Another week gone by, and another pound lost! This whole challenge has really taught me a lot so far and I'm sure I'll learn much more as it goes along.
As I mentioned in another post I've really focused on watching my caloric intake. If you consume more calories than your body can burn off, you'll gain weight (your body turns the extra calories into fat). If you burn off more calories than you take in, you'll lose weight (your body burns your body fat to make energy). There are issues of metabolism, nutrition, and so forth, and there are also different theories out there on how many carbs, fat, or
protein you should eat and in what ratios, but really the big key to
weight loss is how much energy (calories) you eat versus how much energy
you use.
For someone of my height, weight, and age, my daily calorie requirement is somewhere around 2000-2400. A lot of this depends on your activity level, so it's not an exact science. I'm not too active (desk job), and I would require more calories to maintain my body if I had an active job, but I do work out a few days per week. If you're curious about your daily calorie requirements check out this site at http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm . Now, a pound of fat is around 3500 calories. So if you want to lose a pound you have to burn 3500 calories more than you consume. Losing a pound a week means you have to have a deficiency of around 500 calories per day (3500 calories divided by 7 days). For me this translates to around 1800 calories or so. If I'm consuming 1800 calories, I'm eating less than my body needs to maintain itself, so it burns fat off to make up the difference.
I've been surprised how much 1800 calories really is. So far I haven't been suffering too much. Sure, I get hungry, but I eat when I need to and the quantity and quality of my food is pretty good. For example, I eat around 400 calories per meal, plus 400-500 calories in snacks. 400 calories can really go a long way if you plan right. A typical breakfast I eat would be a bowl of oatmeal (150), fruit (50), one egg plus an egg white (100), and either a cup of milk or yogurt (100), for a total of around 400 calories. This type of breakfast keeps me full for a good couple hours. Other foods, especially fruits and vegetables, can fill you up but don't have a lot of calories. Jill has been very patient, as I've been pretty serious about my portions and calories. I even bought some extra measuring cups just to measure portions out. I've also had to look up many recipes to find out how many calories a certain food has.
On the flip side, there are some foods that are just packed with calories but have little nutritional or 'filling' value. Jill is going out of town this week and baked up a batch of cookies for the kids. I plugged in all the ingredients to an online recipe calculator (http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php) and one cookie has 180 calories. These are not huge cookies, but just normal size. Typically I'd probably eat 4-5 cookies in one setting because they are so good. But that equals around 800-900 calories. That's half my daily calories from a few cookies! And a short while later I'd be still hungry after eating the cookies. Or I could jog about 1 hour and 20 minutes to burn off that many calories after it took me 5 minutes to eat them. Another example is cereal. When I eat cereal (usually sugary) for breakfast I usually eat two bowls plus milk, which comes out to around 400-500 calories. And again I'm usually hungry a few hours later after eating cereal. The list goes on and on.
(Photo courtesy of Flickr/ provocateur)
So I've learned more about the power of calories. Junk food, sugary food, and desserts are packed with calories. Other food, however can make you full without busting your calorie bank. You just have to watch yourself and plan carefully.
