Saturday, February 26, 2005

Weight / Measurements and other thoughts.

As always, my focus is not on the absolute numbers, but the trends revealed by the numbers. Apparently, I've dropped 4.6 pounds from last week. That's a pretty big jump. However, From 01.09 to 02.26 (7 weeks) I've gone from 257.0 to 239.1 -- some 17.9 pounds. 18 pounds / 7 weeks = ~2.5 pounds per week. That's right on schedule. And, truth be told, I'm doing it without much trouble these days.

Main factors in my view:

1. Got rid of Dr. Pepper;
2. More focused on calories;
3. More smoothies (350-400 calories and usually 2-3 servings of fruit; practically speaking, they are very filling);
4. More soup. I think soup just fills me up and that feeling of satiation (word?) revokes my apetite sufficiently. (I actually remember this from wrestling. It's nearly impossible to down 1,000 calories in soup, you have to have like a gallon of it. . . but 2-2.5 sandwiches will get you 1,000 calories no problem).
5. I am eating much more bread too.
6. Treadmill. The treadmill is arguably the biggest thing. It's the newest weapon in my arsenal and I think there are multiple reasons to believe it's quite effective.
a. It's available all the time.
b. Whenever I watch TV I walk on the treadmill. This has a twofold increase on caloric consumption/expenditure. First, it's burning extra calories, at a time when if I was pasted to the couch, I'd have even fewer calories being burned; second, it provides for an increase in my metabolism for some period of time; and 3) there's a potential that this is causing earlier digestion removing the body's ability to digest some foods, and kicking the foods out of my body before all the calories are absorbed (#3 is my theory, it could be complete bunk :-0). Also -- since I pretty much don't run at night in my neighborhood, it's drastically helped to increase my run miles, because now I can run after school/work -- no problem.

I happened to catch the MN Gopher Wrestling special and J. Robinson (the coach) was talking about his wrestlers cutting weight -- 'it's actually pretty simple, eat few calories and burn more fuel, and the weight comes off.' It's totally true, and something I know because I've done it a few times, particularly when I wrestled in high school. It's totally working for me right now too.



Here's the weight update:


Weight
5-day weighted averages
Week ended / weight / body fat %

01.02.2005 / divby0
01.09.2005 / 257.0 / 36.8
01.16.2005 / 252.3 / 34.6
01.23.2005 / 251.9 / 29.1
01.30.2005 / 248.0 / 31.5
02.05.2005 / 244.9 / 30.2
02.12.2005 / 246.4 / 30.1
02.20.2005 / 243.7 / 30.2
02.26.2005 / 239.1 / 27.1



Therefore, I did, in fact, lose 2.7 pounds (on a weighted average basis) over the past week. This is right in line with the lose 2.5 pounds per week initial philosophy.


Here are my most recent measurements:

02.26.2005
C: 45.5;
B: 14.0;
T: 24.50
N: 16.5;
UW: 44.25;
LW: 41.25;

01.29.2005
C: 47.00"
B: 13.50"
T: 23.75"
N: 17.00"
UW: 45.00"
LW: 41.75"

LESS

06.20.2004
C: 53.00"
B: 17.00"
T: 27.50"
UW: 48.00"
LW: 43.00"

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