Calculations

 

A friend who lost weight doing keto asked me how I’m losing weight eating all the fruit I want, so I did the math.

~*~*~*

I used the calculator from this website to determine my basal metabolic rate

https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/how-many-calories-do-i-burn-a-day#Burning-calories

BMR for females = 655.1 + (4.35 x weight) + (4.7 x height) – (4.7 x age) 

I’m 5’2”, 41 years old, and had been 185 lbs for a while when I began the diet. I used to do yoga but had stopped, and do call center work all day so I was very sedentary.

655.1 + (4.35 x 185) + (4.7 x 62) – (4.7 x 41) = 655.1 + (4.35 x 185) + (4.7 x 62) – (4.7 x 41)

= 655.1 + (804.75) + (291.4) – (192.7)

= 1558.55

x 1.2, or sedentary (little to no exercise)

= 1870.26 = calories needed to maintain weight

~*~*~*

In a typical day on the diet I consume:

35 calories coffee + creamer

210 breakfast: cereal

120 snack: shake

362 lunch: HMR entree + 2 cups vegetables

169 snack: shake + fruit

662 dinner: 2 HMR entrees + 2 cups vegetables

105 dessert : one medium fruit, e.g. a banana

= 1663 calories

 1870.26 - 1663 = 207.26 daily calorie deficit

I’m also working my way up to the minimum physical activity guideline of 2000 calories per week, which is 285.714285714, or a little under 300 calories per day. 

207.26 + 285.714285714 = 492.974285714

3500/492.974285714 = 7.09976179575, or roughly one pound lost every seven days.

~*~*~*

So basically I'm eating less and exercising more, that's how.

 

Movie theater outing

Yesterday a friend reserved a movie theater for a private screening of "The Empire Strikes Back" for a socially-distanced birthday with 17 people. The smell of popcorn butter was driving me crazy, but I was good and got a Coke Zero and a pickle. Easy peasey. 

I also spent $40 on a set of their Wonder Woman 1984 souvenir cups. Oops.

Half-week thought dump

While I miss eating out and all the rich foods that I typically consume, having a meal plan and rituals is its own comfort. I play a lot of Pokemon Go and Sunday was Community Day, which in these COVID-19 times means a lot of driving all over town. I was a little worried about taking my diet on the go, particularly with my usual takeout-and-dine-out crew, but anticipated being a passenger for most of it and brought ice cream, frozen green beans and one entree. 

As luck would have it, our usual driver was multiply delayed, and I ended up driving my friends around most of the day, missing my usual shake time for which I'd brought the ice cream, and making a point to stop at lunchtime to inhale my meal. I brought a salad dressing bottle in case we ended up at a drive-thru or restaurant, but everyone dispersed after playing to eat at home. I kind of feel at fault, and hate that that's who I've become: the one with the dietary restrictions. :/

~*~*~*

Weekly coaching calls are on Mondays, and while I had the greatest weight loss in the group for the week, I also had the least physical activity reported. "Are you ...physically able to do PA?" our substitute coach asked. Duly shamed, I went for a walk yesterday and remembered that I twisted my ankle and fell Sunday while getting ready to leave the house. It doesn't hurt, but the muscles and tendons that were sprained twinges sometimes, depending how my foot lands, and the part in front of my ankle bone is swollen. 

Lately I also sometimes throw my hip out on walks, but a day off between walks is usually enough time for it to rest, so I committed to walking every other day this week. 

~*~*~*

I love that I can eat all the fruit I want, and that pasta is on the menu, but I do want to replicate more foods that I love so I don't feel like I'm missing out. Currently plotting a pizza with a crust made of vanilla shake and chicken soup mixes, a sugar-free tomato sauce comprised primarily of tomato paste, and maybe roasted peppers and basil as a topping. The ice cream i made was nice enough with half an hour's freezer time, but got completely solid overnight. I'm going to experiment with unflavored gelatin this weekend to keep it soft and scoopable. I also need pancakes and bread. I tried making banana bread the other day with banana and oatmeal, but it ended up being an oatmealy banana fritter. 

"I'm not pregnant - I'm just fat."

On March 31st of last year I went to a new nail salon for the first time. The lady sat me back in a massage chair and placed her hand on my belly, "Is it a girl?"

"No," I said. "I'm not pregnant - I'm just fat."

~*~*~*

In my mind I've slowly been gaining weight every year, each year the heaviest I've ever been, but according to MyFitnessPal I have weighed myself almost daily since December 29, 2014 and:

12/29/2014 166.5 lbs

12/30/2015 163.4

12/30/2016 161.9

12/30/2017 179.3

12/30/2018 180.8

12/22/2019 184.5

I'd actually been gradually losing weight annually until 2017, which was when I got a car and stopped walking everywhere. I also started eating out more now that that was an option. I gained nearly twenty pounds that year, and am just now realizing that!

~*~*~*

Normally when I'm feeling fat I try a new diet for a few months, lose a few pounds and feel better about myself, and then fall right off. After the nail salon incident I wanted to do things differently. I didn't look up any new diets. I didn't enjoin my ladies' group to do a fitness challenge with me. I took up yoga, and paid attention to how I ate and why.

I eat out a lot, and eat a lot of food when I do. I remember at what one point feeling like being on a bender: I just had to taste and try everything until I couldn't anymore, heedlessly, with no regard to whether or not I was full or how much it cost, the overriding thought being that I was eating like I was trying to kill myself. I never went to a doctor, but after some weeks of nothing but fried chicken or barbecue I would feel fatigued and have palpitations. I'd lay off the rich foods for a while and eat half a grapefruit every day to feel better.

Yoga emphasizes kindness and mindfulness, and I brought that with me dining out, eating not in defiance or to disgust. I ate out because I needed to, because I was curious about places, and with gratitude that I have the time and car and wherewithal to do so. 

I was never really 170 lbs. In one year I went from 160 to 180. I'm hopeful I can also get back to 160 from 180 in a year. 

HMR in a nutshell

 The diet I'm on is called HMR (www.hmrprogram) and is billed as "The #1 Fast Weight Loss Diet 5 Years Straight" by US News. (https://health.usnews.com/best-diet/hmr-program). It is a meal delivery program you supplement with fruits and vegetables, and comes with support (by way of an app and weekly conference call, as well as emails, literature and a Facebook group) to get you on the diet and towards a healthy lifestyle. 

I chose it because i'm lazy, and the less thinking I have to do for myself, the less I have to rev myself up, and the fewer opportunities I have to talk myself out of the changes I need to make.

As it is, I get to keep my same eating schedule, aligned with my work schedule. In anticipation of starting the diet I went to Korean barbecue twice last week, and gained four pounds. I started on Saturday, and as of yesterday I've lost the four, and an additional two. Yes, I realize it's water weight. 

Five days in I'm feeling okay. The first day was hardest, mostly because I happened to eat some of the worst food they have. The beef stroganoff with noodles was pretty bad, and the 70 vanilla shake sample included in my first box tasted like Optimum Nutrition's. I resolved that their entrees are just condiments for the vegetables I'll be living off of for the next few months. Since then things have been better. The food reminds me of the MREs I would have every so often growing up (I'm a Navy brat). 

My food arrives in a shelf-stable box every two weeks: three shakes and three meals (two entrees and oatmeal for breakfast) a day. My minimum consumption is to be that plus 5 servings of fruits and vegetables daily, and I am to eat as many fruits, vegetables, meals and shakes as I like, if that's what it takes to "stay in the box". Lately that means four meals a day and 6-8 servings of fruits and vegetables.

This has been good for me, particularly digestively, as i haven't been eating much in the way of fruits and vegetables for a while. I end up hungry in the evenings because the food I'm eating now is so much bulkier and low-calorie than I'm used to, I'm having trouble gauging how much I need to eat to keep my energy up. I do make up for it after work, and don't go to bed starving. I miss having savory snacks to graze on. I did have seaweed snacks but went though them all too quickly, and pickles are a little too high-sodium and similar to the steamed vegetables I have with most meals. 

 Hello! I've been needing a space away from the scroll-and-go of Facebook for a while now, and this past weekend I started a new diet, so welcome to my new diet blog! 

It's very shiny and new, and I'm not sure what to make of it yet. I imagine it will be a repository of the sort of daily minutiae that comes with dietary changes. Feel free to look around, but do keep in mind that it's been nearly a decade since I blogged regularly, and some items might have shifted in transit. 

More later,

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