well damn...

Well, if you look to the left, to the left (all of my shame in a box to the left) you can see that I have gained just a bit more than the 5 pounds I predicted in my couple of weeks off- because not only did i not go to the gym during said time- I ate horribly. It was as though I consciously fell off the wagon and did the whole "well, I'll be better next week" thing to justify eating horrible food, and lots of it.

Having most of a week spent in a hotel and eating out all the time didn't help- but I usually did the big eating out thing and/or ate crappy food. No salad for me- unless of course the salad was just a precursor to much more horrible food.
OK, I'm back though. Frank won't be joining me in the gym till Monday- and this morning's workout made me feel like I was going to vomit. I lift a lot more doing the super squat machine I do with actual squats. (a lot more still being relative in that it's still less than 300 pounds- but my heavy set with actual squats is less than 200 so 270 seemed like a lot when I looked at the plates loaded onto the bar) I felt like I could do more weight because I didn't have the muscle strain "I'm going to fall over" type of feeling that you get when you are lifting those last few reps but afterwards I realized I really had exerted myself and felt pretty beat. Which of course made it hard to move on to other exercises afterward.

I still have no endurance- so running tomorrow should be fun. It is getting nicer out- but I think I may just do the treadmill anyway since I've got some sinus stuff going on and I hates my allergies when I run outside.

OK, so new goal: be back under 240 by the end of next week, and down to 235 by the 12th of May. That's real doable. It means I need a caloric deficit of about 1700 calories a day. While that probably seems huge to most normal people- it isn't that big a deal when you are a giant fat man like I am.
Using the BMR Formula, it seems my base metabolic rate has me burning 2335 calories a day. Using the Harris Benedict equation
I can then find out how many calories I burn at different activity levels. So, if I am very sedentary then I should be burning about 2800 calories a day. If I were to be extremely active (hard training twice a day) then my daily caloric burn would be just a smidge under 4450. That is highly unlikely- but with moderate exercise 3-5 days a week I'd average 3600 calories burned a day. Which means if I can just keep my daily calories around 2000 I should reach my goal. (although were I to step it up and work out like crazy I could be at 230 by the 12th instead of 235)

Really, I also know that I need to take into account the decreased base metabolic rate as I lose weight and that I will burn less calories. I still think that keeping at 2000 calories a day should be fine- I will probably train a bit harder than "moderate" exercise but not quite as crazy hard as full on twice a day. (honestly, if you aren't an athlete on a team training for a new season, two a day training just seems like a symptom of anorexia. While I'm in no danger of eminent starvation I don't want to get into habits that could become unhealthy in the future. I may occasionally do more exercise than once a day- but it will only be if I'm doing something like playing ball with friends as a leisure activity on top of going to the gym)