Determination Day 1

Obviously, based on the timing of my last post, I went to bed very late; or was it very early this morning.....? At any rate, I woke up still feeling determined.  I was good, sort of.  I went to the store and bought fruits and vegetables, then came home and made a spinach omelet.  Had a banana for a snack, got some work done, took a nap, then made a really good salad with soup for diner.  I finished it up with some Greek yogurt, blueberries, raspberries, and banana for desert.

Those of you who know me, know that I'm prone to having strange dreams.  Sometimes they are just random, but other times, they have some meaning to them.  I should have written it down as soon as I got up, because I know there was some meaning in the one I had last night.  Oh well, if it is really important, I'll re-dream it.  Yep, I do that.  I tend to have the same dream over and over until I remember it fully and dissect it.

I promised my self that I would do some research, so here goes:  I looked into Metabolism.  Did you know that the Mayo Clinic says that there really isn't such a thing as a "slow metabolism".  The body's metabolism is automatically geared for your activity levels.  With that said, you CAN increase your metabolism.  Here are some interesting facts:

• Drinking water causes the body to increase its metabolism to absorb the water, drinking Ice cold water further increases the rate of metabolism
• A fit person and an obese person burn the SAME amount of calories while exercising.  A fit person burns MORE calories at rest than an obese person.
• Every pound of muscle burns 6 calories a day at rest to maintain its state compared to a pound of fat which burns 2 calories a day.
• Eat more often to burn more calories.  It's true, multiple smaller meals spaced over the day actually increase your metabolism.
• Making it spicy (your food smarty pants) can cause you to burn up to 23% more calories.  WebMD says to take a tablespoon full of peppers can increase your metabolism for up to half an hour and that the more often you eat spicy food, this could be extended.  Of course you need to balance this with what your stomach can handle (keeping a steady intake of Greek Yogurt can really help).
• Protein takes more energy to metabolize than Carbs.  Therefore, you burn more calories digesting protein than you do Carbs.
• Green Tea can help you to burn an extra 50 calories a day, nice!!
• Starving yourself CAN and WILL slow down your metabolism.  Going under 1000 calories a day for your intake throws you into starvation mode and your body stops burning and starts storing.

BTW, Body Mass Index does not tell you your body's fat percentage.  There are several ways to do this with some accuracy, but most of them require a visit to your doctor or a special lab.  The U.S. Navy came up with a fairly reliable way to calculate Fat Percentage based off of the BMI.

Child body fat % = (1.51 x BMI) - (0.70 x Age) - (3.6 x gender) + 1.4

Adult body fat % = (1.20 x BMI) + (0.23 x Age) - (10.8 x gender) - 5.4

where male gender= 1, female=0.

So for me, at 6'1" and 300lbs. my BMI is 39.6 so my body fat percentage is:

(1.2 * 39.6) +(0.23 * 39) - (10.8 * 1) - 5.4 = 40.29%

Now lets compare that to standards:

Description	Women	Men
Essential fat	10-13%	5-8%
Athletes	14–20%	6-13%
Fitness	21–24%	14–17%
Average	25–31%	18–24%
Obese	32%+	25%+

HOLY CRAP on a Bagel!!!!!! I'm FAT!!!!

So if 40.29% of my body is fat, then I'm carrying around 120lbs of blubber!!!  That means that if I did nothing but sleep all day, I would burn 2*120 calories (240) from my fat, and just for easy math (because it would be difficult to separate out the bones, organs, so forth) 6*180 calories (1080) from muscle.  Okay, add that together and it's 1320 calories.  So if I target an 1800 calorie meal plan daily, I only have to burn off 480 calories.......Nope that's not really how it works.

You have to burn about 3500 calories OVER your at rest burn rate to loose one pound of fat.  No way can you do that in one day.  If I walked for 1 hour quickly, I could burn 518 calories (here is a great tool for calculating what you are burning Click to follow).

Okay, I burn 1320 calories at rest a day and eat 1800 calories a day leaving 480 calories just sitting there.  If I burn an additional 518 calories, then that means that I am successfully burning 1838 calories which is 38 over what I'm eating.  At that rate, it will take me  92 days (3500/38) to loose one pound of fat.

Let's add some things here:

• Walk two hours quickly a day = 1037 calories
• 30 minutes of exercising at the gym a day = 375 calories
• Gives a total of 1412 calories a day burned

1320 at rest plus 1412 active equals 2732 calories which is 932 more than I'm eating.  That means that I will loose one pound of fat in roughly 4 days.  Of course none of these calculations takes into account that while I'm exercising, I'm adding muscle density, loosing over all body weight, changing my BMI on a weekly basis, all of which means that my Fat Percentage is decreasing causing me to burn more calories at rest due to more muscle.......you can see where this can get pretty complex just to figure out.  

To keep things simple, I'll figure my BMI and Fat Percentage on a monthly basis to see how I'm doing and not worry about how many minutes of torture I have to go through to loose a pound of blubber.

Okay, now I'm really done for the night because my head hurts.  Catch you later!!