Day 65

Before I get into what I want to talk about today, I just want to say that C25K went well today (last day of week 3), but I paid close attention to my body during the work out.  I’m not sure I’m ready for week 4 yet.  I know I have to push myself in order to move on and grow, but I don’t want to push too hard or too far.  I figure I’ll start day 1 of week 4 on Monday, and if I need to stop or go back, I will.  But I’ll be surprised if I don’t end up repeating week 3 next week.  Who knows, though, I might totally surprise myself.

So last night I hopped on the scale at work, just to see where I was, and I gained three pounds since my weigh in Sunday.  After several WTF?! moments, I realized something has to change.  I’m hungry all the time,I’m tired, I’m miserable, and according to Matt, I’m bitchy.  Apparently 1278 calories a day isn’t cutting it anymore.  So I hit the net in search of answers. 

Warning: Long-ass, math ridden post to follow.

I decided to start by figuring out my BMR, since it seems like that’s the fewest calories I should be consuming.  I considered using the formula to figure it out, but shortly decided I wasn’t quite that nuts.  So I went with two calculators, two (simpler) formulas, and the numbers I got off Fat 2 Fit, averaged them out, and used that as my BMR.

Formula:
(Note, to find your weight in kg, divide by 2.2.  Go here for height in cm.)
1489
1319
Calculator 1:
1487.6
Calculator 2:
1498.4
Fat 2 Fit’s numbers:
1495
1322

So add them all up, divide by six, and I got 1435 calories a day.  So that’s my base, what I can’t go below unless I’m laying in bed all day.

For weight loss you don’t take calories from your BMR, you take them from your AMR (Active Metabolic Rate), or how many calories you burn on a daily basis.  Your AMR depends on how active you are.

And this brings up a question.  How active am I?  I mean, I think that I am fairly active, but would I be considered active by these people’s measurements?  I engage in light to moderate exercise every day, so how to figure out my daily allotments?  And which method to use?  The site I used for my formulas had one suggestion as to what to multiply your BMR by, Jillian Michaels had another (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 as you go up the activity ladder).  So I used both methods, for both lightly and moderately active, threw in those two numbers from Fat 2 Fit, and averaged.

1973
2224
1722
1866
1865
2102

This gives me 1959 calories a day for my AMR.  Now I have a bottom (1435) and a top (1959), I just have to find the sweet spot in the middle.  Theoretically, if I consume 1959 calories a day and keep as active as I am now, I shouldn't gain weight, I should maintain.  But I don’t wan to maintain, I want to lose.

And here we run into problems again.  I’d like to lose 2 pounds a week, which means a 1000 calorie deficit a day.  But that would only leave me 959 calories a day, and that’s below my bottom.  And I doubt I can exercise any more at the moment.

How about 1 pound a week, a 500 calorie deficit.  That’d put me at 1459, which is only just above my bottom.  Little dangerous. 

So I’m going to shoot to the middle and go with 1697 calories a day.  It’s only a 262 calorie deficit, which translates to a little more than a half pound a week, but that’s fine.  I’ll tweak as I go.

Then I wonder if I should just enter my sedentary calorie limit (1643 when averaged) and eat my exercise.  But I have plenty of issues with eating my exercise.  One, I don’t believe Lose It! is entirely accurate, two, I don’t want to over estimate how hard I worked out, then end up over eating because of that mistake.  So for now, that option’s a no.

Now the question becomes how to I get my calories up there?  That’s more than 400 calories more a day than I’m currently taking in.  I figure it’s probably best if I do this slowly.  So once a week I’m going to up my calories by 10%.  Monday I’ll move my calories up to 1406, the Monday after that I’ll bring them up to 1547, and by that next Monday I’ll be at 1697.  I want to start this on a Monday because that’s my weigh in day, and I think I’ll get the most accurate results doing it that way.  Oh, and I’m extremely anal like that.

I know I’ll have to redo all this math every time I lose weight, seeing as my BMR will go down.  But that’s fine.  I don’t exactly trust Lose It's math any more.  Not that mine is infallible (just realized today there’s actual 248 days between April 8th and December 12th, oh well), but I’ll try things this way for a while, see how it goes.