BALANCE…Diet and Exercise: Caloric Miscalculation 12.15.18
Got on the scale this morning, Saturday December 15th. Sheer devastation. I weighed 202.4 pounds. This after a 199.pound weigh-in eight days ago. Worse, my objective was a flat 198. Now, admittedly I changed my feast date etc due to the forecast of a substantial snowfall for 12/09/18 [which was my typical Sunday extra long distance run (and diet fasting) day]. And I admit that my feast day extended a few hours and I may have consumed extra-extra calories (my guess is that on 12/07 and 12/08 combined I ate close to whopping 11,000 calories. [Yes, I am a pig.] But I had thought that after that I fasted on 12/09* and thereafter I am dead certain that my caloric intake never exceeded 2000 calories per day Monday through Friday. ( I pretty much stuck to the goal of 1700 calories per day, but when one considers cream in coffee, which I do allow for first two cups in the morning and perhaps the last 2 de-caf cup at night) the count could go beyond my 1700 calorie objective. [Candor compels me to admit that even on my “fasting” days, I allow myself cream for my coffee in the morning and when I go to bed at night, plus I eat 3 slivers of turkey breast after my long runs and I also eat one handful of spinach/kale leaves, all for a total of probably about 500 calories that are, in fact, consumed on my fasting days.]
Now if a pound equals 3500 calories and I missed my objective and my diet was the same (1700 calories per day plus one fasting day plus one feast day) as typically followed (which has the doable objective of losing me 1.6 pounds per week)…after all I’ve lost about 30 lbs using this plan over the last three months… then something is amiss.
In other words, I missed my objective by 4.4 pounds. 4.4 times 3,500 equals 15,400 calories. And that’s an EXTRA 15,400 beyond the base calories that my body uses to function like a normal human being, and not taking into account what my body uses to run the 20 miles per week that I run and/or go to the gym. I figure right now I burn about 130 calories per mile times 20 or 2600 calories running per week (I run at about a 12 min 30 sec per mile clip) plus 200 calories per gym workout or 600 calories at the gym each week. So that’s 3200 workout calories per week. To this if you add 2600 base metabolic rate calories per day that I use up just to function each day (just to get up and go to work like a normal person) (long story about why I use that figure, which is higher than for most people…perhaps I will do a separate article about that) you get 7 x 2600 = 18,200 base calories to function (excluding exercise) per week.
So if you add:
18,200 (base daily calorie use/wk) + 2600 (running/wk) calories + 600 (gym caloreis/wk) = 21,400 calories used in the week
Thus, for my typical week, which allows me to lose 1.6 lbs, I am consuming 21,400 calories during that week.
This means my break even (no gain no loss) caloric intake should be
21,400 plus (1.6 x 3500) = 21,400 + 5600 = 27,000 calories per week (for break even no weight gain or loss)
Thus to put on an additional 2.8 pounds (a weight gain from 199.6 to 202.4) I would have had to consume…
27,000 calories plus (2.8 lbs x 3500 calories/lb) = 27,000 + 9,800 = 36,800 calories per week.
But all of this was over an 8 day period instead of the normal seven days…(all because of the rescheduling caused by snow)…..so we have to adjust the calculation for an extra day:
Preliminarily I note that before this morning’s weigh in, no extra feast or fasting days have been added in the calculations below. There has only been one feast day and one fasting day in the 8 day period.
Thus for the extra day my now 8 day break even caloric intake (for break no weight gain or loss) should be calculated as follows:
27,000 plus 2,600 = 29,600 calories per 8 days (for break even no weight gain or loss)
I assume here that no exercise is done at all.
Here is what I (honest to God) think I consumed during that 8 day period.
11,000 + 4,000 + 500 + 1300 + 1900 + 1900 + 1900 +2100 = 24,600 calories/wk
So, I should have lost weight again and not gained a whopping 2.8 lbs.
Truthfully, I knew I messed up early on so I tried to make up the difference with two consecutive low calorie days on days 3 and 4 and still lose 1.6 pounds.
But I didn’t.
Boy was I shocked !!
Maybe I should count the mints I consume at work in vast quantities as more than 15 calories each.
Maybe I consumed more cream in my coffee than I thought.
Maybe my thinking that my base metabolic rate [with no exercise, is 2600 calories per day] is incorrect. But it seems to have been correct in the past.
Maybe it’s (ahem) “water” weight.
Maybe the scale is off (it was the same scale).
But it’s all very distressing. I’ve had very slight weight gains before when I didn’t expect it. And it’s tough. But this is a whopping big gain…the biggest unexpected gain during any diet I’ve ever done (a whopping 2.8 lbs) that wasn’t remotely expected.
I know, however, from past experience that these set backs occur and success requires that we work though the failures. We must just be sure that the failures are short term and that they happen as infrequently as possible.
But I’m not going to let it get me down. And I will change nothing in my diet or exercise plan……YET !
Today again, I feasted. Tonight, I go to the gym for a short weight work out (about ½ hour). Tomorrow I hope to run 11 miles….hopefully at something faster than 13 minutes per mile! Still hoping to be in shape for a May 2019 Marathon in Pittsburgh. But I very probably have to get down to my objective of 191 pounds to have reasonable hopes of finishing in under 6 hours ,,,,or even finishing at all!
David Dixon Lentz