BOFH Rant

...big boned my ass.

Let me put it in plain English:

You lose weight when you burn more calories than you eat.

Now, is that very hard to understand. I don't give a shit if you eat 3,000 calories of yak jerky, you're not going to lose weight if you burn 2,000 calories.

It all works out to simple math. A pound of fat is generally accepted to be 3,500 calories. So, if you want to burn a pound of fat off, you need to use 3,500 calories more than you take in. See, it wasn't that hard to figure out.

Now, you will burn about 15 calories per pound of body weight. So, let's say you're overweight. You're 5'6" and weigh 200 pounds. The math (15 x 200) says that you burn 3,000 calories a day. A better weight for you is probably around 150 pounds. Here is where those of you on the Atkin's diet break out your crayons and follow along with people capable of rational thought and figure out how long this can take. Let's assume you think 6 months is good. (You're wrong, but we'll see that).

6 months x 30 days per month = 180 days
50 pounds x 3500 calories per pound = 175,000 calories
175,000 calories / 180 days = 972 calories per day

So, to lose 50 pounds in 6 months you have to cut your caloric intake by almost a third. Unless you are Ghandi, the habits that got you 200 pounds aren't going to allow you to chop your caloric intake by 33%.

Now, I know what the Atkin's people are saying, "Hey, I lost 5 pounds in one week, it works!"

What part of math class did you miss? Did you drop out at 3rd grade? 5 pounds x 3500 / 7 days = 2500 calories a day! This means if you ate NOTHING you could do it, but that's it. You are dealing with either standard daily weight fluctuation or dehydration.

"Well, I'm not dehydrated. I'm not thirsty and I feel fine".

No, what you are is ignorant. It has been shown that high protein diets cause dehydration. Now, I know you think Atkin's is a great new development in diet research. Not so. It's been around since 1856 when William Harvey advocated it! So, people did it for a while, and then realized how full of shit it was.

My Super Secret Diet Recipe for Success

1. Limit your fat intake.
   Fat has about 9 calories per gram, versus 5 per gram for protein and carbohydrates. This allows you to cut out calories relatively painlessly and it's good for your heart too. If you cut 1 tbsp of mayonaisse a day, that will save you about 90 calories a day, or about 2/3rds of a pound a month!
2. Don't weigh yourself every day
   Your weight will vary depending on your hydration, time of day, size of the meal you ate, whether or not you went to the bathroom. Don't worry about your daily weight, look at a trend. If your weight is going up and down, but trending down, that's fine.
3. Set a realistic goal
   I think a realistic goal is probably between 2 and 4 pounds per MONTH. If you are doing this it means you are probably developing the right habits that will allow you to keep the weight off. Dating a supermodel and working off the calories with hot sex probably isn't realistic.
4. Get some exercise
   Don't go out and buy the Bowflex or join a gym. Just start walking 30 minutes a few times a week. Stop taking the elevator, take the stairs. This will help.
5. Swap regular soda for diet
   At 2 soda's a day this will save you about 360 calories a day, or a pound in 10 days!
6. Allow yourself a guilt free day
   Once a week or every two weeks, go ahead and eat that food that you feel you've been depriving yourself of. Remember, you've been eating that way for a long time, one day won't hurt. Just make sure you're eating healthy until the next one.

What about exercise?

You can find a chart detailing how many calories you burn with different exercise, pretty easily. The key is to realize that it's calories per hour. Now, I'm in pretty good shape (even after having a piece of lung tissue removed) and I'm good for between 30 and 45 minutes of standard gym exercise. This means I burn an extra 200 to 400 calories a day. Thus, exercising every day I only expect to lose an extra pound every 7-10 days!

Now, there are days I work out much longer than 30 to 45 minutes. This is because I'm doing something fun, like Racquetball or even better, Ultimate Frisbee! I can play these for between 1.5 and 6 hours in a day. (6 hours is extreme and only happens during a tournament). Still, you can see that you still need to expect a steady loss, not a sudden loss.