Tag: calorie-counting

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L3

L3 Week 1 – Counting Counts

So, a little late, here’s the results of week 1 of L3. The reason for that is that I made a concerted effort to finish Under the Dome this week and so most of the time I’ve either been reading or certainly not feeling like updating the blog.

Lost: -0.4lbs
Weight: 304.6lbs (21st 7lbs)

Not great eh? Well it’s partly the fact that I started off a bit slack – in my own mind I was ‘easing back into it’, I was eating up the remainder of any treat food I’d had left over. Most of that I probably could have absorbed but by the end of the week I slipped into an over indulgent weekend.

What I realised was that I needed to get tough with myself again. Having a week like that – well the early part of it – is ok when you’re a few months into a diet, but if you start off that way and you slip, well the place to slip to is more extreme.

So I’m back to a tougher regime:

  • actually counting calories (including measuring) and not relying on what I know looks right
  • sticking rigidly to limits – once I start allowing myself to go a little over my daily allowance, or skip exercise, then it’s a slippery slope.

The good news is – early unofficial week 2 reports predict I’ll be looking at a healthy loss.

Categories
lesamy

Lesamy Week 71, Not Counting

This week I’ve achieved something that I’ve been trying to do for months. I lost weight whilst not counting calories. Sometime around last autumn I decided that I didn’t really need to count every calorie because I knew what my meals should look like. I am a creature of habit and so I have relatively few variations of meals. So I ought to be able to do my diet without the counting part. I tried this for months but I kept slipping up at the weekends and eating more. Not a fault of not counting but frustratingly not allowing me to prove it could be done.

Well since I’m now back on the straight-n-narrow I have shown it can be done. It’s mainly about sticking to regular reasonable meals and not having in-between snacks. It’s also about getting the exercise habit again. I’m back to walking every day which I think helps a lot.

Here’s the numbers:

loss this week: 2.4kg (5.3lb)
loss this year: 0.8kg (1.8lb)
Total loss: 24.7kg (54.5lb or 3st 12lb)
To target: 24.1kg (53.2lb or 3st 11lb)
Current weight: 119.4kg (263lb or 18st 11lb)


Categories
lesamy

Lesamy Week 11 – A Tale of Two Calorie-Counters

So this week the big news is I bought a stepper. It’s an exercise machine that you, er, step on. It’s got pedals and you sort of ‘walk’ on it against the resistance of these hydraulic rods.

Naturally it’s my new favourite toy.

Except that I have to be careful. As I said in a previous post, I’m really too heavy for it. Its stated maximum weight is 100kg and I still exceed that by nearly 25%. However my reasoning was thus:

  • It was cheap – £25.
  • As long as it didn’t break as soon as I got on it – and it didn’t – I can use it occasionally until I get closer to (then below) 100kg when I can use it more often.
  • This is fine since my main motivation was to get something I can use when the weather’s too foul to contemplate walking outside. (I have done at least one session walking around my bedroom. That was a little dull)

Like all these gadgets these days it’s got a calories-burned display (as well as steps done and time etc). And on Sunday, when the weather was in fact inclement I used it “in anger” for the first time. I decided to aim to match the calories burned on my usual weekend-day walk with is ~650 as measured by my trusty pedometer. However I soon downgraded this to 450 (a weekday amount) when I realised how difficult this was.

In the end I did 71 1/2 minutes of exercise over the course of an hour and a half (whilst watching Return of the Jedi) by which time I had allegedy used up the magic figure of 4-5-0. I say allegedly because I normally walk for ~63 minutes and do that much. So do I believe my pedometer or the stepper? Well I suspect my pedometer because it takes into account my weight whereas the stepper just (I think) measures the number of steps and probably has a set formula as to how many calories that is.

Anyway it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that I have a baseline, an arbitrary, though consistent measure for my progress. I’ll only really compare my stepper performance with previous stepper sessions.

Having said that it is tempting to count these calories as real for the purposes of trading against food. I confess that on Saturday, having hit my limit for the day, I did take to the stepper for twenty minutes to earn enough calories for a block or two of chocolate. But I won’t be making a habit of that. Mostly because it’s such hard work that it’s easier to not have the chocolate.

One thing’s for sure and that is the stepper’s more ‘cardio’ type exercise, which I believe is what they call it when it raises your pulse, you’re panting heavily and sweat profusely. Walking no longer does that for me (and I’m not quite ready to transition to running, I’d quite like to be carrying less bulk first). So for that reason I may try to make sure I do one stepper session a week even if the weather does not make it essential.

Oh and the results for this week:
Weekly loss: 1.5kg (3.3lb)
Total loss: 20.2kg (44.5lb or 3st 2lb)
Current weight: 123.9kg (273lb or 19st 7lb)

Pleased with that as it’s another milestone – I’ve now lost over 3 stone!