4 pounds total a month. As if! In reality, with the way the body works I'll be lucky to drop 2 but that's still progress.

4 comments:

tiff said...

5 regular sodas a day? Dude - replacing them with water will make you goal a near target!

Woot!

eb said...

Congrats on losing 4 lbs!!

Anonymous said...

At 208 pounds, 60 minutes of hiking burns 599 calories.

But who hikes for just an hour?

An all day hike can burn enough to make up a whole pound.

(Just make sure you bring healthy snacks on the trail - not granola or other high fat treats)

I like hiking for weight loss... even though I start to feel like I am on the Batan Death March after about 5 miles.

utenzi said...

Damn, you're a math whiz, CP.

I don't bring anything but a camera when I hike. No water, no food. I usually hike between 1 hour and 3 hours and prefer a 15 minute pace (4 mph). My favorite distance is around 5 miles so the Company Mill trail at Umstead is just about perfect. Too bad I don't live close to it anymore.