Rusty's Blog

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.

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: