Monday August 10th, 2009 "Registration"

This morning I weighed in at 326.6. It seems I'm still paying for my gastronomical indulgences last week. Today, I had school registration for both my Senior and my 8th grader. I also had to get this nasty squeak fixed on my car. And, this being the day before my 25th Anniversary, I had some last minute shopping to do. Needless to say, I decided to take an exercise break today. My body really needed a break anyway. Tomorrow, I am going to try to take my longest bike ride yet and hit the gym before my wife gets back from work.

August 17th's issue of time magazine has an article "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin." In a nut shell, it's about compensation. It's true that exercise actually makes you hungrier. An hour after I get out of the pool or several hours after a bike ride I get hungry. What happens to most people is they give into the hunger and eat too much much to "compensate" or reward themselves. Exercise alone will not make you lose weight, but burning more calories than you take in will. Below you will find the formula for your metabolic rate. If you use the formula below and my calorie counter on the left of my page and use the Calorie Burned calculator at http://www.healthstatus.com/cgi-bin/calc/calculator.cgi you can use math to predict your weight loss.

The Harris-Benedict equation for calculating Basal Metabolic Rate is:

66 + (13.7 x weight in kilos) + (5 x height in centimeters) - (6.8 x age in years)

After calculating the BMR, you have to multiply it with the appropriate activity multiplier. This determines the exact calorie requirements of a man. The Activity Multiplier is:

• 1.2 (for those who do little or no exercise)
• 1.375 (for those who do light exercise/sports 1-3 days a week)
• 1.55 (for those who do moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days a week)
• 1.725 (for those who do hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week)

Lets say my Activity Multiplier is 1.6. My caloric requirement is 4260 per day and if I want to lose 6.6 pounds this week, I need to burn 6,350 calories per day. For example, on Saturday I rode my bike for a hard two hours. My burn rate that day was 7,871 and my intake was good, thus I lost some weight. Today I burned 4,751 so I may have lost a tiny bit of weight. Tomorrow, my burn rate should be around 10,000. If I can maintain a productive week I should be down to 320 by Sunday. That is, of course, if I don't over eat.