The Promise Diet™ -- a Radical Approach to Permanent Weight Loss

Today at the Y they had free percent body fat tests using a small hand-held electrical device (not skin calipers in other words). They did mine twice and got 21.8% and 21.5%.

I also weighed 200 this morning, a pound less than my pre-Christmas weight, which is great since I had two fun gluttonous free days between then and now.

After I got home from the Y I looked up a chart on the web and found http://www.new-fitness.com/body_fat_measuring.html. It showed the following for a male my age:

16.1% -- Excellent
19.4% -- Good
22.6% -- Fair
26.1% -- Poor

So, not surprisingly, I still have some weight to lose.

Taking 21.8% for calculation purposes, at 200 pounds exactly I guess this means I have about 43.6 pounds of fat on my body. (I realize the measurements these gadgets produce aren't 100% accurate.) Since I'm actively lifting weights I'm going to assume the weight I'm losing is all fat, and for purposes of math simplication I'm going to assuming I'm not going to gain any muscle mass for a while.

So, when I reach my goal weight of 185, meaning I've lost 15 more pounds of fat, that would make my percent body fat then to be (43.6-15)/185 = 15.5%, putting me into the "excellent" category then. I'm thinking this suggests that my 185 is a good "ideal body weight" for me. My BMI would then be 24.4, at the high end of "normal", but maybe the fact that that I've been lifting weights regularly for some time now means I've got a bit more muscle mass then some.

About 6 more pounds and I'll be "good" according to this chart.

Anyway, I was happy to see that I had lost a pound when I weighed this morning. 185 is on it's way...

Posted by Reid at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I somehow hurt my heel last weekend and as a result did not do any exercise, sports, or weight lifting -- or hardly any movement! -- for seven days. (It's starting to get better now and I did upper body weights at the Y this morning.)

Referring back to my 2200 vs. 2500 calorie ponderings, in which I mentioned how at 2500 calories I wasn't getting hungry but at 2200 I was often getting hungry, I thought it was very interesting that I didn't experience much hunger this week, eating less than 2200 calories/day. Presumably the difference in hunger this week can be attributed to the fact that my body wasn't consuming as many calories as normal since I was desk/bed/sofa ridden.

And, despite the inactivity and lack of hunger, I lost two pounds this past week, and now weight 198! I'm really curious to know what I would have weighed had I had my normal active week -- too bad we can't do true split A/B tests on such things.

Anyway, I feel my hypothesis is growing stronger: active people (or at least active people like me :) have a "sweet spot" of calorie consumption at which they lose weight, have the energy they need for their activity, but don't get hungry, or at least not that hungry. Eat more than this and weight loss slows down. Eat less than this and you go around hungry and (perhaps) weight loss slows down, or at least doesn't speed up to compensate for the decrease in calories consumed, since metabolism shifts.

This sweet spot would likely shift down over time as one loses weight, since one's basal metabolism would decrease (unless one is gaining a fair amount of muscle mass by weight lifting).

For me, then, my ideal seems to be more like 2500/day than 2200/day. Since I've promised to not eat more than 2200/day until I weight 185 I'm going to stick to that, but probably I should have stayed with 2500, at least for weeks that I'm not laim.

Too bad I can't split myself into three, with one of me eating no more than 2500/day, one 2200/day, and one 1800/day. I bet adding up weight loss, energy, and lack of hunger, 2500 would win over the course of a month.

Posted by Reid at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week I gave blood one day and saw a doctor for my hurt foot on another, so i had my blood pressure taken twice by a medical professional. (I reguarly do my own at the machines in the pharmacies of Walmart and Harris Teeter.)

One time it was 110/64 and the other 112/73.

In the distant past I apparently had high blood pressure, because my body has shown some signs from it in dilated eye exams and an echo cardiogram. I actually don't know how high it got or how long it was high -- I literally went a decade without getting it checked or otherwise seeing a doctor, during a time I was quite obese -- my weight reached 326 at its max. (Not ever seeing a doctor for over a decade was a mistake, by the way, even if I felt good.)

Anyway, 20 months ago my blood pressure was in the 130s over 70 something and occasionally a bit over 140, especially in doctors' offices (white coat readings. anyone? :) I had fairly recently started eating right and losing weight. Since then I've seen it trickle down, so that now when I check it at Walmart it's typically in the one-teens over upper sixes. My pulse is often right around 50.

That's significant progress with no medication. That's another testimony to the power of PUBIMO Promises and the Promise Diet.

For further motivation, here's an entry about my significant cholesterol improvement.

Posted by Reid at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)