![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Eating Less, Running More
It's been a little while since I've talked about diet and exercise. I know most people aren't really keen on hearing the minutiae of the process, and admittedly it can be a bit dry if you're doing what you should. When it comes right down to it, weight control is a numbers game. You keep track of the Calories that are coming in, and you fine-tune it until you're losing weight at the rate you think you should. It's a simple proposition that's astonishingly difficult to pull off.
We don't tend to think of food in such an exacting way. It belongs to our more esoteric understanding, even when we start getting into the pseudo-science of it. Even when we throw around terms like caloric intake, fat-protein-carb ratio, net carb, low carb, no carb, body mass index, and all the rest, those hard numbers exist in some vague realm that seems disconnected from the way we really take and enjoy sustenance. We consider food to be an emotional experience, like art, and it's hard for us to make the leap into concrete data. No one wants to treat art like it's science.
But, alas, that's what we're forced to do in our day and age. We're encouraged to eat all the wrong things in incredibly damaging amounts, and the refuge of hard data is the best means we have of taking back control of our diets. So, number crunching it is. Even though I'm inconsistent with it, and it's a giant pain in the ass when I'm eating out, it's a black and white thing that's impossible to argue with. I know my goal. I know how to get there. And I have the means with which to measure progress. So how's the progress coming along?
Not too bad, actually. Like I said before, I'm pretty inconsistent about monitoring, just because it's pretty hard to get accurate counts when you're eating out a lot. But the weight's been down significantly for the last few months, and I'm only seven pounds away from my first 'permanent' goal. I'm averaging about 182 pounds these days, and I'd like to be a svelte 175. We'll see how my stomach looks once I hit that weight to see if I need to go down any further.
It pains me to say it, but the thing that's helped me most is just consistency. I used to resist it as much as I could, because I hated the idea of being the kind of person who had the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day. It's a fairly irrational feeling, come to think of it, and it did me a lot of harm before I knocked it the hell off. Now, I'm pretty cool with having hot or cold cereal and a cup of coffee for breakfast every morning. Every once in a while, I'll get a fruit and yogurt parfait from the local sandwich shop, or a couple slices of wheat toast with butter and honey. The most important thing is to keep the calories down, and with that in mind, you'll quickly come up with a repetoire that gives you the most bang for your buck (i.e., stuff that isn't too calorie-heavy while keeping you reasonably satisfied until lunchtime).
Lunch tends to be a Lean Pocket and pre-packaged salad; that gets the job done until dinner most of the time, but I feel like I could be doing better. It's a bit high in fat between the pastry pouch and salad dressing, and there's not quite enough lean meat. I might be better served with a home-made sandwich with veg or fruit (carrots, celery, grape tomatoes or even grapes) and yogurt, but that requires a bit more prep than I'm willing to take in the mornings. I'll have to run the numbers (I'd like to bring up my protein percentage and lower my fat).
Dinner and snacks are the diciest part of the day for me. If I can stay away from cookies I'm generally fine, but I'm a big stress eater and work has its way with me several times a week. I'm weak, but I often seek the comfort of cookies when I'm feeling all keyed up. Before that, my go-to snack food was candy, but the year-long moratorium on that has taken that release valve away. I'm not complaining, but it feels like I've traded one crutch for another, essentially. I have to get better about that.
Exercise is ideally a combination of weight training and running. Weight training is good for endurance and encouraging muscle growth (or at least maintenance), while I honestly just love to run. Besides clearing my mind, making me feel better and more fit, it also demands that I stretch and drink a lot of water on a regular basis. That can't be a bad thing, right?
Between diet and exercise, my goal for Calories is 1600 per day, or 11200 per week. Just to give myself a little wiggle room, I'll throw in 300 extra Calories per week for the nice, round number of 11500. With the recommended calorie intake of 14000 per week, that puts me at a deficit of 3500 -- which, as you may or may not know, is the equivalent of a pound of fat.
So by that logic, if all goes well, I should be losing about a pound a week! It's really too bad we live in a world where cookies and other baked goods are so delicious. :) Still, I'm trying -- refining my process, and making slow, painful, incremental progress. I'm still making a lot of mistakes, but it feels like I'm earning my discipline still.
We don't tend to think of food in such an exacting way. It belongs to our more esoteric understanding, even when we start getting into the pseudo-science of it. Even when we throw around terms like caloric intake, fat-protein-carb ratio, net carb, low carb, no carb, body mass index, and all the rest, those hard numbers exist in some vague realm that seems disconnected from the way we really take and enjoy sustenance. We consider food to be an emotional experience, like art, and it's hard for us to make the leap into concrete data. No one wants to treat art like it's science.
But, alas, that's what we're forced to do in our day and age. We're encouraged to eat all the wrong things in incredibly damaging amounts, and the refuge of hard data is the best means we have of taking back control of our diets. So, number crunching it is. Even though I'm inconsistent with it, and it's a giant pain in the ass when I'm eating out, it's a black and white thing that's impossible to argue with. I know my goal. I know how to get there. And I have the means with which to measure progress. So how's the progress coming along?
Not too bad, actually. Like I said before, I'm pretty inconsistent about monitoring, just because it's pretty hard to get accurate counts when you're eating out a lot. But the weight's been down significantly for the last few months, and I'm only seven pounds away from my first 'permanent' goal. I'm averaging about 182 pounds these days, and I'd like to be a svelte 175. We'll see how my stomach looks once I hit that weight to see if I need to go down any further.
It pains me to say it, but the thing that's helped me most is just consistency. I used to resist it as much as I could, because I hated the idea of being the kind of person who had the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day. It's a fairly irrational feeling, come to think of it, and it did me a lot of harm before I knocked it the hell off. Now, I'm pretty cool with having hot or cold cereal and a cup of coffee for breakfast every morning. Every once in a while, I'll get a fruit and yogurt parfait from the local sandwich shop, or a couple slices of wheat toast with butter and honey. The most important thing is to keep the calories down, and with that in mind, you'll quickly come up with a repetoire that gives you the most bang for your buck (i.e., stuff that isn't too calorie-heavy while keeping you reasonably satisfied until lunchtime).
Lunch tends to be a Lean Pocket and pre-packaged salad; that gets the job done until dinner most of the time, but I feel like I could be doing better. It's a bit high in fat between the pastry pouch and salad dressing, and there's not quite enough lean meat. I might be better served with a home-made sandwich with veg or fruit (carrots, celery, grape tomatoes or even grapes) and yogurt, but that requires a bit more prep than I'm willing to take in the mornings. I'll have to run the numbers (I'd like to bring up my protein percentage and lower my fat).
Dinner and snacks are the diciest part of the day for me. If I can stay away from cookies I'm generally fine, but I'm a big stress eater and work has its way with me several times a week. I'm weak, but I often seek the comfort of cookies when I'm feeling all keyed up. Before that, my go-to snack food was candy, but the year-long moratorium on that has taken that release valve away. I'm not complaining, but it feels like I've traded one crutch for another, essentially. I have to get better about that.
Exercise is ideally a combination of weight training and running. Weight training is good for endurance and encouraging muscle growth (or at least maintenance), while I honestly just love to run. Besides clearing my mind, making me feel better and more fit, it also demands that I stretch and drink a lot of water on a regular basis. That can't be a bad thing, right?
Between diet and exercise, my goal for Calories is 1600 per day, or 11200 per week. Just to give myself a little wiggle room, I'll throw in 300 extra Calories per week for the nice, round number of 11500. With the recommended calorie intake of 14000 per week, that puts me at a deficit of 3500 -- which, as you may or may not know, is the equivalent of a pound of fat.
So by that logic, if all goes well, I should be losing about a pound a week! It's really too bad we live in a world where cookies and other baked goods are so delicious. :) Still, I'm trying -- refining my process, and making slow, painful, incremental progress. I'm still making a lot of mistakes, but it feels like I'm earning my discipline still.