First Week o' the Decade

What a great week!

First things first. Eating has been going nicely. Not surprising, I suppose, since you'd think that I would have this down after, er, many years of devoted practice. But here's what I have been doing:

• Keeping overall calorie intake at or below 1800 calories a day.
• Eating tons of fresh fruit including lots of blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries.
• Eating nothing after 7:30 pm. Gandhi recommended eating nothing after dusk, but that's a little tough in New England in January.
• Eating small portions and meals every 2-3 hours.
• Eating lots of stuff I like including sushi, roast chicken, mushrooms sauteed in olive oil, eggs, veggies and all that fruit I mentioned, some good yogurt, a delicious meal out at Za's to celebrate a year since Betty and I met, and even a little egg nog to celebrate the New Year.

On the other side of the balance, exercise: I just got back from the pool, which makes 8 of the last 9 days I've done my half-mile swim and 150 crunches. This knocks off about 525 calories a day, so that my net calorie intake is under 1300 daily.

Naturally, if I keep up this regimen, I will lose weight. And today's weigh-in, after one week of this, shows me down from 251 to 248 since last Friday. This is a good start toward my short-term goal of getting my weight down under 225. The thing is, I like this regimen, so it is just a matter of keeping my priorities straight so that doing these things that are good for me does not get dislodged by anxiety that I need to do this or that instead.

One thing that has worked nicely in the last few days is getting my swim in at the beginning of the day. I've been dropping Betty at the train and going on to the gym for my workout, which puts me back at my desk with a sense of accomplishment, ready to do some work, around 10 am.

A note on the arithmetic of weight loss: Just to keep it simple, I am using this Basal Metabolic Rate calculator, which tells me that my BMR is 2098 calories a day. I then use the following chart to figure out the how many calories I need to maintain my weight:

Harris Benedict Formula

To determine your total daily calorie needs, multiply your BMR by the appropriate activity factor, as follows: If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2 If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375 If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55 If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725 If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9

So it's pretty straightforward. I've made my plans based on level #3 above, which would mean that about 3200 calories a day would maintain my current weight. So if I keep my calorie intake to no more than 1800 calories a day I should lose 2 to 3 pounds a week.

Just so.

There have been plenty of other things that have been great about the week, too, including over 7,500 downloads of my books and some great mid-day naps. But I figure it all starts with feeling mahvelous, or looking mahvelous, or whatever it is.