August 30th

August 30th

Diet Compliance:Another celebratory goodbye dinner. As with previous, I fasted through the day and made this a one meal day. Too bad that one meal was chinese all-you-can-eat. As best as I can figure, I ate ~2400 calories, but holy crap, I feel FULL. I shudder at what the scale might say tomorrow.

Exercise Compliance: Got my 10k steps in, and really, with some heavy lifting relating to a move, I probably exercised far more than that (which is good, because, Chinese buffet).

Measurements Weight: -.2
Measurements Chest:  -.5"
Measurements Waist: -.5"

Comment: I know the scale is a liar when dealing with daily weigh ins, but it is a little frustrating to have closed in on -4 lbs lots total in two weeks (a good rate), and now be back to just -2 pounds lost on day 12 of 14. I know that can change quickly when the body dumps a lot of water, but still annoying, especially since I'm about to go on a big road trip and it's always good to leave for those feeling good about yourself.

I have a big challenge ahead, and one of the primary reasons why I started this blog for extra accountability. Tomorrow (or later today really), I begin a cross country trek to start a new job. The temptation to just "let it rip" will be ever present. And as you can tell by following this blog, I've deviated a bit from my initial plan *even in the course of preparing for this trip,* even if those deviations are minor and I'm still creating substantial calorie deficits each day.

I suspect sometimes it'll be easier, other times harder. Easy: probably day one; I'll be on the road myself, driving until I reach some lonely motel somewhere on the road. It'll be just me with no celebratory anything. I'll probably just grab a small fast food dinner (the 6pm fast breaker) and buy a protein bar or something at a gas station for the end of eating window meal (I'll have a ton of whey protein with me for when I get settled).

It'll get harder once I start dealing with people. Men and women just enjoy socializing with food, and this will be... pretty much how Every. Single. New. Person. Will. Great. Me. House I'm crashing at on day 3? FOOD (we'll prepare X for you!). House I'm staying in for the next few months? Big time foodies that want to "show me the best the area has to offer." First day on the new job? Of course, they are treating me to lunch (which is awkward since I don't eat lunch- I'll probably eat a light one to not look weird, and hope that they don't all get lunch together and bro out).

On the plus side, the whirlwind of activity should (at first anyway) allow me to get my 10k steps in easily, I hope (stay tuned for how I manage that while driving all day).

Stats:

Occasionally I'd like to share some statistics, courtesy of the fitbit app.

Calorie burn per day estimate, 30 day rolling average: 3007 cals. This is great since this is really only based on my improved efforts the last 12 days. It has approached even such lows as 2600 cals before, so this is a big improvement! I know it's a fake number based on averages (duh) but it is still a fun number to push up, up, and up.

Calorie Consumption average since start of plan: Fitbit has gotten chintsy in its stats and removed the 30 day rolling average for calories. Thanks for nothing guys. But here is some quick math on my cals per day since I started (so 12 days): 2068 calories. Not bad, can do better certainly as my best, most ideal target is 1500-1800, although this target is based on being very sedentary, so if I end up averaging this for months on end, I'll be successful indeed. 

August 29th

August 29th

Diet Compliance: Finally a sub 2000 calorie day, just under 2000 cals.

Exercise Compliance: Fell just a bit short, at something like 9k steps, but not by a lot. Did my leg exercises.

Measurements Weight: -.2.8
Measurements Chest:  -.5"
Measurements Waist: -.5"

Comment: Just two more morning weigh ins until I have a long multi day car trip. I'll have a scale and tape measure with me, but I'm not sure I'm going to bother with the scale in the hotel.

August 28th

August 28th

Diet Compliance: Another higher calorie day for the same reason as the last two days: celebratory "going away" events. But fortunately not as bad: ~2300 cals. Hoping on Monday I am back to my usual plan.

Exercise Compliance: I wanted 12k steps (was feeling ambitious) but got just about 11,300 steps. Still great :)

Measurements Weight: -.2.8
Measurements Chest:  -.5"
Measurements Waist: -.5"

Comment: On the weight front, I'm still on pace to attain a 2 pounds per week rate of loss, as I'm only a few days into week two and I'm almost at 3 pounds lost. Good going me!

August 27th

August 27th
 

Diet Compliance: Today was my highest calorie day since I started this blog. 2600 cals, which isn't a disaster, but definitely high. The high number was the result of a date with my wife, which included dinner. Like yesterday, the plan was to only eat that dinner and nothing else, but dangit if the ol' hungries didn't hit about six hours later (I would have had a much better day if I was able to resist the hunger monster at midnight- this is why my usual plan works so much better: I have that "baked in," with the protein shake then. It's harder to do when you allow yourself a higher calorie initial meal at 6pm. As a reminder, my plan is intermittent fasting with a window for eating from 6pm-12am).

See comments for more excuses, er, explanation.

Exercise Compliance: 10k steps attained again.Thank goodness.

Measurements Weight: -.2
Measurements Chest:  -.5"
Measurements Waist: -.5"

Comment:Back to -2 lbs lost this morning, which was not alarming nor a surprise. Re: high cals, in theory 2600 cals should actually be fine for long term weight loss, if I'm actually doing 10k steps. If you trust the calculators out there, I ate 2600 cals while burning 3250, a difference of -650 cals.

Let's extrapolate that. -650 x 7 days = -4550. This is well above the required -3500 calories required to lose one pound. So if I ate deep dish pizza to the tune of 2600 calories per day (or insert other food), and walked those 10k steps, well, gosh, I'd be fine and dandy.

Except I know from personal experience that this doesn't work. Well, ok, yes, it does work, in as much as thermodynamics is inescapable. However, what doesn't work about it are a bunch of factors:

1. The burn rate of 3250 is based on an estimate and may not reflect my actual burn. It could be off significantly, and if it is, it would surely be off downwards.

2. From a psychology standpoint, it's never worked for me to sort of just skim the absolute bare minimum in terms of calorie restriction. Like most fallible people, I'm prone to the ol' "whatever the limit is, fudge it by X amount." So if I made my target something like 2100-2600 cals, knowing that I would probably be losing more than 1 pound per week, I can assure you that a blog post like this would be talking about hitting 2800, 2900, or 3000 calories on a "bad" day like this. "Oh, it's ok, I still am -250 calories in the hole!" I would say.

3. Finally, another big assumption: am I using a bomb calorimeter at home? Haha, nope. In other words, I "think" I've eaten 2600 calories because I am at the mercy of other people who did this work. Who the heck knows how accurate various restaurant and nutrition package labels really are? Restaurant food in particular is tricky because preparation will vary. So in other words, you don't want to be getting too close to your daily calorie burn because maybe that 400 calorie side of rice is really 700. You just don't know.

All this is just a long winded way of saying: this was OK for a special date night with the wife, but should not be a daily occurrence. But one more thing I know won't work either: "cheating" because I feel bad about the high calorie count, and "dumping some calories onto the next day." OMG DO NOT DO THIS. It'll cause days and days of cheating like this, and finally a calorie blowout. Nope, just accept that today was not optimal, and start fresh. Always. Start. Fresh.

August 26th

August 26th

Diet Compliance: Today was a higher calorie day, hitting 2200. This was expected, as I actually fasted all day until 8:30, in which I went out for a MASSIVE hibachi dinner from a great friend (a going away treat as it were). A little higher than I want day to day but still totally fine.

Exercise Compliance: 10k steps easily attained today, thanks to the kiddo (that same one that was hard to get to sleep the night before..) wanting to walk ALL OVER THE NEIGHBORHOOD. It heartens me to see my efforts at fitness causing her to want to walk and explore more also.
Chest day also.

Measurements Weight: -.3.8
Measurements Chest:  -.5"
Measurements Waist: -.5"

Comment: Another chunk of weight fell off this morning, so making good progress for 8 days! I do expect a temporary water weight gain based on eating an enormous, 2200 calorie carbohydrate based meal tonight when I weigh in tomorrow, but I'll be fine with it: it's the only food I ate today, and I'm on plan. That's the point of the whole thing, right?

August 25th

Diet Compliance: Yep, 1800 cals again today.

Exercise Compliance: Got only 8k steps today, 2k short of the goal and the first time I've truly been short since I've started. The reason was that my daughter had a bedtime meltdown (parents can surely relate what can happen with bedtimes), so even though I had gotten enough steps to easily meet the goal by midnight, 10:30-12 was spent trying to get a kiddo to sleep.

It was a rough night :(

Measurements Weight: -.1.8
Measurements Chest:  -.5"
Measurements Waist: -.5"

Comment: My weight held at the current -1.8 lbs from the starting weight, which was expected (since I'm writing this late, a spoiler: a big chunk goes away the next day!). Better still is making some headway on my measurements!

August 24th

Diet Compliance: Yep, 1800 cals again today.

Exercise Compliance: Yep, 10k steps (keeping the streak alive!) and it was "back" day.

Measurements Weight: -.1.8
Measurements Chest:--
Measurements Waist:--

Comment: Tomorrow is a big day, as it is the first measurement check since I started. One week isn't a ton of time so I'm not expecting a lot, but still. As you can see, my weight has started going down again after the initial water weight loss/regain cycle. This makes sense: if this -1.8 loss holds into tomorrow, it'll be one week, and wouldn't you know it: according to the calorie deficit, I should pretty much be......... losing two pounds or so.