Twofer

Extra post for today –

1. I kind of blew the diet (already). OK, not diet, but counting calories. And not so, much, but just a bit. Breakfast, as you know, pushed 500 cal. Lunch – I did good; leftover fajitas, no cheese, no guac: about 400 cal, near as I could figure. Supper – My folks decided to treat us to a local seafood restaurant. Good stuff. In hindsight, I should have gone for the off-season lobster – if you avoid the butter, which isn’t needed now that the critters have their winter fat, it’s not so bad for you. Instead, I got the fried platter. I avoided the fries, and stole some of my wife’s salad, but I figure supper was 1,000 calories or so. So I’m up about 2,000 for the day.

If I fight off the monster for the evening, it’s not so bad. Plus, I swam, so there’s a deficit to make up there. Only, I’d hoped to make it up off of my belly (mmmm, whole belly clams….)

2. Speaking of deficit: I found the coolest calorie calculator. It purports to solve for your baseline, but more importantly, it gives inputs for calories burned running/swimming/biking, etc. Good stuff.

3. There’s been a bunch of good comments on about body fat monitors on Sunday’s post. Appreciate all the information about potential inaccuracies, but I’m pretty confident it was accurate. It’s too close to the BMI and my physical appearance as a little bit fluffy. Much like the scale, though, I’m going to continue to formally avoid it 6 days a week. Oh, and Jon – it was an impulse buy. $5 cheaper than normal.

Swim/Weigh-in

178 – Added a pound but it’s within the margin of error, and I was sick last week.

One of the upsides of being sick has been getting back into a regular sleep cycle, so I was up early this morning to hit the pool at the Y. And hit the pool I did. 1,000 yards. Everything felt fine, but I was still fighting some of the lingering weariness that hobbled me last week.

**** WARNING – Nasty statistics to follow ****

I picked up a small body-fat monitor at Target yesterday. Yech. 32%. Meaning that I’m carrying around about 55 lbs of lard everywhere I go.

The upside is that the measurement “checks with chart” as the quartermaster would tell me back in my submarining days. Say I cut down to a healthy 15% body fat – that’s about 27 lbs to lose, which would put me right at 150, or about where the BMI calculations tell me I should be.

This, though, was a real eye-opener. In the past 3 or 4 years, I’ve peaked out at about 195 or so, almost 20 lbs higher than I am today. Yee cats.

**** Back to regularly scheduled navel gazing ****

This week begins counting calories. I’m going to shoot for an 1800 calorie base, with an addition of about 50% of what I burn in exercise. Breakfast – Trail Mix Bagel and Honey-Walnut Cream cheese. Only a gazillion calories. OK, only 530 cal. Washed it down with good old fat burning coffee. Yippee! (BTW, whoever posted about coffee’s fat solubility last week deserves a gold star.)