Weight loss!

Okay, so I weighed in today at a somewhat round-in-the-belly 168 1/2 lbs. after getting off the elliptical machine and stripping to my naked core, no towel or nuthin'.

Yesterday, I was 171 lbs. before my treadmill run and 168 lbs. after, but I think the clothing I had on before and lack thereof after contributed to the discrepancy.

I'm sticking to the idea that I weigh 168, and hoping the 171 was, you know, a cruel joke that those pesky electronic scales at the gym sometimes like to play on me. Not funny guys, not funny at all.

For a guy who once wrestled (in high school) at 112 - 114 lbs., my adult heft is quite a change. Naturally, I have no desire to lose 60 lbs. (I'd look like a scary skeleton, or maybe just French.) I do have much desire to drop 15 or even 20.

For now, I'm going to set a smaller goal of losing 8 to 10 lbs ... in seven weeks. That's 1 lb. to 1 1/2 lb. per week... Not a modest task, but, according to
TheDietChannel.com, those who aim to lose no more than one or two lbs. weekly are more likely to keep it off than those who engage in quick-result, fad diets.

So how do I lose a lb. per week? Well, the Diet Channel has 10 tips for me, and because it's on the Internet, they must be true! Actually, the tips are sensible ones that parrot stuff i've heard elsewhere.

Eat slower; do at least 30 minutes of exercise a day, five days a week; add weight lifting and cardio to your workout routine; focus on getting healthier, not thinner, etc. I can accomplish this last part by focusing on my running goal. I need to get back below 9-minute miles for my distance runs. I was so much speedier 1 1/2 years ago... sigh. :(

One tip I didn't know:
One pound is equal to 3,500 calories. So to drop 1 lb. a week, you would need to drop 500 calories per day, on average. (Or 700 calories a day for five days, followed by two days off).

There's two ways of going about this: you could drop 250 calories from your daily intake (i.e. skip dessert) and then exercise for 30 minutes, and drop another 250. Or, the way I figure it, keep your caloric intake more or less the same while exercising for an hour per day.

This latter option is actually hard to do because our tendency is to eat more once we start expending a lot of energy (and if you've ever run for an hour, which is six miles or more, you realize you are using quite a bit of energy!).

Still, thinking this way gives me hope. As long as I can take 700 calories off a day, five days a week, I can drop seven lbs in 7 weeks... If I can push it a little harder, I can drop 10 lbs. in seven weeks.

March 29 was my first way-in date... April 16 will be my final weigh-in date! Yippee yee haw.