Weight chart

This is a chart of my daily weight, from December 2008 into September 2009. I was up over 230 within a few months of starting this chart, although I reformatted my hard drive and lost some of the earlier data. You can click on the chart to enlarge it. I got down to 181# in July, and then did a lot of travelling for the summer, and it shows! I am just now returning to a normal life and settling back into my routine.

First thing in the morning I get up and go pee, then stand on the scale and record my weight. I have an Omron HBF 516B scale, which also displays my body mass index (BMI), fat %, muscle %, resting metabolism (# calories required to eat and breathe with no activity for the day), body age (not sure how this is normed?), and visceral (belly) fat on a scale from 1 - 15. I also record this information, although I am not sure how useful it is to chart all those variables, as they all correlate very closely with one another.

Right now I am at a BMI of about 26.0, which seems to fit my body pretty well. I did get below a BMI of 25, and I felt pretty scrawny.

Polar watch

Another component to my calorie tracking effort was to track calories expended. Every time I would ride my bike or go to the gym, I would wear my Polar heart rate watch. This would keep track of how many calories I'd burn up in each exercise session. I do know that if you exercise calories, you need to eat calories. I am not sure the exact formula, I suppose there is one though. But I know everybody has a resting metabolism, which is how many calories you burn up every day just breathing and eating. Then you add calories doing simple living, then add more calories for exercise. It doesn't really matter what the exact formula is, though, as I was just trying to re-calibrate myself to reasonableness. Reasonable portion/meal sizes, and reasonable exercise habits. Tracking calories exercised makes it apparent when you go a few days without exercising!

It does help that I live right next to a biking trail, across the street from my gym, and a block away from my yoga studio, too. Being across the street from the gym is great in the winter. It is easier to walk across the street when it is freezing than it is to get into a cold car to drive to the gym!

I did wear my heart rate monitor watch a few times while doing various types of yoga, so now I can "ballpark" how many calories I burn doing certain types of yoga. Anywhere from about 150 calories (basic) to 450 calories (ashtanga).

Food Log Part 1

I had kept a food log during previous attempts to lose weight, with moderate success. I'd keep a log of every morsel of food I ate, then enter it every day on http://mypyramidtracker.gov That system worked fairly well, I'd lose 10-20 pounds at a time, for periods of 2-3 months. This website is great -- it gives you the total calories eaten, and a detailed nutritional breakdown of all the important nutrients in food. The problem I had with this system is that it didn't work well to figure out WHERE my food problems were -- it would only give daily totals.

So then I tried something new -- I made my own log sheets on MS Excel that would include subtotals during the day. This way, I would know where the big calories were hiding, and I could plan my meals for the day fairly well. I also had a food scale, calculator, and laptop in my kitchen that were dedicated to weighing/calulating/looking up calories in my food on http://nutrition.gov

For the first several weeks, I did have daily calorie goals that I would try very hard to keep under. As I lost weight this calorie goal would shirnk, as I needed less calories just to breathe all day. However, after a while I relaxed my goals a bit and just tried to focus on what is "reasonable." Reasonable portion sizes, reasonable meals, reasonable daily totals. Some meals/days I would go over or under, and that was fine, I was recalibrating my eating habits to try to conform to USDA portion recommendations and daily calorie totals.

Keeping subtotals during the day was critical to my success. This way, I would see where I was already at, and could tailor my expectations for my next meal accordingly.

I also broke up the monotony of keeping a food log, by going 30 days keeping track of other nutritional information. For example, for 30 days, in addition to tracking calories, I also tracked sodium content. Another 30 days I tracked the helpings of fresh fruits and vegetables. Another 30 days I tracked my fat calories, etc. Doing this was educational in helping me to understand what foods were healthy, and which weren't. I could still eat bacon, for instance, but learned that 8 slices spoils my whole day's calories and sodium. 2-4 slices are more reasonable.

I did learn that it is almost impossible to eat at resturaunts. The portion sizes are way to big. A steak dinner at Longhorn, for example, is 2300 calories without any sour cream on the potato! That is a whole day's worth of calories in one meal! A 22 ounce steak is not reasonable. An 8 ounce steak is.

I also weighed myself every morning, and tracked that on my food log as well. There are daily fluctuations in weight that aren't a big deal, and after a while I learned to ignore that noise and focus on the signal.

I realize some of this advice is contrary to the advice of some health care professionals, although it is harmonious with the advice of other health care professionals. I guess the key is to do what works for you. I used this method to lose 50 pounds in about 10 months, and it worked for me to recalibrate my eating habits. I have gained about 5-10 of those pounds back, but I do feel better with this, I think I was a bit too low.

I also did a lot of yoga. That helped my body to pay attention to what my body was telling me, like when I am full or need food.

But for me, the key was keeping updated daily subtotals of my calories, to re-learn what reasonable eating really is.