I’m at my third day of tracking what I eat. It has been interesting, to say the least. I did some research and found that at my height, weight and age I should need about 3200 calories/day to maintain weight. One pound equals 3500 calories. So to lose 2 lbs in a week I need to eat 7000 less calories than my body needs. This comes down to eating 1000 less calories each day. So if my body needs 3200 calories I should eat 2200 calories or less each day.

The first day I consumed about 1744 calories. Yesterday I was taken out to dinner at a pizza place and had pizza, salad and a rootbeer shake. This messed me up. I ended up with 3568 calories. The week is almost over and I’m still heavier than I was a week ago. Now that I monitor what I’m eating I feel a little more in control. When I think about eating something I ask myself, “How many calories does this have?” Sometimes it’s not worth finding out and in the case of sweets and junk food I figure it’s just easier to not eat them. As I lookup the nutritional facts of different foods I see what hurts me. For example, yesterday I took a test and needed a snack before taking the test to give my body some energy to think properly. I went to the vending machines and thought a blueberry muffin shouldn’t be too bad. I was wrong. The blasted thing was 400 calories, 22g fat, 48g carbs, 1g protein. STAY AWAY FROM THE MUFFINS!!!!!

For my results last week I was at 236.5 lbs on Friday. By Sunday morning I was around 241. I’m finally down to 239 but if I want to get down below my low it’s going to take something serious. I wasn’t able to go running yesterday due to extra schoolwork. Now I’ve gained weight and it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to get my miles in. I’m going to have to do something drastic! I’ll just have to wake up extra early to run and try to run further than usual. Lately I’ve had limited activity on Saturday so I’m going to have to make sure and go running on Saturday.

On a happy note. My flag football team won on Saturday. This time the opposing team was short a player so that helped. We had a few more good guys that could throw and had some speed. I think we ended up winning 36-7.

I’m considering keeping track of my health on a more detailed basis. At the end of each day I’m going to record what I ate and maybe when I’m wondering why I’m not losing weight I can figure out how many calories I’m eating and how many I’m burning and make adjustments accordingly. By the end of all this I might end up created some kind of program that makes it easy for people to track their mileage and calorie intake and will give a suggestion on what to change.

Here are the results. Andrea had a great week. It looks like Weight Watchers is working well. I’m still in the lead but that could change fast. I measure and weigh on Fridays and then on Saturday and Sunday I gain weight so to keep losing I have to actually lose a lot from Sunday to Friday. Jen is going at a nice pace and could sneak up any time. Keep up the good work. Megan doesn’t have as much to lose so even though she has been putting in lots of miles she isn’t losing. Any suggestions for her? As for Jared, Courtney and Mike. Let me know if you don’t plan on participating and I’ll take your names of the chart.

School is getting pretty hectic. I didn’t have time to run last night was up until midnight doing Chemistry homework. I’ll have to go for a run today or tomorrow to get my miles in this week and continue to lose weight. I’m going to start building my endurance up a little more. I can run two miles fairly easily now so I’m going to start running for time. One thing that has worked for me in the past is to run uphill for a specified time and turn around and run downhill the rest of the way. I can do 2 miles in about 16-17 minutes so now I’m going to run uphill for 10 min and turn around and try to make it home in 10 min or less and hopefully I will get further and further each time I run. Then I’ll add 2 min and do that for a while until I can run 30 min. Then the goal will be to get 4 miles in 30 min. That’s about what I was doing at my peak shape. Once I’m there I will have to plan how I’ll improve from there.

A new hobby I’m picking up is something called geocaching. Check out this website. http://www.geocaching.com I’ve done one so far and plan to do more.

Last night I was watching biggest loser and it was the groups first week and they each had lost a ton of weight. The average was over 6% of their total starting weight. If I were to lose weight at the same rate I would have lost 15 lbs in a week! In two weeks I’ve barely lost two pounds. I wonder how long someone can lose so much weight before leveling out. Some of these guys were 350-400 lbs so they have a lot of weight to lose. Those guys had lost around 28 lbs!

Anyway, I wonder if I should have my challenge based on percent of starting weight. That way, the heavier people don’t have an advantage.