Greg's Weight Loss Blog

A month ago I wrote about how I quit measuring foods and counting calories. It was an experiment and, as David put it, the “next step to being healthy being a normal thing”. The big question was would I be able to do it? Did I gain the knowledge and experience in 7 months to let go off the safety net and try to maintain my weight on my own? I’m here to report that I think I did!

Eating healthy and making good choices became second nature to me by now. Just because I quit counting the calories it did not mean I quit watching what I’ve been putting in my mouth. I’m still eating the same foods in the same amounts as I have been in the past I just do it without the help of my kitchen scale and without jotting down everything into my food diary. I still keep a mental diary of my daily intake and I’m still counting calories in my head. But it’s a lot more manageable than running to the computer after each meal to make sure the calories are still in order.

I’m also allowing myself small indulgences and I no longer feel utter remorse if I eat a cookie or devour a piece of cake every now and again. They fit into my lifestyle and they fit into my caloric budget as you can tell from my weight chart for the past month.

As you can see my weight has been fluctuating a bit over the past month with two notable spikes. The first one happened on the weekend of my half marathon and I think it had to do with hydration more than anything. I lost a lot of water during the race and I probably drank more than my fair share of water after the race to replenish. I also carb loaded for the race which meant more pasta than I would usually eat. The second surge in weigh was on 4th of July weekend. That weekend involved some festive eating with salty snacks at a friend’s place which also lends itself to excess water intake. But that very same weekend I also ran a total of 20 miles in two runs burning over 2,000 calories so everything went back to normal after that.

If you look at the overall trend of the red line it’s still downward. I’m happy about that even though my wife is not. She thinks I’m about 10 lbs too light at the moment and I should not only quit “dieting” I should start eating more to gain 10 lbs back. Needless to say I have no intentions of quitting my “diet” and I will not gain any weight back. My averaged weight on 6/17/10 was 166.6 lbs (75.6 kg) and today it’s 164.8 lbs (74.7 kg). I have lost 1.8 lbs (0.8 kg) in a month without even trying and without counting calories or measuring food with a scale. I’m officially under my initial target weight that I set when I started my transformation which was 165 lbs (74.8 kg). Having reached this goal now I’m onto the next one which is single digit body fat. I have checked my fat percentage with a 3 point caliper measurement and I’m at 11.8% at the moment. I know I’ll get there and I’m in no real hurry to achieve it.

This week I’m flying solo. I have been tracking my calories for over 230 days. I wrote down every single food item I have consumed and every single calorie that made it into my mouth. This is a very tedious process and aggravates the hell out of my wife when I get up from the dinner table to rush to the computer to enter the grams of rice I spooned over to my plate and the amount of vegetables that I placed next to it. But I have been doing it because it worked.

If I look at my progress for the past 7 months I can safely say that a large portion of my success can be attributed to my very diligent calorie tracking and sticking with the plan without deviation. Every week my weight loss matched my expected loss based on the amount of calories I took in and the amount of calories I burned via exercise. Everything worked like clockwork. But I had to ask myself this question: “Do I want to count every single calorie for the rest of my life to maintain my healthy physique?” And the andwer to this question is “No, I don’t!”

So this week I have decided to ditch the kitchen scale and Cron-o-Meter and start winging it. I can’t be sure just yet how well this new approach is going to work for me but I sure hope it’ll be a success as I want to live my life as a normal person not someone with a severe OCD who needs to write down every single calorie. This week might not have been the perfect week to go without my trusty measuring system as my mileage will be pretty low this week due to taking two rest days for pre-race taper but if I can’t do it now then I need to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate just what it is that I’m doing wrong.

So far I have confidence in myself, I’m not doing anything unusual or out of the ordinary and I’m still counting calories in my mind and I’m still trying to maintain my 2,300 calorie diet in my head. Whether I’m succeeding or failing at it will be revealed in a couple of weeks.

I’ve been writing a lot about my current and future plans and my transformation but what I haven’t shared much of is the past. My story to obesity is not the usual one, or at least not in the sense what I would consider usual. It certainly isn’t the standard “I’ve been overweight/obese all my life and finally I had this big revelation and decided to turn my life around at age 33″.

My mom and sister

Growing up I was never fat. I was actually downright skinny when I was a young boy. My sister on the other hand was always the “chubby one”. I grew up in a very nice family with loving parents and a great younger sister. We sure had our fights and I was usually the one who got punished for them as I was the older one, but all in all I had a really nice childhood. My sister wasn’t the only one who suffered with their weight in my family. My mom has always been on the heavy side and she blamed it on her upbringing. Her grandmother and single parent mom always kept encouraging her to be plump “just in case you catch a disease you’ll have plenty of reserves”. This was their mentality and it certainly had shown on my mom. She definitely had been obese for as long as I could remember.

Me and my sister

As I was growing up I have witnessed my mom’s struggle with weight and her constant goal of trying to get slimmer and lose it all. She even went to “fat camp” where they put her on a zero calorie diet for several weeks to try to get her to lose her weight. And she did lose some, as to be expected, but she gained it all back once she came back home. It was a constant, never ending battle for her. I have also witnessed my sister’s struggles with her weight and the constant nagging and denial of sweets and snacks from my parents that came with her being overweight. I was clearly the lucky one. I inherited my dad’s “skinny genes” while my poor sister was stuck with my mom’s “fat genes”. But not only I inherited the “skinny genes” I also got a good dose of my dad’s running genes.

My dad was a runner. He went to college to earn his degree in cartography and civil engineering which naturally lent itself to be on the college team of foot orienteering. If you don’t know what foot orienteering is, don’t worry, I actually had to look up the English term myself as me being born and raised in Hungary it’s not a term I have actually learned or used in English, ever. Think of it as cross country running and map reading at the same time. You have to navigate and visit several points through terrain with nothing but a topography map and a compass. First to visit all points wins the race. The sport started in Norway and it is apparently a lot more popular in Europe than in the US but I just checked and there are several local orienteering events even where I live. Having said all this, my dad did compete at college level and he did OK.

Mom pinning the bib on my friend

For me, running started when I was 10 years old. I had a friend who was training at a sport school three times a week. I was never really good at any of the team sports at school and I thought I would go with him to training and see how I liked running. It turned out that I actually enjoyed running very much. I liked it enough that what started out as a Monday, Wednesday, Friday activity in the afternoons has turned into a five times a week training within a year.

On my way to victory

By the third year into my running career I was one of the top runners in the group and I have moved from my regular junior high school to a special magnet school for athletic talent. I was swimming three times a week before school and ran on the track four to five times while ran cross country in the woods once a week. I was clearly on my way to becoming an elite athlete. I won numerous track meets and cross country events on the regional level and I was national age group champion in 4,500 meter cross country amongst 13-14 year old boys in Hungary. I have clocked 9:26 on track for 3,000 meters (5:04/mile pace for 1.86 miles) and my personal best in 10,000 meter road racing was 35:14 at age 13.

So what happened? I got tired. I burned out. By the time I entered high school I felt like I was done with running. School was taking a toll on me, I went to another magnet school, a bilingual high school where I had to learn English and my classes were taught in both English and Hungarian. I just couldn’t take running any more so I quit. And I never ran another mile unless my life depended on it for almost 20 years. The one thing that I never changed though were my eating habits.

I thought I was still growing and burning calories just like I did when I was running. I was going through chocolate and pizza like it was nobody’s business. I slowly but surely started to gain weight. Before I knew it I was getting chubby. My classmates started to make fun of me even though I wasn’t that fat. I was overweight from my lean mean running machine look but by today’s standards I was barely overweight on the BMI scale. But when you come from 140 lbs, 175 lbs starts to look pretty hefty. The last time I wore size 31″ waist pants, the size I’m currently wearing, were freshman year of high school.

If I was on The Biggest Loser Jillian would have a field day with the fact that my mom passed away when I turned 15. She would blame my obesity and overeating on the fact that my mom died. Mom mom had breast cancer and she passed away at age 39. I really don’t think her passing had anything to do with my obesity. I simply stopped exercising and kept eating the same way I used to. But my mom’s death had a lot to do with the fact that I finally turned my life around. The closer I was getting to age 39 the more I started thinking about how short life is and how much more I wanted to do in life and how living the unhealthy way in an obese body would not let it happen. So while I wouldn’t attribute my obesity to “fat genes” inherited from my mom I certainly credit her death as partially the reason why I started my transformation. As for my sister, she has turned her life around about 14 years ago when she finally became fit and she has been the skinny one ever since while I became the family fatty.

But things are turning around once again. I’m on my way to regaining, hopefully, most of my genetic given speed and running ability while losing all the excess weight while my sister is getting bigger and bigger by the minute. I expect that by the time I visit her in August she’ll be bigger than me. You might wonder why would anyone say such a cruel thing about their sister. But this time it’s a good thing as she’s pregnant and expecting a baby at the end of September .

So there you have it, my secret running past. While I certainly have lived the life of a couch potato for the past 19 years I certainly was blessed with some great running genes that are hopefully helping my new, leaner, fitter me to try to achieve my goal of running a Boston Qualifying marathon time in October.

This is probably the last installment of my weekly updates. My weight has not moved much this week at all, I’m really coming in for a smooth landing at around 166 lbs for now. I lost 0.2 lbs this week which is practically nothing, but considering the amount of food that I had been eating I think it’s reasonable. As you can see I didn’t log Friday’s diet. I went to a farewell party for a co-worker who relocated to another city and there was a lot of festive eating involved. They served chili, which my itself is actually a great meal but I ate a couple too many lemon squares and brownies that night. So I just said, screw it, I’m not even going to try to estimate the damage. It’s a good thing that the next morning I went and ran 10.6 miles and burned 1,300 calories in the process.

I did manage to lift weights twice this week which is a first in a really long time. I felt fine with the weights but I definitely need to get back into the rhythm and keep going on a regular basis.

My running was great this week. I clocked 34.6 miles (55.6 km) this week which is not as much as I have been running lately but it was the first week of my marathon training plan so it was supposed to be easy. I’m actually looking forward ramping up the mileage a bit, the week just seemed pretty easy.

All in all it was a solid week with a bit of wondering off the right path in the eating department but it wasn’t anything that I can’t fix.

I’ve been writing about my goals and how I’m still not quite there yet but I haven’t really written much about my long term goals or where I’m going with this running thing. Sure, I have logged some decent mileage since I have started running in January and sure, I have improved my running greatly over the last 5 months. But how did I do it and more importantly why did I do it and even more importantly, what’s next?

My first and original goal, in terms of running, was to finish a 10K race. But I didn’t just want to finish it, I wanted to be in the best possible shape I possibly could by then. Considering how difficult it felt to even run three two plus one miles on my first run the best possible shape wasn’t going to be something all that stellar. But I set out to run the Cowtown Marathon’s 10K race. I made that goal so it would give me a reason to run and a reason to train. This goal also required me to follow a plan.

Thanks to my co-worker, an avid runer, marathoner and fellow weight loser, I found Hal Higdon’s website. Hal’s an older guy in his late 70s who has completed over 110 marathons in his lifetime and authored several books on the subject of running and marathons. His website provides an abundance of information and a multitude of free training plans from 5K races all the way to marathons for runners at all abilities and fitness levels. I decided to go with his Intermediate 10K training plan and started it on Week 2.

By Week 4 I ran my very first race, a 5K that the plan has called for. Shortly after the race I got injured due to a bum knee that I should have let to heal but I overcompensated and developed tendinitis of my right foot instead. It forced me to quit running for a week and only left me with two more weeks before the big 10K race.

8 Week 10K Intermediate + 12 Week Spring Advanced weekly summary

After my first 10K race I needed a new goal and a new plan. I needed a goal to keep me motivated and I need a new plan to keep me on track. So I have decided that I will run a marathon. Running a marathon and finishing a marathon are two different things. Some people just want to finish one, get across the finish line, get the beer and the finisher’s medal so they can say they have done it. If you have been following me for a while you would know that this is not me. I don’t like to do things half assed. I like to do them right. This meant I couldn’t just point at the calendar and pick a marathon in the next couple of weeks and make a run for it. No sir! I knew that I would have to train and be in top shape to be able to run it in a way that I would want to run it.

Most marathon plans are 16-20 weeks long. So it’s not only the 26.2 miles that’s a marathon, the length of training that gets you to the start line is a marathon of a training session itself. You can’t just wake up one morning, roll out of bed and walk up to the start line and expect to perform well. Sure, some might pride themselves in doing a “no training marathon” but I wanted to do it the right way. It meant that I would have to look at marathons in the June/July time frame. Let me remind you that I live in Texas. There just aren’t a whole lot of races let alone marathons in June/July in Texas. And while I was committed to the plan of running a marathon I was not committed enough to travel out of state for one. So that left me with no option but to look for a fall marathon.

I found one in Tyler, Texas, the Tyler Rose Marathon on 10/10/10, the same day there is a small race in Chicago known as the Bank Of America Chicago Marathon. So I have decided that while I would not travel to Chicago, I would most certainly drive 3 hours to get to Tyler Texas for a small and cozy inaugural marathon. But since the Tyler marathon is not until October it left me with 30 weeks of training left. What was I supposed to do with all that time, the marathon training was only going to take 18 weeks?

Lucky for me, Hal Higdon also has a 12 week plan that he calls the 12 week advanced spring training plan. This plan called for numerous 5K and 10K races along the way and this is what I had been following for the past 12 weeks more or less. I have ran three 5K and three 10K races that were on the plan and I have reported from every single one of them. The end of the plan got kind of messed up for me due to race scheduling and timing so i kind of finished the plan a week early which left me with nothing but relaxing easy runs for the last week. Ironically I have logged the most miles in a week last week on this easy week.

So now that I have finished my spring training, I have started working on my marathon plan this week. I will be following Hal Higdon’s Advanced II marathon plan for the next 18 weeks and I should be in top shape by the time I’m going to toe the line in Tyler, Texas on a hopefully cold fall morning in October.

If you have read this far I will also tell you that my goal is not only to run a marathon. My goal is to run a marathon and finish it with a Boston Qualifying time of 3:10:59 or less. So there you have it. My new plan is to follow the 18 week marathon plan and finish with a sub 3 hour 10 minute marathon in October. I have started my fat to fit transformation on 10/25/09 and I’m planning to BQ (Boston Qualify) on 10/10/10. I call this my C2BQ plan. Why C2BQ? There is a plan called C25K which means “Couch to 5K” and it’s supposed to help people to get up and start running and it gets them from being a couch potato to running a 5K in 9 weeks. My plan is the Couch to Boston Qualify in a year plan. I’m 7 months into it and I have another 18 weeks to go.

Since I will be concentrating on my running throughout the summer and my weight is sitting at a comfortable 165 lbs I will probably not worry so much about shedding the last few pounds but I’m sure losing them will be a side effect of my vigorous running regime.

It’s been over seven months since I have started this journey and I have been tweaking my transformation and modifying my plan along the way to get to where I am today. This week’s update also brings some changes.

1) I am no longer going to track waist size. My waist hasn’t changed a bit in the last 3 weeks. I’m still measuring 33″ (84 cm) around the navel and I’m wearing size 31 waist pants that are now getting a bit lose. But I think my waist size is stabilizing so there is really no point in charting it any more.

2) I am no longer going to track body fat percentage and lean body mass. Unfortunately my trusty scale that I had been using all along is now giving me grief. It actually has been giving me grief for the past two weeks where it puts up “Err.” instead of giving me an estimated body fat percentage. It is still accurately measures my body weight but I just can’t rely on the body fat percentage numbers any more. This morning it told me I’m 23% body fat which is clearly ridiculous. If I’m over 13% I’d be very surprised. Since I no longer have an accurate, not that it has been all that accurate lately, method to measure body fat I will no longer measure it or post the data as it would be mostly wrong. I know where I’m heading and I know that I’ll see it when I get there. Until then there is really no need to measure it with an estimate that is not right.

3) The daily calorie chart might show blanks. As you can see there is no chart for last Monday in the calorie chart. The reason being is that I simply stopped counting calories for the bigger part of the day. I ate pretty good but I just couldn’t get myself to log everything and measure every single potato chip that I consumed by the poolside on Memorial Day. So there might be days from now on when calories won’t get counted nor posted. I still feel like I need to track my calories if I want to shed the last couple of pounds but if I skip for a day it’s not like I would gain it all back so I will allow myself cheat days or days where I just don’t track.

With all these changes in effect my week still wrapped up nicely. I have lost 1lbs (0.4 kg) on the rolling average scale which I’m happy about. Average caloric intake was significantly higher this week than any other previous weeks. Not including Monday, I have averaged 2,644 calories per day with 141 grams of protein. The interesting thing about these two numbers is that 2,644 calories sounds like a ton of food but when you put it in perspective with respect to the amount of exercising I have done it’s not bad. The other interesting thing is that while i used to eat 40 grams of protein supplements daily before to achieve 140 grams of daily protein at the beginning of my diet, now I’m struggling to keep it under 140 grams without eating anything but whole foods. I love meat and I have no problem with keeping protein at a high level. It’s actually a bit too high for me with all the running, I should be eating a bit more carbohydrates instead. Regardless, it was a good week in terms of eating. It’s quite amazing that I had 800 calories more per day this week than I had when I was in the beginning phase of my transformation and ate 1,800 calories a day.

I don’t feel like talking about strength training this week as it has been non-existent. I really need to quit socializing at lunch and head for the gym instead. I’m also thinking about buying a pull-up bar for home so I can just crank out my upper body workout at home without the gym if I need it.

I have been concentrating on my running exclusively this week. I have broke 600 miles ran for the year and I also broke 45 miles ran for the week, the most I’ve done in a single week. I actually ran 45.3 miles (73 km) this week and I feel fantastic about it. I have also started tracking my mileage and workouts on dailymile.com. It’s another venue for me to find active runners in my community and for others to keep tabs on my workouts. I still have the lot more technical runs.gregstransformation.com database running which not only lists my runs but it shows my logged data for every run. I also had my first group run this week which was great! I really enjoyed running with the pack on the weekend and I will do a lot more of that in the future.

I’m very pleased with the way my week turned out, a couple more of these and I’m right where I want to be!

This week has come to an end and I had been too busy to post up the update on time. So what have I been busy with? Mostly running and family stuff.

Eating was spot on again, I really don’t know what else to say about it any more. Food is a non-issue for me at this point. I think 7 months is definitely enough to build new eating habits. I’m certainly not dieting any more, it does not feel like a diet. It feels just normal eating. I only ate above my 2,400 calorie allocation one day and I ran 13.1 miles that day and burned 1,500 calories in the process. So eating a whopping 2,700 calories that day were more than justified. Thanks to that day I have averaged 2,446 calories for the week as my daily intake. Protein was at 131 grams, which is a bit more than I’d like but unlike most people who have problems with not eating enough protein, I’m quite the opposite and I tend to eat quite a good amount of protein. And I eat all this without protein shakes. I don’t remember the last time I had a protein shake.

Running has been great this week. If you look at the chart you will see that I had two days where I didn’t run and I only had a measly 2 miles on Sunday. This is because of my race schedules. I had a race on Saturday and I ran a really fast 13.1 mile run on Wednesday so I needed two days to rest and get my legs ready for the 5K race. On Sunday I only ran 2 miles to keep my legs moving and ready for the next race on Monday. So I only ran 31.4 miles this week which is much lower than last week but it is actually still a pretty good mileage and it is a lot of hard miles. This weeks mileage was about quality vs. quantity. Calorie wise I have burned 3,464 calories with the running this week.

I skipped the gym altogether this week. I performed no strength training. I feel bad about it but I just couldn’t find the time or motivation to go.

Weigh loss has been steady this week, my rolling average indicates a 1.2 lbs (0.6 kg) drop for the week which would mean my BMR is 2,551 calories. It is higher than before so I’m either not counting all my calories burned or I’m counting too many calories for intake. This is quite the opposite problem than what most people make when they start counting calories. They tend to underestimate the calories in and overestimate how much they burn. It’s nice to have this problem for myself.

Overall I’m really pleased with the way the week went, I think it was a great week. A couple more is all it will take to get to my target!

I’ve been working on my transformation for 30 weeks now and I think I can conclude that I just had another successful week.

Eating is really on auto pilot at this point. I don’t think a whole lot about what to eat, how to it, how much to eat. It really comes pretty darn naturally now. This weekend We went to the Chinese buffet and I just naturally gravitate towards the green bean stir-fry, the broccoli beef and the steamed rice while before I’d fill up on sweet and sour chicken with fried rice, a couple of cheese won-tons and egg rolls. Granted I ate 1,100 calories worth of food in one sitting at buffet but I was stuffed afterward. I could not have eaten another bite even if I wanted to.

Now you might think that 1,100 calories in one sitting is excessive. And I would agree with you. I certainly don’t do it every day. But Sunday I ran 11 miles in the morning and burned 1,200 calories. Then I went and rode the same 11 miles and then some with my family on a bike burning another 600 calories. So Even with the 1,100 calorie dinner and close to 3,100 calorie daily intake I was still in a severe caloric deficit for the day. This is the beauty of diet and exercise working in harmony. When you put in the amount of exercise I put in you can get away with eating like a crazy pig every once in a while. But what’s still beautiful about those 3,100 calories today is that they were extremely well balanced: 20% protein (152 grams), 58% carbohydrate and only 23% fat. On a regular day I actually find it quite difficult to eat 2,300 calories, I have to resort to making two servings of oatmeal at 9:00PM just to get in my daily calories. Once I stop my weight loss I’ll have an even harder time to stuff my face with 2,700+ calories a day on average.

In terms of numbers, I have averaged 2,438 calories a day which is mainly due to the well justified 3,100 calorie Sunday. I have averaged 128 grams of protein a day which is a bit more than I need but nothing extreme, I’m gladly taking those numbers.

Strength training is still a struggle. I did put in one exercise on Wednesday but I had to skip Friday again as I had to take my son to soccer right after work which left me no time to go to the gym. I just really need to quit eating out so much and trying to knock out the gym at lunch time. I sound like a broken record with this statement though. Maybe I should actually do it instead of just talking about it.

Running was phenomenal this week! I broke another record, I ran over 40 miles (65 km) in a week for the first time! I actually had to adjust the scale on the chart to fit all this mileage. I also ran my longest run ever with 11 miles this weekend which felt fantastic. And to top it all off I ran a personal best in a 5K race on Saturday morning with a 19:05 time. More on that later. All in all I have burned a whopping 5,149 calories doing running and that one 12 mile outing with the bike on Sunday. That’s a lot of calories!

So based on the calories in vs. calories out where do I stand in terms of weight? The rolling average indicates that I have lost another 1.4 lbs (0.6 kg) this week which is right where I want to be. 1.4 lbs of fat equals 4,900 calories which means that my BMR is 2,402 calories. It means that I have been eating pretty darn close to that maintenance, within 35 calories of it and I have generated all of my weight loss with the exercise that I had put in. It means if I were to quit running today and I would stick with a 2,400 calorie diet I would be able to maintain my current physique. But we all know that I’m not quitting the running and I’m not stopping with the weight loss either until I see some abs.

Well, here goes another week. The name of the game this week was getting back to a slow weight loss after last week’s horrendous weekend cake gluttony. I think I have succeeded in my goal.

I have eaten significantly more this week than any other week before, not counting last week’s 3 day weekend binge. But overall my days have been hovering around the 2,400 calorie mark instead of the 2,300 calorie mark where I would have liked them to be. I had some hard running days and I just felt the urge to eat more and more. Remember, 2,400 calories a day is still under maintenance for me with all the running I’m doing. I have averaged 2,467 calories a day thanks to the 1,500 calorie dinner on Saturday at Macaroni Grill that contained my all time favorites; Penne Rusctica and their rosemary peasant bread. Those 1,500 calories made me clock in at over 3,00 calories for the day. But quite honestly, I didn’t care. I knew that I have burned close to 900 calories that morning while running a 10K and I was going to burn another 1,000 calories the next day running a 7+ mile long run. So even at 3,000 calories for that day I was still in caloric deficit overall.

I seem to be only hitting the gym once a week now, I really need to get better about making it in there twice. the problem is clearly that I prefer to play spades or go out for lunch on my lunch break and when 5 o’clock hits I just want to get the hell out and come home instead of sticking around for another 30 minutes to put my strength training in. Something will have to change. I either have to give up the social aspect of my lunch breaks or just tough it out after work and do my strength training then.

Running was fine this week. It was a race week with a 10K race on Saturday so the mileage was lower than last week’s training, but I still put in 30.9 miles (just shy of 50 km). I had a solid interval session on Tuesday, a good tempo run on Thursday, a 10K race on Saturday and a 7.6 mile run on Sunday. I also ran 3-3 miles of recovery on Monday and Wednesday. I have burned a total of 3,629 calories this week for a daily average of 518 calories.

Since my Intake was 2,467 and I have burned 518 calories with exercise my average net caloric intake for the week was 1,949 calories. Based on the rolling average of my weight I have lost exactly 1 lbs this week which is 500 calories a day. So my BMR is right around 2,449 calories which is still in the reasonable ballpark. I guess I’m doing what I set out to do which is eating my maintenance calories on average and only lose weight based on calories lost due to running.

All in all, I am very pleased with the week and my weight loss. I certainly need to keep a check on my food intake, I’m eating more and more and I need to know when to stop. I can’t eat 3,000 calories a day just yet.

I might be a bit belated on the update but I’m still keeping track of everything. Or should I say sadly I’m still keeping track of everything. This week was OK but it certainly could have been better and there was a lot of cake involved in this week’s nutritional saga.

As you can see in the chart my diet was flawless for the first four days, maybe a bit excessive on Thursday, but it is to be explained with the 3 slices of cheese pizza I ate at my son’s end of the season soccer party. And even with all that pizza I came in at a respectable caloric intake and if I account for my cardio for the day I was still in deficit. But for Friday, Saturday and Sunday I just have no excuses. I actually do, so let’s take it day by day.

I have already blogged about Friday. It was a day that started out good, even dinner was OK but I should not have let myself eat the two slices of cake (technically one was a piece of pie) and the cheese and chips that night. Saturday looks almost as bad as Friday, it is certainly over 3,000 calories for the day. So what happened?

It was my daughter’s birthday and we got her some awesome chocolate mousse cake that’s what happened. One slice of that stuff is a whopping 430 calories. But given that it was a family event I could not say no to the cake plus I quite honestly didn’t feel like saying no to it either. It was delicious and I felt it was so worth the calories. But how did I end up eating 3,000 calories when all I had was 430 calories worth of cake? Well Saturday we also happened to attend a wedding. My boss’ daughter was getting married and my wife and I were invited. So we went to the wedding and it was great. I’ve been to a couple of weddings and as far as weddings go this one was up at the top of the list of weddings I enjoyed.

It was a very casual atmosphere, the ceremony was outside and the weather could not have been any more perfect. It was a breezy low 70s (22 Celsius) day. The reception was also very casual and the food was pretty darn good. I stacked my plate high with veggies and roasted beef and turkey. So far so good. But I also ate a good amount of stuffed mushrooms which, I think were the highlights of the culinary experience at the wedding. They were splendid. I had some fruit as dessert but I also had to have some of the grooms’ cake, I kind of felt obligated to have a piece. So I did. So not only I had two pieces of cake on Friday, I did a repeat and had two pieces of cake on Saturday. The two slices of cake were over 660 calories so it’s safe to say had I not had them I would have been more than OK for the day.

Sunday I was certainly trying to maintain a more reasonable diet and I kind of did but we had friends visit us and we made some fantastic filet mignon for them with some shrimp on the grill to go with it. I used to enjoy going to steak houses but now I much rather make my own surf and turf. It was a very nice dinner with some quinoa, steamed zucchini and squash, and fennel puree as sides. And for dessert, you guessed it, I had another slice of the leftover chocolate mousse birthday cake. So even with the extra 430 calories that came in with the cake I still managed to eat a somewhat more reasonable 2,600 calories on Sunday.

So with all the “festive eating” , that is properly justified as you can see, you might wonder what my weight had been doing. Well, if I look at my rolling average I have lost 0.9 lbs. If I look at the scale on Sunday morning from a week prior I have gained 0.5 lbs. So the truth probably lies somewhere in between those two numbers. Even on the rolling average my weigh has been climbing for the past 3 days which was a first. So far every single weigh in was below my rolling average but this time the numbers have been constantly higher than my rolling average indicating that my rolling average was going in the wrong direction. I’m still happy with where I’m at, I know that this week was an unusual week with a trifecta of heavy days but the chances of such alignment of events and gatherings in the near future are slim. So eating was not the best, how about strength training?

Well I did go my lifts on Wednesday but I skipped Friday. I had to leave early from work for the company event so I couldn’t stay and put in my workout. I did do some push-ups, 25 of them, on Saturday morning but I would not consider it a workout. But if there is anything this week that I’m particularly proud of, it has to be my running.

I have logged 37.8 miles (60.8 km) with an average pace of 7:57 minute/miles. This is the most miles I had run in a week so far. I am extremely happy with my running. I had a solid 10x400m interval repeat on Tuesday that almost killed me in the 90+ (30+ C) weather. I also had a great 10.8 mile long run with my co-worker again on the same route we did last time and burned over 1,100 calories in the process. This is why I don’t feel all that bad about the cakes. All in all I have burned 4,194 calories with running this week.

Based on the average caloric intake of 2,654 calories and the average daily caloric expenditure of 599 calories my net daily calories were 2,055 calories. Combined that with the estimated weight loss of about 0.7 lbs and you get about 2,400 calories as my BMR. Certainly within the ballpark that I have been calculating all along.

So while the week was nowhere near perfect I still managed to generate a caloric deficit and lose weight even if it was at a slower pace than ever before. Had I not exercised at all this week I would have gained about 0.5 lbs this week instead.