you really CAN lose weight on 1600 cals

I am now officially down 8 pounds in a little over 12 weeks. My calorie limit is 1600. I allow myself a sweet treat every single day, usually a Dove bar but sometimes a cookie, brownie, or slice of some kind of cake. I do not exercise any more than my usual walking to get around from place to place. I take some days off from my diet, allow myself to go over my limit a bit but don't actually count calories. I had 3 days where I kind of lost control and binged, but on those days I think my total intake was close to 2000 cals, so not a disaster.

This is the least punishing diet I've ever been on, and although the slow pace can be frustrating at times I have felt more in control than ever.

I highly recommend to those of you who are 175lbs or more and who have lost weight on low calorie diets but regained it, especially if you've done it more than once, to consider upping your calorie limit to 1400-1600 cals. And don't punish yourself with exercise, if you like exercising that's great, but if you don't just try to not be sedentary. It really can work !

By the way, I say "175lbs or more" because I calculated that 1600 cals will probably support 150 pounds, and if you are already close to 150 the weight loss will be at such a snail's pace you'll likely go nuts. :-)

Update on my 1600 calorie diet

It's been a while since I've updated my blog ...

My 1600 calorie "permanent diet" is going quite well. As of Monday Sep 29 I reached 178.4 so was down 7 pounds. I went up slightly the following two days and am now 178.8. I started dieting on 07/22 so it's been 10 weeks. I expected to lose only 1/2 pound per week so I'm slightly ahead of schedule.

I have found this the easiest diet to stay on. I'm not going to claim that it's easy, but definitely a lot easier than any other diet I've ever done. The Dove-bar-per-day saves me ! I also take most Mondays off, I'm still careful about what I eat but don't require myself to stick to 1600 calories. I've only had a few slip-ups, I had one on Tuesday but got back on the diet Wednesday and am OK today too. I'm hopeful that I will reach 170 by Jan 2009, but if it doesn't happen I'm OK with it.

There have been several times when I've been frustrated and had the "I should just go off of this diet" automatic thought ... and then it dawns on me that there is no going off this diet because it's my permanent diet ! It's how I want to eat forever ! This too has saved me.

Based on my weight loss so far, I've recalculated that 1600 calories will eventually get me to 150, not 160. We'll see. Right now I'm just focused on making it to 170. 170 is a wall that I've run into several times and haven't been able to break through, hopefully I'll be able to do it this time.

Smoothies ... mmmm

Let's see, what should I whine about today ?  :-)

I'm making my own smoothies now.  I found out that Odwalla smoothies have carrageenan in them, and while the Naked smoothies appear to be carrageenan-free, they just have an awful lot of sugar in them.  The label doesn't break the sugar down ... how much fructose, glucose, and sucrose.  So I decided to make my own.

I got a $16 single-serving Hamilton Beach blender, a smoothie recipe book (actually a box of cards), carrageenan-free vanilla soy milk, silken tofu, and a bunch of different fruits .... and wouldn't you know the things are great !  I can't cook, but smoothies I can make !  Now I can control the sugar, and the soy milk and tofu give the things a nice creamy shake-like texture while adding some good nutrients.

My one smoothie so far:

6 strawberries

1/2 banana

1/2 cup cantaloupe

1/2 cup carrageenan-free vanilla soy milk (no sugar added)

1/3 cup silken tofu

The resulting smoothie is not very sweet, just sweet enough to be tasty.

overweight saves lives

I posted a link in a prior blog to some CDC data debunking the common claim that overweight and obesity is the #2 preventable cause of death.  I'd like to elaborate ...

http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel/fs050419.htm

The initial CDC report that came out in 2004 claimed that nearly 400,000 preventable deaths per year are caused by overweight and obesity, putting overweight and obesity #2 behind tobacco use, which causes 435,000 deaths per year.  And then, not sure why, the CDC re-analyzed their data and found out that their original claim wasn't just wrong, it was GROSSLY incorrect.

Turns out that obesity, just obesity, is responsible for 112,000 deaths.  Still #2, but quite a lot lower than 400,000.  Alcohol use is #3 at 85,000.

Better yet, it turns out that OVERWEIGHT SAVES LIVES.  That is not a typo.  Here's what the CDC says, bolding is mine:

Being overweight (BMI of 25-29.9) was not associated with excess mortality. The study found that 87,000 fewer deaths than expected were associated with being overweight.

Look at that.  87,000 fewer deaths.  Fewer !  Overweight is .... good for you.

Even better, underweight is bad for you:

Underweight individuals (BMI of less than 18.5) had a higher risk of death with nearly 34,000 more deaths than expected.

34,000, that makes underweight the #7 killer, just behind firearms.

What ticks me off most is that even though the correct analysis was published back in 2005, the media, doctors and other scientists, and just about everyone else continue to propagate the misinformation !  Some of these people are deliberately misinforming you in order to sell you something, diet "food", diet pills, diet plans, diet books,etc.

I am also bothered that the fat haters use this misinformation to justify their prejudice.  They would look horribly superficial if they hated fat just for appearance reasons, so they have to justify their hatred, they hate fat because fat kills.  Well, you have to have a hell of a lot more fat than most of us have before it even poses a significant risk.  If you do more research you find that the severely obese are the ones who have the biggest risk for health problems, just because you are mildly or even moderately obese doesn't mean you are at risk.  Good health care and physical activity are bettter indicators of health and longetivity.

I encourage you to bookmark the link I provided, and then any time you see a news story, a blog, or any other entry on the web which contains the BS 400,000 figure and you can post a comment, DO IT.  Ditto for personal conversations.   Help to eradicate this misinformation.  Help to educate others.

Oh, just one more comment ... yes there has been a rather drastic increase in the number of people who are overweight and obese, but that trend appears to have tapered off in recent years.  I will post supporting evidence later ...

sugar addiction

I remember years ago when I saw a psychiatrist, briefly, because I was struggling with my food issues and pathological eating, and the guy said that it was impossible for food, even sugar, to be addictive.  He was normal-weight, probably never experienced a sugar craving in his entire life.  I disagreed with him.  He also said that everyone is on a 24 hour clock when it was obvious I was not, my body prefers a longer day.  I found out he was wrong about that too, I'm glad i didn't spend much money on him.

I'm surprised that any person who has even a minimal understanding of science could think that food can't be addictive and yet drugs can be.   Where do these people think drugs come from ?  Yes, some are synthesized, but some are from plant sources too.  And really, when you think about it, drugs contain chemicals, and food contains chemicals ... so are they really that different ?

Some might complain that sucrose (table sugar) is glucose and fructose, and because glucose is necessary for our bodies, something that contains glucose can't possibly be addictive.  Yah ?  Well oxygen is necessary too, but sulfuric acid (H2SO4) contains oxygen and I'm sure as h*ll not going to breathe THAT in and think that I'll be OK !

And then there's the matter of psychological addiction vs. physical addiction, many people will claim that sugar is only psychologically addictive, not physically addictive, as if our thoughts, which are chemical reactions in our brains, are not part of our bodies !

Fortunately some scientists are forging ahead and doing actual research.

I am happy to see that there are plenty of studies showing that sweet foods creatinly behave like addictive substances, so they very well may be addictive.  But you know what's going to happen if they declare sugar addictive ??   TOTAL MAYHEM !!   Do you know how many foods contain sugar ?  Will they have to put sugar on a controlled substances list  ?  Will we need a prescription for it ?  Will foods marketed to kids have to be devoid of sugar ?  It will be a mess, but maybe, just maybe, we really should "go there".

I get great satisfaction from the thought of sugar at least being recognized as acting like an addictive substance, because I know when the fat haters find out they'll suffer some discomfort.  They want to think that we overweight people are simply weak and lazy and don't want to limit ourselves at all, in addition to believing the hype about the (fabricated) "obesity epidemic" and the BS about overweight people being a burden on the health care system.  (I see a doctor once, maybe twice a year, and one visit is for my yearly gyn exam !)  I wonder what fat haters think about lab rats or other animals that get hooked on sugar to the point where they bypass nutritious food to get their fix es?  And they suffer actual withdrawal symptoms when the scientists take their sugar away from them ???  Yah, weak and lazy rats don't care about anything, right ?

Why don't the fat haters just admit it: overeating, overeating sweets in particular, is an addiction behavior.  We are not weak, we are not lazy, we are junkies.  We are junkies because the food companies put sugar in everything, and we are unlucky that our genetics predispose us to sugar addiction..  Instead of passing out or getting psychotic, the symptom of our addiction is extra fat.  And like all junkies, we are tortured by our cravings, sometimes to our own demise.

They would still hate us.  Because their hatred is illogical and so deep-seated they couldn't even shake it if they tried.  So f*ck 'em.

The food companies know that sugar is addictive, that's why they add so much of it to so many of their foods.  I read that fast food joints put sugar in just about everything, including burgers and fries.  Worse, sugar is pushed  on kids so freely and so frequently.  Why on earth does anyone think that a sugary cereal is a good breakfast for a kid ???  Or that sugar-laden soda is an acceptable drink ??   Why are there sugar-doped "nutrition bars" for toddlers ???

Is it possible that most hyperactive kids who have been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD are actually sugar addicts ????????  (I'm not saying all are, but this inordinate increase in the number of kids diagnosed with these disorders is highly suspect !)

I was dismayed to read a study about sugar-addicted rats ... the longer they were deprived of sugar, the more they ate when it was made available to them again.  I was hoping that the body could recuperate from a sugar addiction, but this type of result tells me that it might not be so.  :-(

So let's say sugar is addictive and most of us overweight people are addicts.  What can we do about it ?

SUGAR REHAB !  :-)

If abstaining causes withdrawal and subsequent relapse, and abstaining longer causes a worse relapse, then it would make sense to eat a little bit of sugar every x hours, just enough to stop the worst cravings.  Sugar rationing.   Maybe after a while it would be possible to taper down so that you are only eating 1/2 or 1/3 of the sugar you had been eating when you first started rehab.

Several days ago I was wondering if high level of insulin was responsible for the "addiction", but I no longer think so.  I think now that we sugar junkies are experiencing two simultaneous problems ... high insulin or even insulin resistance, and also addiction.  I think sugar rationing can help with both problems.

I'm very interested in other people's opinions on this, especially if you have direct experience rationing your sugar intake ... did it work ???

are processed foods making us fat ?

What if processed foods are making us fat ?  Isn't it awfully coincidental that from the time that processed foods became generally available we started to see a significant increase in the number of overweight and obese people, with no end of that increase in sight ?

I'm not talking about massive amounts of processed foods, or high calorie processed foods, I'm talking about processed foods in general, including diet foods.

What if certain additives are like addictive drugs ?  What if certain additives cause your cells or organs to function improperly, e.g., insulin resistance or insulemia ?

What if the food manufacturers know this and they are deliberately tweaking their foods to make you crave them more ?  We know that the cigarette manufacturers have done this, why should the food manufacturers be any different ?

What if the food manufacturers lie on their nutrition labels ?  What if that processed dinner doesn't have 350 calories but 600 instead ?  To my knowledge there is no regulating agency to ensure that the labels are correct.

What do addicts to when they want to quit being addicts ?  They necessarily give up the addictive substances.

We can do it too.  We can give up processed foods, or keep them to a minimum.  I'll bet we'll find that we feel better and have an easier time losing weight.

my undies weigh nearly a pound ???

I'm on this slow diet and I'm expecting to only lose approx 1/2 pound per week.  Yesterday I weighed 184.4, so imagine my surprise when the scale showed 183.6 this morning.  I weighed again and it said the same thing, 183.6.  I don't recall a time ever before in my life when a lower weight did not make me happy !   I was unclothed, ready to hop in the shower.  When I got out of the shower I dried off and donned my undies.  Then I decided to check my weight again ... this time it was 184.4.  I weighed again, 184.4.   OK, that makes more sense.  But I will admit I felt a tiny pang of disappointment that I was not 184.2.  :-)   So do my undies weigh .8 pound ???  Or is my scale a little flakey.  No doubt the latter.

The diet is in full effect and making me a little bit miserable.  I am hungry pretty much all of the time, and last night and this morning I was dead tired !  I was late for an orthodontics appointment this morning because I had such a hard time dragging myself around the condo trying to show and get dressed.  Even coffee didn't help much.

My body is probably converting over to burning fat now, but it's not quite *there* yet.  It's used to having plenty of food coming in via the stomach.  Now the cells are hanging out waiting to be fed, and they're like "WTF ???  HELLO UP THERE ??? WILL YA EAT SOMETHING ???"   :-)   And the fat cells are getting nervous, wondering why their supply has been cut off.  They're still smug and happy, all filled up.  But some of them, the older ones that have been through this before, sense the mpending doom, they're going to have to give it up.

....

I read another really interesting article last night, about how the media latches on to PR disguised as unbiased scientific research and then hypes incorrect info !  A must-read !!

http://www.center4research.org/hypehlthrpt902.html

When research was first published linking fen-phen to potentially fatal heart valve damage, the media took notice. ... But then a funny thing happened: New research articles were published in medical journals, indicating that fen-phen wasn’t really dangerous after all. ... the popular media took up the news with great enthusiasm. "Study: No Heart Damage from Diet Drug," proclaimed a front-page headline in USA Today (4/1/98). The study in question, paid for by Wyeth-Ayerst (the manufacturer of Redux) and authored by Dr. Neil Weissman, found only a small, statistically insignificant increase in heart-valve damage for women who took the diet drug compared to women who didn’t. ... When Weissman and Wyeth tried to publish the study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the editor required that they modify their data analysis. As a result, the findings were no longer so reassuring. The published article (9/10/98) was not promoted by the company, for obvious reasons, and received little press attention.

The article discusses breast implants and hormone therapy too.

Definitely do your research.  When you see the results of a study, first find out who funded the study.  Does the study involve a drug and the funding came from the drug manufacturer ??  Find out if the study was published in a biased medical journal, e.g., any that Excerpta Medica controls.  Do not fall for credentials, just because the study is coming from a well-respected university or has a well-respected doc's name attached to it, it can still be a sham.  And do not trust the reporter’s summary, find the actual study and look at the data yourself.  If it doesn't make sense, if it seems too good to be true .... you know.

Liars and lies !

While searching for info about insulin, I came across the web site www.obesity.org, The Obesity Society, which appears on the surface to be an unbiased scientific venture dedicated to the study of obesity.  But when you start digging, you can't help but get the distinct feeling that they don't just study obesity, they have a disdain of it.

Thinking that this might be a front for drug companies pushing weight loss medications, I went back out to google and did a search on "The Obesity Society Wyeth", and sho nuff I found evidence to confirm my suspicions.

http://www.consumerfreedom.com/pressrelease_detail.cfm?release=183

A report released by the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) titled An Epidemic of Obesity Myths uncovers the complicated web of funding and support between weight loss and pharmaceutical industries and the Obesity Society (formerly the North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NAASO)).

CCF's Senior Research Analyst J. Justin Wilson commented, "Our report exposes this effort by the $46 billion weight-loss industry to quietly nurture overblown rhetoric in an effort to panic the public about carrying a few extra pounds and force Medicare and HMOs to cover the cost of their drugs and programs. Pharmaceutical and weight-loss companies have invested millions of dollars in institutes, researchers, and studies -- all squarely aimed at hyping the ills of being overweight."

Today, as the Obesity Society commences their annual scientific meeting in Boston, CCF reminds journalists, scientists and anyone who buys into the worst of the "obesity epidemic" rhetoric, that much of the research put out by Obesity Society faculty has hyped the problem far beyond what's appropriate in dispassionate scientific discourse.

Bingo !

Btw, this is old news, but it may have gone unnoticed because of the rabid hatred of overweight and obese people:

One would be forgiven for thinkin CDC stands for Center for Damage Control.  Just a year after its widely-publicized and exceedingly controversial announcement that excess weight kills 400,000 Americans annually, the agency is rumbling, bumbling, stumbling toward an explanation for a new study that says the real figure is just 26,000. ... excess weight is about one-fifteenth as dangerous as previously thought, and has a lower death toll than diseases like septicemia and nephritis.

http://www.consumerfreedom.com/article_detail.cfm/article/161?nd=1

Just for reference the estimated yearly number of deaths due to cigarette smoking is something like 430,000.

And btw, the life expectancy for Americans has increased again, despite the so-called obesity epidemic.

It's a shame that FACTS will never convince the fat-haters that they are irrational.  They WANT to hate us.  Hell, if they could blame the terrorist attacks on us they would !  I'm surprised they haven't said that the WTC towers fell because there were too many fat people in the building.

Fabulous info here: http://www.obesitymyths.com/

insulin, friend or foe ?

My husband told me he'd seen a show about diabetes but the info provided was confusing.  I only knew that diabetes had something do with blood glucose and insulin, nothing more.  I knew nothing about insulin resistance.  I wanted to learn !

There are many great web sites with info about blood glucose and insulin, so I don't want to re-type everything here.  I will just summarize in the most simplistic sense, I urge you to read more:

Glucose is a very important and necessary chemical which provides energy to cells.  You NEED glucose, but too much of it can be a bad thing.

Diabetes is too much blood glucose.

Insulin is a hormone produced in and released by the pancreas which helps cells utilize glucose.  It also assists fat cells with storing fat and stops fat from being metabolized.   So you can see where I'm going right now !!  Insulin can be a problem for us overweight people.  Insulin is necessary for life, and a proper amount of insulin is necessary for good health.  As with glucose, too much (or too little) is a bad thing.

Type I diabetics are unable to produce normal amounts of insulin.  As a result, their blood glucose is too high.  They rely on external sources of insulin (shots).

Insulin resistance is when the cells do not respond properly to insulin and are unable to take glucose from the blood in a normal manner.  It's a precursor to Type II diabetes.

Type II diabetics can produce normal amounts of insulin but their cells are insulin resistant.  Blood glucose elevates, more insulin is produced, and eventually the pancreas is unable to compensate for the glucose and the blood glucose remains high.

I wonder how many of us have insulin resistant cells or are for any other reason overproducing insulin.  And I wonder if junk food and sweets "addictions" are actually symptoms of too much insulin, over-response of insulin, and/or insulin resistance.

Btw, it's not just sweets, it's fat too.  I read that high fat diets can contribute to insulin resistance.

I'm thinking now that a good weight loss diet focuses on insulin regulation.  What if high insulin is keeping us fat ?  What if we can lower our insulin levels and lose weight more easily and better control our cravings ?

Here's a study that measures the insulin response to 38 different foods.  It might be a good starting point in regulating your insulin level.

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/66/5/1264.pdf

And here is some great info that is aimed at bodybuilders, but hey, they want to lose fat too, while maintaining or building muscle.

http://www.bodyactive-online.co.uk/nutrition/hormones/insulin/nutritionInsulinIndex.asp

I am taking all of this info to heart.  I don't want to eat in a very rigid manner so I won't follow every bit of advice.  But I can apply the principles.

Btw, good news if you are insulin resistant or have too high insulin ... it can be improved through diet (and the scientists say "weight loss" too, but I think what it really is is diet !)

I want to say again that my summary is very simplistic.  Obviously the relationships between eating, glucose, and insulin are very complex.  There may not be any hard-and-fast rules, and each body is different.  But I think that the principles behind insulin regulation are very sound.  They are definitely worth a try !

Here's the first thing that you can do: check out the insulin indices of 38 foods in the study I linked to above.  Try to choose more of the foods that trigger less insulin response.  If you feel the need to eat a sweet treat, choose a low insulin index treat.  If you must choose a high index treat, eat only a small amount.  You know me and my Dove bar, I've decided to eat half of it earlier in the day and the other half hours later, so the impact on my insulin is lower.

If you're really adventurous, you can play around with combos of foods, like having protein-carb and protein-fat meals but never carb-fat or carb alone.  See the info at the other link I provided.

Btw, as for my progress, I completed the first week of my 1600 calorie permanent diet, and so far so good.  I am getting hungry, I know it will take several weeks or even a month or more to get used to the reduced intake, but 1600 calories is a lot easier to tolerate than 1400 or 1200 !!  I can live with this.  I am trying very hard to eat like a normal-weight person eats, to eat a variety of different foods.  I'm also trying to eat a good amount of fruits and veggies.

I said I wasn't going to weigh myself very often but I just need to look !  :-)  I am down a pound, I think some of that is water.  The actual weight lost is probably close to my computer-estimated .5 pound.  We'll see what I weigh next week.

====

One more comment here about weighing myself ... I had a revelation when I stepped on the scale this morning that it really didn't matter if the scale showed progress or not.  I have no time limit !  And I am not on a temporary diet.  So the dismay I used to feel when the scale didn't show what I hoped or expected should be absent.  It won't be, of course.  I'm a lifelong dieter and I have automatic highly negative responses to such things as "cheating" on a diet and not seeing expected progress.  So in addition to revamping what I'm eating, I will need to revamp what goes on in my head as well.

My diet, and welcome to it

Most weight lost diets are too restrictive.  Let’s face it, we overweight people are overweight because, for whatever reason, we dearly love food and have a hard time saying no even when full, and also because we have learned to use food to regulate our moods.  So put us on a 1200 calorie diet that contains few or none of our favorite  foods we feel immediately deprived.  But contrary to conventional wisdom, we are far from weak !  Nobody should, for even a second, think that an overweight person on a 1200 calorie diet is any less physically uncomfortable than a pack-a-day smoker who has been deprived of his/her cigarettes.  We are far from weak, indeed !  We manage to stick to the grueling diets through sheer willpower until we can no longer stand the deprivation and discomfort.  For me, the common breaking points occur when a) for weeks the scale refuses to budge for no logical reason, or b) a series of difficult problems occur in my work and/or personal life.

Most diets are suitable only for losing weight, they are not suitable for maintaining weight loss long-term.  Whether we reach our goals or break our diets because of problems, we have to figure out how to maintain our current weight.  How much do we need to eat ?  Must we count calories for the rest of our lives ?  Can we eat ice cream, chocolate, cakes, or cookies ever again ?  Pizza ???  How do we handle controlling our intake when we don’t have the “high” of weight loss driving us ? 

Most dieters choose goal weights that are too low !  We are unrelentingly battered with messages telling us that we must be thin to be happy.  The standards by which we are all judged are actresses and singers who make millions of dollars and have time to exercise 3 hours per day and be fed custom-cooked meals, and barely-out-of-their-teens anorexic cigarette-puffing models.  There is no room for diversity in the world of the self-appointed arbiters of appearance, many of whom have something to sell you because you have a problem, you’re FAT, and you need to be fixed ASAP.  But the fact is, there is much diversity in the human specie, and it’s perfectly fine if some are larger and some are smaller.  We cannot all be thin, and yet most dieters choose goal weights that will make them thin.

Most dieters choose a time frame that is too short.  I would also love to lose 20 pounds in 2 months, but that doesn’t mean I can actually do it.  In fact, I know I can’t.  It’s not because I don’t want to, it’s not because I’m not trying hard enough, I just can’t !  My body doesn’t always do what I want it to do.  Bodies are incredibly complex, efficient, and self-regulating.  Genetics play a huge role.  We cannot force our bodies to do things that they cannot do.  Ignore this fact now and we’ll be forced to confront it later ... when the scale doesn’t move as quickly as we’d like, or, worse, we have a 4-week plateau, or, even worse, we GAIN weight even though we’ve been completely faithful to our diets.  But even then we don’t admit that our expectations were unrealistic, we simply beat ourselves up for being failures.

Most dieters overestimate their ability to burn calories through exercise.  I would love to be able to use a treadmill for 30 minutes every day, but I can’t.  I’m extremely busy and only have time to complete my most basic and necessary chores, and any time someone tells me “You’d find the time if you really wanted to”, I’d love to reply back “Yah ?  Well you could be smarter if you really wanted to be”.  The best I can do right now is walk as much as possible and take stairs instead of elevators.  Of course my workplace conspires against me, the building managers have secured the stairwells so you cannot use them without setting off alarms.  Don’t even get me started on the selection of food in the vending machines.  The icing on the cake, the health bulletins that the HR department distributes urging us to eat better and get more exercise.

Anyway, my point is ... most diets fail because the diets and the dieters are unreasonable.  Too much deprivation and punishment, too much frustration.

I’m going to try something new.  I’m going to create what I’m calling a permanent diet, a diet that will cause me to lose weight and one that I can stick to when I’ve reached my goal.  And I’m not setting a goal date !  I’m removing the pressure of time right at the very beginning.

In order to create such a diet, I have to answer honestly the following questions:

How much do I really want to weigh ?  Forget what other people think, at what weight do I feel most comfortable and happy ?

How many calories do I require to maintain that weight ?

What foods do I crave and when do I usually like to eat them ?

How much am I willing to exercise, and when ?

I want to weigh 160.  Based on my current weight of 185 and my prior experiences at various weights, I think 160 is a reasonable goal.  I was able to maintain 140-150 when I exercised regularly, but since I won’t be exercising I think 160 is best.

Many years ago I read that to maintain a particular weight, sedentary women require roughly 8 cals/day per pound of body weight, moderately active women require 10, and active women require 12.  Obviously this isn’t going to be exact, but it’s a good place to start.  I think I require 10 cals/day per pound, so if I want to weigh 160 then I will require 1600 cals/day to maintain that weight.

I’m a sweet junkie, and yet I also crave certain nutritious foods.  The sweet I love the most is Dove milk chocolate, 200 calories per bar, and I’m going to make room one each day in my diet.  I also love Dunkin Donuts chocolate chip muffins, but at 630 calories they cannot be part of my daily intake.  I was hoping they have carrageenan in them, now that I’m trying to avoid the stuff, but they don’t.  :-)  So I’ll have to just use my willpower to avoid them.  As for nutritious foods, I love eggs, whole wheat bread and toast, salmon and many other seafoods, turkey and chicken, lean beef, steamed broccoli and carrots and asparagus, fresh salads, baked potatoes, and much more.  There is plenty to choose from.  I will make every attempt to eat the most nutritious real foods that I can eat, not processed crap, especially not the processed crap marketed to dieters.

I’m a grazer, so I’m going to alternate  3 small main meals and 3 snacks throughout the day.  And if I get really hungry in the late evening and my sleep is jeopardized, then I’ll allow myself to go over my 1600 calorie limit.  I’ll eat a small snack, 100-200 calories, something nutritious and satisfying.  And I’m not going to worry about it !

Here’s the rough breakdown:

breakfast           300

snack                150

lunch                 400

Dove bar :-)       200

dinner               400

snack                150

                        ===

total                  1600

As for exercise, there won’t be much right now.  I am fortunate to live close enough to work so that I’m able to walk to and from each day.  I do walk home on most days, but sometimes, especially in the summer, I do not walk to work because I’m running late and don’t have time to walk or the weather is such that if I did walk I would arrive all fuzzy-haired and sweaty.  I’m not going to punish myself so I can lose a tiny fraction of a pound !  If I can get some extra walking in, I’ll do it.

So that’s it !  Goal is 160 lbs, I can eat 1600 calories including 1 Dove milk chocolate bar per day, the remainder will be nutritious and satisfying, I can cheat a little bit if necessary, I am not exercising, and I don’t care how slowly the weight comes off.  Let’s see what happens !!

Now, I wouldn’t be an experienced dieter (or nerd) if I didn’t care, even just a little bit, how long it might take me to reach 160.  :-)  How fast might I lose weight if I consume 1600 cals/day ?  I estimate that I require 1850 cals/day right now, so consuming 1600 cals/day results in a daily deficit of 250 cals.  Over the course of a week the deficit is 250*7= 1750 cals.  A pound of fat is 3500 cals, so it might take me 3500/1750 = 2 weeks to lose a pound of fat.  But that’s only at the very beginning, because as I lose weight my caloric requirements will change.  When I weigh 175 I might only require 1750 cals/day, and my weekly deficit will drop to 150*7= 1050 cals, so it might then take me 3500/1050 = 3 1/3 weeks to lose a pound of fat.

I wrote myself a little computer program, adjusting the caloric requirements each week.  According to the program, I might be 160.x at week #160.  How funny that it worked out that way !  160 in 160 weeks.  That looks really horrible, doesn’t it ?  160 weeks is more than 3 years !  But it’s important to understand that the graph of the weight loss is asymptotic, a curve that swoops down and then slowly heads toward the goal weight.  The early weight loss is much more rapid than the later weight loss.   It’s also important to remember that I’m a body, not a computer.  :-)   Here’s the program output:

weight               week#

185                   0

180.x                9

175.x                23

170.x                41

165.x                71

160.x                160

I’m not going to do it, but let’s say that I was able to burn up an extra 100 cals/day through exercise beyond my normal daily activity.  Here’s the adjusted program output:

weight               week#

185                   0

180.x                7          <-- shaved 2 whole weeks off !

175.x                15

170.x                26

165.x                39

160.x                58         <-- much earlier ! 

(This reminds me of compound interest, it’s amazing how small tweaks can result in large changes over time.)

I do have prior experience taking weight off slowly.  In 2005-2006 I dieted slowly and went from 210 to 175, 35 pounds in the span of approximately 18 months.  That’s an average of only 2 pounds lost per month.  I found that although the slow weight loss was frustrating at times, I also felt much less agitated, I suffered less intense hunger pangs, my skin conformed well, and I felt much more in control.  Even though I regained some of the lost weight, I now have a net loss of 25 pounds instead of 35, I’m doing alright.  I let that weight gain happen, it wasn’t an uncontrolled binge, it was a conscious decision on my part to give in to my need to eat to cope with some very frustrating and difficult things goin on in my life.  Now that I’ve gotten through most of that mess, I’m ready to try again. 

So here goes !  I will keep you updated on my sloooooow progress.  :-)