Food Log: Wednesday May 13, 2015

Wednesday May 15 I pulled out all the stops, did everything right and fell off diet...Hoodia, cocoa and cinnamon as appetite suppressants....yes I am vulnerable to free food when I am hungry. I am even more vulnerable when the free food happens to be of upscale restaurant quality. Try, try again.

Food Log

Black Coffee

8 0z shrimp, large serving clery, small serving Kimchi

Black coffee

Small serving pulled pork
1/2 ear of corn

2 oz. pretzels

4 oat meal cookies (Doh!)

1 cup of plain, non-fat yogurt with 6 oz. blackberries Encore: Another cup of plain, non-fat yogurt with 6 oz. blackberries

Food Log

Black coffee.
Orange.

Black coffee.
Orange.

At 10 PM, 12 oz. 93% lean ground beef smothered in jalapenos, one tomato.

Restarting Diet

Day 1, May 10, 2015: 254 lb.
Day 2, May 11, 2015: 246 lb.
Revision. The weigh-ins are about 36 hours apart. It is impossible to burn fat that fast. Weight loss is primarily due to water loss but also to elimination. If you eat a lot and have several pounds of undigested food inside you and then suddenly decrease caloric intake...

That accounts for the rapid weigh loss and rapid regain of most diets. We can return to that later.

Revision:

Day 0, May 9 (Also May 10 AM) 254 lb.
Day 1: May 10 circa 11 PM: 250 lb.
Day 2: May 11 PM: 246 lb.

How Many Hours, How Many Miles....?

I am pleased that the good people at Fitness for Weight Loss have compiled easy to follow guides telling us how many hours a person must endure a given exercise to lose one pound. While helpful, the tables should be thought of more as rules of thumb than scientific cannon.

I considered compiling a table similar to the aforementioned lists. But then I reconsidered. The aforementioned rule of thumb is that a pound of flesh equals 3500 calories. So if you burn 3500 calories, you shed a pound. Hold on a second. Should we not figure the marginal calorie burn? The difference between say, walking and sitting?

Let's borrow a few numbers from the Harvard eggheads.
Note: For simplicity sake, only estimated calories for a 155 person are included.

Note: The calories burned are figured for one half hour. So we have to get out our calculators and multiply by two to get hourly rates. 

Note: 3.5 mph is a fast, non-leisurely pace. It's more of a power walk pace.

Observation: Do you really burn 28 more calories per hour by reading vs. watching TV? Well this is Harvard and when they read, they really read, man. Plus, their TV viewing only includes C-SPAN and PBS, material that does not necessarily induce laughter or bodily movement or changes in facial expression.

Walk: 3.5 mph (17 min/mi)

149

Sleeping		23
Watching TV		28
Reading: sitting		42
Standing in line		47

So, should we not subtract the calorie burn of say, watching TV, from the calorie burn of walking? Instead of counting total calories burned, should we not count net calories burned? Walking at 3.5 mph burns 149 calories per half hour but only 121 net calories (or 107 calories per half hour should one indulge in Harvard-style reading.)

The point of all of this is: It takes longer to burn off a pound than even the dismal tables suggest. If the dismal table tells us it takes twenty hours of said activity to lose a pound, it might actually require thirty hours of said activity. Bummer.

How Many Hours Of Walking Does It Take To Lose One Pound?

2.0 mile per hour (mph) pace (30 minute mile)

• If you weigh 150 lbs, you’ll have to walk for approximately 20 hours to lose 1 lb.
• If you weigh 200 lbs, you’ll have to walk for approximately 15 hours to lose 1 lb.
• If you weigh 250 lbs, you’ll have to walk for approximately 12 hours to lose 1 lb.
• If you weigh 300 lbs, you’ll have to walk for approximately 10 hours to lose 1 lb.
• If you weigh 350 lbs, you’ll have to walk for approximately 9 hours to lose 1 lb.
• If you weigh 400 lbs, you’ll have to walk for approximately 8 hours to lose 1 lb.

____________________________________________________________________________________

What Threw Me Off-Diet

Last year in late April and early May I was thrown off my diet by a bowel obstruction. This year I am thrown off by a malfunctioning refrigerator.

It sounds like a lame excuse but it has been disruptive. The refrigerator was not keeping food cold and I kept throwing food away because it was spoiling quickly. Then it stopped working altogether but the freezer worked fine.

I tried troubleshooting the problem online. Freezer works, refrigerator does not brought more than a half dozen possibilities. I did not have time to do diagnostics so I called an appliance repairman. He came out and did a bad diagnosis. He defrosted the freezer and proclaimed the board defective. The refrigerator would be cold within 24 hours. It would freeze again in two weeks but in that time we would have a new circuit board.

The fridge would not make a comeback in 24 hours. The repairman made a return visit and declared the fan dead and the circuit board OK. The good news is that a fan is cheaper and easier to obtain than a circuit board. 2-3 days. The bad news is that in that time we would have no refrigeration.

So I have been eating a lot of freezer to microwave foods as well as things like canned tamales. I had to throw away about a $100 worth of food. The diet would be impossible to practice without a refrigerator so I am taking a respite. As soon as the refrigerator starts working I will be back on diet.

YEA!