It's a New Phil, Week 8

By | February 25, 2006
6 Comments

The First Plateau

I was actually up four pounds this week, making the past two weeks a complete wash, although I’m still down 5 pounds for the month. Four pounds seems like a big gain. I have a digestive theory that might account for part of that. (My wife told me this morning to consider a laxative.)

As a precaution, I’m cutting my calorie intake by 10% for the next week. I’ve been going over my goal of 2000, anyway — my average daily intake is right at 2090 — so even just keeping my intake where it is supposed to be would no doubt help. But I think what I’ll do is round that 2090 up to 2100 and say that I need to reduce my intake by 210. So I’m going to be very careful not to exceed 1880 calories per day over the next week, and we’ll see where that gets me.

This “setback” may go a ways towards rationalizing my high burn rate, which I knew I was going to see get corrected sooner or later. With 5 pounds lost in the month, my burn rate is now only 2818, which is actually still pretty darn good. We’ll see where it ends up over the next few weeks.

By reader request, here’s a link to a blank copy of the spreadhseet I use. I hope it is self-explanatory, or that earlier editions of this feature will make it clear how to use it. If anyone tries it out and gets stuck, drop me an e-mail

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    Well, you don’t sound discouraged. And you shouldn’t be. Like you said, now’s the time to get a more accurate look at your actual metabolic rate – now that excess water is gone.

  • Jim Strickland

    In weight loss, it is vitally important to have a measure besides just the scales, because weight loss is not a linear process. You may find that despite plateauing and putting 4 pounds on, you are, in fact, shrinking. My trainer tells me that what happens is your body replaces fat with water, then abruptly dumps the water, so weight loss comes in gusts. Don’t loose faith, don’t crank down your calorie intake, and for heaven’s sake don’t go bulimic on us (using laxatives for weight loss falls into that).

    Trust me, I’ve been there a few times. In the last two and a half years I’m down around 80 pounds.

    -Jim

  • http://drinktank.blogspot.com ivankirigin

    I’m sorry if you’ve mentioned this before, but how do you know the calorie count of the food you eat?

    Do you eat at restaurants? Last night I had a coconut red curry from a very fun Thai restaurant (The Republique, in the South End, Boston). Did they use whole coconut milk? ‘Lite’? How much? Even if I know the calorie count per serving size, do I weigh the food before eating?

    How do I get an good count for that meal?

    I suppose not eating out makes it easier and probably healthier, depending.

    Have you been doing any weight training exercise? Again, building muscle is excellent for your goals, if difficult to account for in your datasheets.

    You also might want to correlate eating with time of day. It would be interesting to see some statistics on how the % of food eaten after N pm correlates with calories burned during the day.

    Whenever I think about this project, I just want better sensors than inference from end-of-week loss combined with detailed calorie logs. I should get a bodybugg :-D

  • lihighironman

    As you get closer to your ideal bodyweight, it might be a good idea to start regularly checking your body fat percentage. It is very possible that your loss of bad fat is being masked by good muscle gain or benign water retention.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Phil Bowermaster

    Stephen –

    Thanks. I would only be discouraged if I was suddenly a couple inches bigger around again. No sign of that.

    Jim –

    Sound advice. I appreciate you sharing your experience — great work on the 80 pounds. The laxative thing was more of a joke. I have needed them on occasion in the past, but I would never use one to try to hit the right target on a scale. Better the eating disorder I have (eating too much) than a really dangerous one like bulimia! My 10% calorie drop is intended as much a pump-primer as it is anything else.

    Ivan –

    At home, I have a good scale and I weigh food before eating it. When I go out, I try to eat very moderately and estimate the calories in what I’m eating. I don’t really do the math until I’m back home with the Excel spreadsheet.

    I use two books:

    The Complete Book of Food Counts

    and

    The Most Complete Food Counter

    You can estimate the calorie value of almost anything. When I’m in doubt, I tend to estimate high. I would assume that Thai curry has coconut milk in it, for example. (Any Thai restaurant worthy of the name would make it that way!)

    I’m not doing weight training per se. I do push-ups and other strength training exercises — I have a workout that I like to do using my 10-pound sledgehammer. (Really.)

    Lihigh –

    Good tip. I’ll see if I can’t find a way to make body fat percentage part of what I track.

  • http://drinktank.blogspot.com ivankirigin

    Tanita makes some fun scales that record percentage body fat. It works by standing on it barefoot and running a current from one foot to the other.

    Apparently, knowing your age, weight, sex, height, and …. drumroll …. _resistance_, you can estimate PBF pretty accurately.

    An example on Amazon:
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0007Y6BS4/sr=8-1/qid=1141168300/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-5596005-1605645?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance