Archive for the ‘SurvivalWare Diet’ Category

The SurvivalWare Diet

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Previously known as the Facebook Diet (no branding benefit to me), The Entrepreneur’s Diet (abbreviated as ED, a turnoff to some), and Rusty’s Diet (displays way too much ego).  This is the last time I change the name, promise.  We’ve been flying in low below anyone’s radar, and we’re about to change that.  So, from here on out, I plan to stick with a consistent name.

Background

A little background:  in April of this year I decided to test a theory I had long held about the importance of motivation in trying to lose weight.  During my last physical my doctor told me that based on my BMI, I was borderline obese (what do they expect – they make you weigh with all your clothes on!).  She also said my cholesterol levels were a little on the high side, and she could put me on statins, or I could lose 30 pounds and come back for a re-check in 6 months.  She suggested that if I just stopped drinking alcohol, I could lose the weight pronto.  Easy for her to say!

 The appointment took place in February, and of course it took me a couple of months to decide to act on her advice.  Around that time my brother Hank (www.issetrak.com) introduced me to Facebook, and the old wheels started spinning. 

 Trained as an Industrial Engineer at the University of Michigan (Go Blue!),  I remembered about the Hawthorne Effect.  Look it up on Wikipedia if you want the details – but in a nutshell some industrial engineers were trying to improve productivity at this huge GE Plant, and kept meticulous production records to help them study the impact of certain things.  They turned up the lights – and sure enough productivity increased.  They turned the lights back down – and guess what – productivity increased again!  They concluded it was the attention from management, knowing what was being watched, that led to the improved performance.  We see the same effect when SurvivalWare is used in a small business – when you make explicit what the performance measures are, and make them visible to all who can impact performance, you see improvements over time.

 So I thought that if I did nothing more than post my weight on Facebook (www.facebook.com) every day, I would be forced to make good decisions throughout the day in order to avoid embarrassment the next.  I started out at 224.5 on April 8, 2009.  I know what you’re thinking:  I must be shameless to start with in order to post a weight like that, and how could I possibly be less embarrassed if I get it down to still-chunky  220?  Well, it worked for me – for a while, anyway.

 I got myself to start by NOT setting an outlandish weight loss goal (e.g. 30 pounds in 6 months). I’m in the software business after all (www.survivalware.com).  I try not to get too worked up about deadlines.  Rather, I made to commitment to post my weight on Facebook every day for 30 days – and then decide if it was worth continuing.  How hard could that be?

 That worked for a bit – I actually lost 15 pounds in 90 days.  The encouragement from friends and family was really helpful. My brother Hank (www.issuetrak.com) asked me to see what the impact of not drinking alcohol would be.  Don’t you love it when family members make suggestions about how you should live your life?!  But  I had opened myself up for that type of thing by posting on Facebook (www.facebook.com) to begin with.  Plus he had a point – I would gain information about the impact, and then I could decide if it was worth it.  Plus I had the added benefit of an opportunity to prove that I wasn’t a total souse.  I stopped for 10 days.  I finally gave in with encouragement from my wife (it’s not every night we go out to dinner – you’re telling me you can’t have a glass or two of wine?).  It was at a Macaroni Grill or something like that where they put a huge open bottle of wine on the table and have you keep track of what you drink on the honor system.  I’m only human, after all.  Those 10 days did help with the weight loss.

 But I found I would rather cut back elsewhere – say on the peanuts that normally accompany the alcohol consumption.  Or maybe up the exercise to compensate.  Hank (www.issuetrak.com) suggested that I post the number of miles I rode my bike, so I started doing that as well.

One problem was that I was uncomfortable with the unpredictability of my daily weight.  It didn’t always correlate with the previous day’s performance.  I felt like I needed a better measure to monitor and control.

The other problem was trying not to sound like a self-absorbed dork when reporting my weight and bike miles each day on Facebook (www.facebook.com).

 Toward the end of July I experimented with calorie counting.  I was in the habit already of logging my daily bike riding, so I just needed to track the occasional walk with the wife or mowing of the lawn.  I use a push mower and awarded myself the same 600 calories per hour that you get for jogging (400 for biking, 200 for walking).  I decided I could handle the calorie counting, and made the commitment to do it for 30 days, and track my actual vs. theoretical weight.

 See my last post for the month by month account of what I did:

http://www.survivalware.com/rustysblog/2009/11/03/rustys-diet-a-soft-landing-after-losing-30-pounds-in-6-months

The SurvivalWare Diet

In a nutshell the SurvivalWare diet is this:

  • invest the time and effort to determine your food intake and how much time you exercise. 
  • Log calories and exercise minutes every day.  Write down somewhere (paper or in a computer file) the Total Calories Consumed and Minutes of Exercise by each of three main categories (walking, biking, running).
  • Do the analysis: keep a running tally of how many calories you have burned vs. consumed.  
  • Set a goal based on your desired weight loss over 30 days. (I did 10 pounds one month, but I had to average 3 hours a day of bike riding to achieve it. 3 to 5 pounds a month is a more reasonable pace).
  • Calculate the calories you need to burn in excess of calories consumed by taking the total for the month divided by 30 to get an average per day.  That is your daily goal.

I found two things really helpful when tracking food calories: 

  1. the CalorieKing food database (www.calorieking.com) and
  2. buying a food scale.  I loved mine until it broke recently.  I bought it on Amazon.com for less than $40.  I might try to upgrade next time.

 Also, it helps that I like to cook, and that enables me to jot down ingredients and read from the food labels as I prepare dinner.   Also, I find that if you prepare dinner for your spouse every night, it is hard for the spouse to be mad at you for any length of time.  Unless, of course, you overcook the salmon or overspice the chili.

Restaurant meals were tougher.  Not all restaurants publish the nutritional contents of their meals, or there may be a lag when a new menu item is added – and of course, that’s what everyone orders, the new stuff.  But it was amazing what I could find out with my iPhone using the Food Scanner app.  ($2.99 from Apple’s App store).  It helps kill the time between placing your order and having it served to you.  Plus what social interaction – such as lunch or dinner with a spouse or friends – can you have today that doesn’t lead to at least one Google search?   Food Scanner gave me an excuse to play with the iPhone, and then I naturally would keep it out just in case.

You can search for Caesar Salad and you get to choose from about 12 different restaurants.  If you don’t find the exact establishment you are eating at, you can compare yours (when it comes) to the pictures of the others and pick one that looks closest.

Food Scanner also claims to read the UPC codes on labels that come on packaged foods.  I found that feature to be unreliable in my tests.  Also, if you have the label in front of you, there in plain text  is the serving size and number of calories, and it is really easy to jot that down on a scrap of paper.  That’s what I do – just jot down what I eat soon after every meal,  or during the meal preparation.   Then once a day I tabulate all the scraps, and look up any calories that need looking up (e.g. fresh fruit).  I try to remember everything I ate and drank.  Depending on your memory, and how many drinks you have – you may be able to jot things down just once a day without having to do it throughout the day.  When you get all that in one place,  record the total calories consumed in a spreadsheet.

It gets easier over time.  It is amazing how you tend to eat the same thing for breakfast or lunch every day (with a few variations).  I’ve learned to estimate fruit weights and serving sizes just through repetition. 

I never did find a food logging program I liked – either on the iPhone or on the PC.  I found my hand method of recording to be a good hybrid approach that fit my style.  I’d say don’t bother with entering into a computer every single food item that you eat – it is the total calories each day that counts.

 When I was at my PC,  I used the Calorie King database (www.calorieking.com) instead of the iPhone to look up calories because it was more efficient and easy to use (no iPhone keyboard!).  It would correct my misspelling of broccoli, and make it easy to express my consumption in standard servings, dry measure, or weight in ounces or grams.  For fruit it would show me the weight for small, medium, or large pieces of fruit (e.g. fresh apples) and you could use that to estimate if you didn’t have a food scale.

 In my next posting about the SurvivalWare Diet, I plan to make available and explain the actual spreadsheet I used to track my weight loss performance since August, 2009.

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Posted in Cooking, SurvivalWare Diet, iPhone | No Comments »

Rusty’s Diet: A Soft Landing after losing 30 pounds in 6 months

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

I just finished my third full month of keeping a consumption and exercise log, and I feel like it has really been worth the time and trouble.  For the first time in my life, I feel like I am in control of my weight.  I weighed 191 on November 1st, down from 224.5 when I first started what I then called the FaceBook diet in April of this year.

I’m getting ready to analyze what I ate (and drank) during those 3 months, during which I lost 14 pounds.  I will say this: I’m not very good at controlling what I eat.  I find it much easier to get more exercise than to cut down on caloric intake.  Also, I made sure I had room for alcohol.  I drank bourbon every single day during the last three months.  I did pretty much abandon beer – because I discovered bourbon gives you more bang for the buck.

Here is what I averaged per day in caloric intake the last 3 months:

August:  2,452

September: 2,617

October: 2,574

August was the month I set out to prove this would work.  I set an ambitious goal of burning 35,000 calories more than my intake – which should result in a loss of 10 pounds.  It turns out to be 1,130 calories per day, and I decided I had a shot at doing it if I could ride my bicycle 3 hours per day.  My bike ride became my priority, and it worked.  I came 2,000 calories shy of my goal, but still lost the 10 pounds.  I found my actual weight varies from my “theoretical weight”  by as much as 3 pounds, but usually they are close. 

I felt I needed a rest from the diet in September, and set my goal at zero the first two days of the month, and then an excess of 500 calories per day for the rest of the month.  I missed that goal by 4,000 calories, but still managed to lose 1.5 pounds.

I left the goal unchanged in October due to inertia, and performed even worse:  I burned 5,575 excess calories vs. a goal of 15,500.  I still lost 2.5 pounds, half due to luck.

So for November, I’ve decided to dial down the goal to 233 excess calories burned per day, which should result in 2 pounds per month of weight loss.  It should be comfortable and easy to do – and will allow me to redirect some of the biking hours to work.  The first day of the month I missed that meager goal by 300 calories, but made up for it today with an extended bike ride.

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Entrepreneur’s Diet: Report Card for the Month of August, 2009

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

I know everyone has been waiting with bated breath for an update, so here it is:  this damned Entrepreneur’s diet really works! 

Diet-Progress-9-1-2009

I went public (Facebook early August) with a goal of losing 10 pounds during the month of August.  From a starting point of 205, I vowed to lose 10 pounds by September 1st.  My plan was to do it by averaging 3 hours a day of bike riding, covering 1,000 miles or more; and counting calories.  I had calculated that I needed to burn 35,000 more calories than consumed during the month in order to lose the 10 pounds.  This translates to 1,130 calories per day.  Breaking the problem down into smaller pieces helps. 

My research on the web came up with a figure of 400 calories burned up during an hour of bike riding.  (About 200 calories for walking, amd 600 calories for running).  If I could do 3 hours a day of bike riding (a big if!), I would burn 1,200 calories a day over and above the 2,300 calories I burn from a person my age and sex living a sedentary lifestyle.  This means that I could consume 2,370 calories per day, and still meet my agressive weight loss goal.

Toward the end of July, I invested in a food scale and found a nutritional database on the internet that I really liked.  I did a few trial runs to see if it was even feasible to do the calorie counting necessary to execute my plan.  I also upped my bike riding to a furious pace, to see if I could really achieve 3 hours a day over an extended period.  The last 10 days of July, I averaged 32 miles a day.  That also helped me get used to the routine. 

One of the things I decided early on was to NOT give up drinking alcohol.  I was in the middle of trying to get a new version of SurvivalWare released, while juggling major customer projects, and trying to assemble a team at Luhring SurvivalWare, Inc. to take us to the next level, and do it without running out of cash.  I needed stress relief above and beyond 3 hours of bike riding a day.

I hit the ground running on August 1st,  exercise-wise as well as recordkeeping-wise.  I’ll document the details in a separate “how-to” article, and focus here on the results.

On a daily basis, I concentrated on surpassing the goal of 1,130 calories burned in excess of consumption, and to stay above it on a cumulative basis month-to-date.  I found it was easy to do when I was able to take a monster bike ride, but real hard when I was shut out of exercise.  On a few occasions, I tried to stockpile my excess calories burned in anticipation of some difficult days.  I didn’t realize until the middle of the month that I had a 4 day anniversary weekend getaway that involved 10 to 12 hours of driving all told.  It was in the mountains, and it would be futile to bring a bike.   Besides, this was an anniversary after all, and the proper thing to do was spend time with the missus.  Nobody told me that we would stay in a B&B for two nights whose specialty was a 4 course breakfast.  Or that we would go drinking at a college bar with my son Thomas and his friends.  It was painful the next morning – not from a hangover, but from counting the calories in an Irish car-bomb (and then applying a multiplier).

It turns out my stockpile wasn’t quite big enough.  I had 1,500 calories “in the bank” the Friday morning we left, and had used that up and 3,500 more by the following Tuesday.  I whittled that down slowly and finished the month with a deficit just under 2,000 calories.  That means that by one measure, I really didn’t hit my weight loss goal of 10 pounds – a more realistic measure would be the 9.4 pounds of theoretical weight loss.  So I got lucky on weigh-in day to the tune of .6 pounds!

I was pretty determined and obsessed about the diet as I saw how well it worked, and how much it seemed to use the same principles I use as an entrepreneur to grow a new business.  The last day of the month, when I weighed 195 for the second day in a row, I was tempted to declare victory and quickly report on the results.  I knew that the 195 was due to luck and for sure I would gain a pound or two.  God’s way of keeping me humble.  At that point I had accumulated 928 miles of bike riding.  I had been on track to break 1,000 miles all month, and then came the 4 day getaway.  I even snuck in 25 miles the morning we left.  (The only way I managed the time that day was to be at my desk by 4:30 a.m. to crank away for a good 4 hours before breakfast and the ride).  Three full days of no bike riding means that I have 28 days instead of 31 to reach 1,000 miles.  I would need to average 35.7 miles per day instead of 32.3 miles.  Clearly there were good reasons for missing the goal.

But, the weather was nice.  Low 70’s, low humidity.  Light NW breeze.  I had started work at 5:40 a.m. and managed a good 6 1/2 hours of sheer productivity by the noon hour.  So I said to myself “what the heck?  I’ll give it a try.”  I packed a lunch, filled up my Camelbak with water, forwarded the office line to my iPhone, and I set off.  First stop was the bank.  Sometimes one of my employees will ask me to deposit his paycheck right away.  This is a service I offer to family members until I figure out how to get the Direct Deposit working with my bank and QuickBooks Payroll.   I always get a kick out of going through the drive-through lanes on bicycle.

Second stop was lunch.  This was the day the Wall Street Journal published an article about large companies taking longer to pay their bills, but requiring payment from smaller companies more quickly.  “What a bunch of ass-holes!” was all I could think.  Don’t they realize that their cost of capital is much lower than ours?  The smart thing to do would be to do the opposite, and thereby lower the cost of doing business with them.  We would be happy to share the savings.

So – two hours in I had a grand total of 9 miles under my belt.  I had this slightly uneasy feeling that time might be a problem.  I had about 63 miles still to cover before it got dark.  I had not yet installed my new bike light set on the bike I was riding.  But I trudged on.  I decided to just do a straightforward 36 miles out and 36 miles back.  I took the Mount Vernon trail to where it meets up with the 4 mile run trail just south of National Airport.  That takes you to milepost “0″ of the W&OD trail (about 2 1/2 miles). Then I just needed to get to milepost 23 and turn around and come back.  The rest is history, of course.  I managed to clock 73 miles that day in over 6 hours of riding time.  I ate more than usual, but still managed to beat my daily goal of 1,130 calories burned in excess by about 800 that day.  And the next day – September 1st – after 6 hours of riding and good healthy eating – I weighed the same:  195.0 pounds.  What’s a brother gotta do to lose a pound or two?

Here are some charts that show what happened during the month:

  • Calories burned vs. consumed
  • Difference between Actual Weight and the theorectical weight
  • Bike miles ridden
  • Time spent exercising

 

Calories burned vs. consumed

Diet-Aug2009-Calories-Burned-vs-consumed

I averaged about 2,452 calories per day in food and drink.  I estimate about 20% of the calories were in the form of alcohol.  I calculated calories burned at an average of 3,518 per day based on my bike riding, and the occasional walk with the missus, and lawn mowing with the reel-type push mower.

 

Difference between Actual Weight and Theoretical weight

Diet-Aug2009-Diff-Act-vs-Theoretical

It was remarkable how closely the two measures tracked.  My actual weight was always within 2 or 3 pounds of the theoretical, and often within a pound or less.  I never went more than three days in a row with my actual weight still above the theoretical.  It always drifted back down.

 

Bike miles ridden

Diet-Aug2009-Miles-Ridden

This was not exactly a life of hard labor.  We have some of the nicest bike trails in the world here in the Washington, D.C. area.  I love riding outside.  I have a variety of rides to choose from depending on how much time I have, and the time of day.  I did 1,001.5 miles for the month, an average of 32.3 per day.   Some days were easier than others.  I like it best when I can break the ride up with lunch, or errands. At least 11 of the rides were in 90 degree heat.  It’s not that bad once you get going.  You make your own breeze.  You only get hot when you stop.  You just have to be sure to take a good supply of water.  There are lots of places to refill your water bottle or CamelBak all along the trails, but sometimes they do go out of order.  I figure on about one liter of water per hour of riding when it is hot.

Time spent exercising

Diet-Aug2009-Time-Spent-Exercising

I supplemented the bike rides with 6 walks averaging an hour a piece, and 6 sessions of lawn mowing.  I gave myself credit for the lawn mowing at the rate of 600 calories per hour based on the volume of sweat produced and the feeling of exhaustion afterwards.  I use a reel-type push mower, and I get a real good workout.  I have been doing it all summer, and think it has helped my arm strength.

 

Steady as she goes

Now, a week later, I am happy to report that I haven’t gained it all back.  I gave myself two days off (goal of 0 excess calories burned) and on one of those days ate and burned exactly the same number of calories (a piggish 3,094) without intentionally fudging the numbers.

I feel like the first time in my life I have control over my weight.   This morning I weighed 194.5, down 30 pounds since April 8th.  My T-Shirt size is down to L from XL.  I can wear shorts with a 36 inch waist, down from 40.  I’m about to go to the last notch on my belt – for the second time.  I found a BMI Calculator online (http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/) and found that my BMI is now 26.4, down from 30.5 when I started.  Over 30 is obese.  25 to 29.9  is merely overweight.  A weight for me of 180 with a BMI of 24.4 would be at the upper threshold of “normal weight.”  I will probably require intensive psychotherapy to stop from thinking of myself as fat.

I am trying to dial back the instensity this month, and then take advantage of some of the free time.  I’ve set a goal of 1 hour and 45 minutes a day of bike riding, which is about 20 to 21 miles a day for me.  I want to burn an excess of 500 calories a day which will result in a weight loss of 4.3 pounds per month.  I still want to make up the 2,000 calorie carryover from August.  I figure I can get down to 180 by the end of the year without a whole lot of stress, and then decide what to do from there.  I hope to follow up with a more detailed “How to” article about some of the mechanics of counting calories, and monthly reports on how it goes.

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Posted in Bike Riding, SurvivalWare Diet | No Comments »

Entrepreneur’s Diet: Report Card for Week 1

Monday, August 10th, 2009

This is my blog, so I get to choose the reporting schedule.  That this first report comes on a day my actual measured weight is in line with my theoretical weight is purely coincidental.

I think this thing really works. 

The parallels to running a business continue to hit home.  There’s all this uncertainty, just like in the daily life of an entrepreneur.  You really don’t know if or when any given deal will be closed.  You generally cannot predict accurately when someone you make  a sale to is going to fork over the cash (unless you have a cash only business).  Same with the weight loss program.  I don’t know if I really could burn 400 calories per hour of bike riding,  the closest estimate I could find at the time.  Maybe I will have better information in the future.  Same with the 2,300 calories per day burned by someone my age and sex living a sedentary lifestyle.  (Sorry for the bolding, I just wanted to increase readership of this paragraph).

There is the key assumption that 3,500 excess calories burned equates to losing a pound of fat.  I think I read it somewhere a long time ago – maybe when I was a kid and was on one of my various (and usally not terribly successful) diets.  Suppose it is really 2,500 or 5,000?

Finally there is the hassle of good record keeping: taking the time to count calories, and recording them by meal.  I use the Calorie King database to look up foods for which there is no nutritional label.  I’ve been measuring stuff like: how much cereal fits in my standard cereal bowl, how much milk I pour on it, and how much sugar is really contained in those two heaping teaspoons (turns out to be a tablespoon).

A lot of the measuring and weighing I just do once, and can then use the information over and over.  A lot of my meals, especially breakfast and lunch, are the same every day, or chosen from 3 or 4 variations.

The exception has been fresh fruit, which varies quite a bit in size from one shopping trip to the next.  And then stuff like cheddar cheese where the portion sizes are hard to equate with the standard serving size.  Who thought that an ounce of cheddar cheese could turn out to be so small?  

We eat a whole lot of fresh fruit – probably 3 to 5 servings every day.  (Laurie told me the FDA recommends 9 servings a day – but who in the world eats that much??).  I’ve been weighing fruit portions recently so I can equate “1 medium pear” from Calorie King with the amount of weight in what I consider to be a medium pear.  Bananas vary a lot in size – the one I had this morning was 3.2 oz, which Calorie King considers to be between extra small and small.  One nice thing about Calorie King is that it is real easy to change units and it updates instantly the total calories and other nutrients (3.2 oz of banana = 82  calories).

My wife Laurie and I have a running battle on what constitutes a small vs. large banana (she prefers the small ones).  I am sure it will drive her absolutely nuts if I start measuring the weight of the bananas to monitor whether I have purchased the latest bunch according to a pre-agreed upon definition of what constitutes a small banana.  This whole food weighing thing is going to be more fun than I thought.

So here are the results of the first 9 days of August.  I was out of town (and without my scales) on August 1st, so I am using 205 as the starting weight, which is halfway between 207.5 on July 30th and 202.5 on August 3rd. 

We drove back to Alexandria from Va. Beach on August 2nd. As a result, I could squeeze in just a short 9 mile ride before we left.  I’ve been riding like a madman ever since, and even did 54 miles yesterday.  So calories burned (Sales) have been above plan, month to date.  Calories consumed (Expenses) have also been above plan, but by a little less than calories burned.  For the first 9 days of the month in total, the cumulative excess of calories burned (Profit) is 10,796.  I did this while averaging 3 hours and 8 minutes a day of bike riding, plus eating and drinking 2,457 calories a day.   I found that including 3 or 4 shots of bourbon in my planned diet (mixed with diet ginger ale of course – 100 calories a pop) made it a whole lot easier to keep to the plan.

My goal, based on wanting to lose 10 pounds for the month, was a cumulative excess (Month to Date Profit) of 10,170 calories for this period of time.  My theoritical weight loss is 3.1 pounds in total.  My actual weight (Total Debt) is down 4 pounds (Cash Flow) to 201 this morning.  You guessed it: my goal is to earn a lot of profit, create positive cash flow, and pay down debt.  All while having fun.

  Energy Food Eaten Excess Cumulative Cumulative Cumulative
  Ouput Calories Cal. Burned Excess Goal Act vs Goal
8/1/2009 3,426 2,540 886 886 1,130 (244)
8/2/2009 2,633 2,200 433 1,319 2,260 (941)
8/3/2009 3,707 2,100 1,607 2,926 3,390 (464)
8/4/2009 3,455 2,630 825 3,751 4,520 (769)
8/5/2009 3,547 2,334 1,213 4,964 5,650 (686)
8/6/2009 3,665 2,793 872 5,836 6,780 (944)
8/7/2009 4,053 2,614 1,439 7,276 7,910 (634)
8/8/2009 3,971 2,252 1,719 8,995 9,040 (45)
8/9/2009 4,448 2,647 1,801 10,796 10,170 626
             
Legend for Entrepreneurs:        
  Sales Expenses Daily Profit Month to Date MTD Profit  
        (MTD) Profit Goal  

 

Here is a sanity check to see if my actual weight loss is tracking the theoretical weight loss based on calories eaten and calories burned:

  Cumulative Estimated Estimated Actual Actual vs Actual Weight Cumulative
  Excess Weight Loss Weight Weight Estimate Loss Weight Loss
8/1/2009 886 0.3 205.0 205 0.0 1.0 1.0
8/2/2009 1,319 0.4 204.7 204 (0.7) 1.5 2.5
8/3/2009 2,926 0.8 204.6 202.5 (2.1) 0.0 2.5
8/4/2009 3,751 1.1 204.2 202.5 (1.7) (3.0) (0.5)
8/5/2009 4,964 1.4 203.9 205.5 1.6 2.0 1.5
8/6/2009 5,836 1.7 203.6 203.5 (0.1) (0.5) 1.0
8/7/2009 7,276 2.1 203.3 204 0.7 (2.0) (1.0)
8/8/2009 8,995 2.6 202.9 206 3.1 3.0 2.0
8/9/2009 10,796 3.1 202.4 203 0.6 2.0 4.0
      201.9 201 (0.9)    
               
Legend for Entrepreneurs:          
               
  Month to Date Estimated Estimated Actual Should be  Cash Flow Cumulative
  (MTD) Profit Debt Debt Debt close to    Cash Flow
    Reduction Balance Balance zero  over    
        (due to Cash Flow  time.    
        timing differences)      
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Tags: Calorie King, Diet, Entrepreneur's Diet, weight loss program
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Weight Loss Program for Entrepreneurs

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

In an earlier post (July 11th) I talked about my Facebook diet and how it enabled me to lose 15 pounds in 90 days.   In the last paragraph,  I went on record:  “My plan now is to try to stay steady for the rest of this month, and then do a major push in August to get below 200.”

It is now August 2nd, and I did manage to stay steady the rest of July.  My last weigh-in on July 30th had me at 207.5, about two pounds less that the July 11th posting.    My goal for August is to lose 10 pounds, and get below 200 for the first time in 30 or 35 years.  Also, I have a chance to weigh less than my brother Hank (198.5 recently) for the first time since I was about 4 and he was 6.  Unfortunately, he just joined a gym and may represent a moving target.  Nothing like the additional motivation from sibling rivalry.

I’ve decided that managing a weight loss program is a lot like running a business,  which is why I am calling this a weight loss program for entrepreneurs.  Amidst a lot of uncertainty, I tried experimenting to see what would work, and what would not.  This is something you are constantly doing when you start and run a business. 

I tried to understand better what I was capable of.  I kept good records so that I could come back and analyze performance over an extended period of time.  It helps to distance yourself from the daily and weekly swings in weight, and take a longer view.  Same thing with a business:  you can’t get too excited over daily swings in sales, but you sure as hell better understand the monthly trends so that you can size the business appropriately.  I feel like I have a good idea now of what is possible. 

Continuing the analogy, I’ve made some investments to improve my performance in the future.  I investigated nutritional databases and found a good one to help me get a better handle on my “expenses” – i.e. the colorie content of the food that I eat  (www.calorieking.com).  I bought a food scale so that I can be even more precise when I need to.  I’ve kept a food diary the last 10 days to see if it is practical to do.  

Finally, I made some projections of future calories burned and calories consumed, to see what it would take to reach my target of losing 10 pounds in 30 days.  I am putting a system in place to monitor actual performance against projections.  Now, I just have the minor detail of actually executing the plan.  This blog and Facebook will have a major role in that.  Making the measures visible and public and powerful motivators.

 Starting on Tuesday, August 4th,  I plan to publish my weight each day on Facebook.  I will supplement that with a detailed blog entry specifying the exercise for the day and estimated calories burned, as well as a log of food that I eat, and the estimated colories consumed.

Based on my age, weight, and gender (55, 207.5, Male), I burn about 2300 calories a day with a sedentary lifestyle.  According to CalorieKing, I burn up about 400 calories  an hour when cycling.  I’ve read that a pound of fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories.  So here’s my analysis and plan:

  • I need to burn 35,000 calories above and beyond what I consume for the month in order to lose 10 pounds.  That’s about 1,130 per day over 31 days.
  • I feel like with some concerted effort, and the flexibility I have from being my own boss, I will be able to do 3 hours of day of cycling.  That equates to 1,200 calories per day.
  • This means that I can eat 3,500 calories a day to stay steady (2,300 + 1,200).
  • To achieve my 10 pound goal for the month, I can eat 2,370 calories a day (3,500 minus 1,130)

Wish me luck!

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Tags: entrepreneur, SurvivalWare Diet, weight loss program
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FaceBook Diet – 15 pounds lost in the first 90 Days

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

As my son points out repeatedly, this is not actually a diet, but rather a weight loss program.  But the title is more catchy with the word “Diet”, which could easily add a couple of zeroes to the size of my book advance when I am finally discovered.

Here’s the Rusty Luhring weight loss program simply put:

Post your weight on FaceBook every day for 30 days.  Eat less and/or healthier than you’ve been eating recently.  Exercise more.  Adjust dietary and exercise habits after 30 days, and re-up.

Eat whatever you want.  Just remember that every day, you must post your weight for all your friends and family to see on FaceBook.  I found that it kept my mind on the “diet” all day, and helped me make better decisions about food intake and exercise.

I did this for the last 90 days, starting on April 8th, 2009.  I lost 15 pounds.  I did a lot of bike riding.  My weight was volatile.  I decided that counting calories was too much of a pain, so I didn’t.  I drank too much alcohol.  I traveled three times during that period – during which I couldn’t weigh myself – and found that I lost weight during each trip.  One included a 9 day trip to Rotterdam where I stayed in a hotel that charged 18 Euros (around $25) for breakfast.  I lost 5 1/2 pounds during that trip, cheapskate that I am.

The premise is that once you give visibility to something – a performance measure, or a goal – it keeps your attention focused on improving the measure or attaining the goal.  When you back that up with commitment – by actually going public with your daily performance – good things happen.  The FaceBook community is a great place to make it happen, because you have friends and family urging you on, telling you to keep it up, even when the numbers are going in the wrong direction.

In the interest of full disclosure, this is not a painless diet. It’s a pain in the butt trying to make your weight posting sound interesting or anything but self-absorbed.  My brother Hank asked me if I could post the number of miles I ride on my bike each day, so I started doing that mid-way through the 90 days.  Sometimes I upload a photo taken during my bike ride to try to make it less burdensome on the reader. 

Hank also suggested I try abstaining from alcohol for a week, and see what impact that might have.  Older brothers can be a pain in the butt, too.  I’m trying to make this an honest analysis, and yes abstaining from alcohol made it “easy” to lose weight.  Hey – I was just thrilled that I could stop drinking completely for 10 days.  So I can say to myself, “I am not a total addict.”  But I still like the stuff.  And after 10 days of abstention in mid-April, I decided make alcohol part of my daily nutrition.

This first 90 days was a time of experimenting and adjusting.  I created a few charts in SurvivalWare to show what happened. 

Here is a look at my daily weight:
Rusty Luhring's daily weight: April 12, 2009 to July 10, 2009

Rusty Luhring's daily weight: April 12, 2009 to July 10, 2009

 Here’s a look at the last 30 days.  The blue line is the day by day weight.  The green line is a 7 day moving average.

Rusty Luhring's daily weight and 7 day moving average. 30 days to July 10, 2009

Rusty Luhring's daily weight and 7 day moving average. 30 days to July 10, 2009

It was interesting to look at the change from day to day.  In the last 30 days, I showed a weight GAIN on 10 days, a weight LOSS on 13 days, and stayed the same the rest.  The lesson here is: don’t get discouraged by the gains or too excited by the losses.   Just keep at it over a long period of time.

Rusty Luhring's daily weight change, last 30 days to July 10, 2009

Rusty Luhring's daily weight change, last 30 days to July 10, 2009

 I tend to push up the bike riding when I feel like the weight is going in the wrong direction.  It doesn’t necessarily help right away, but sure does over time.  Here’s the riding log from the last 30 days.  My seven day average is just above 30.

Rusty Luhring's bike riding log for last 30 days, to July 10, 2009.

Rusty Luhring's bike riding log for last 30 days, to July 10, 2009.

 

 My plan now is to try to stay steady for the rest of this month, and then do a major push in August to get below 200.  When I get below 200 pounds, it will be the first time since high school.  I’ll drink to that!

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