If you want to lose weight, then you’ll need to create a caloric deficit. In other words, you have to burn more calories than you consume. The size of this deficit will determine how quickly you lost weight.

Generally, when people talk about losing weight, they’re talking about losing fat. So just how many calories are there in a pound of fat?

Calories in fat, protein, and carbohydrates

From a dietary perspective, there are 4 calories in a gram of protein and 4 calories in a gram of carbohydrates. In contrast, there are 9 calories in a gram of fat. Given that there are 454 grams in a pound, this means that there are 9 x 454 = 4086 calories in a pound of fat. Right? Well, not really…

Calories in a pound of body fat

As it turns out, body fat (also known as adipose tissue) contains more than just fat. It also contains protein, connective tissue, water, etc. Thus, a pound of body fat corresponds to “just” 3500 calories.

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but… If you consume 3500 more calories than you burn, you’ll gain a pound of body fat (more or less). Conversely, if you burn 3500 calories more than you take in, you’ll lose a pound of body fat.

So… If you’re looking to lose a pound per week, you’ll have to create a caloric deficit of 500 calories per day. This isn’t an easy thing to do unless you’re making smart choices in the kitchen. Yes, you can amp up your exercise regimen, but it take a lot of exercise to burn off junk food.

Our eight year old asked me a funny question the other day:

“How do you build muscles in your nipples? I wanna make my boobs dance.”

Apparently he saw someone on TV flexing their pecs and making them bounce, and he wants try it out himself. I told him to go do some pushups, and off he went.

P.S. Catchy title, huh?

I have a quick little fitness anecdote to share… Earlier today when I went upstairs to exercise, I discovered our eight and nine year old working out together. They were doing sit ups, pushups, etc. And best of all, they weren’t fighting.

When I asked what they were doing, they answered: “Getting in shape.”

Not only that, but our twelve year old has recently started tagging along with my wife when she goes out for a walk. For him, I think it’s equal parts getting fresh air and having some time alone with Mom, but whatever it is, we’re happy about it.

To be fair, they’ve always been very active (and very healthy) kids, playing football and soccer, riding bikes, shooting hoops, swimming, doing Taekwando, etc. Nonetheless, I can’t help but think that the positive example that my wife and I are trying to set is rubbing off on them.

While we certainly don’t want them to become fitness-obsessed, or to grow up with unhealthy body images, we’re pleased to see them showing an interest in exercise. Beyond this, it was great to see our eight and nine year old working together instead of picking on each other.

I mentioned about a week ago that I had starting tracking my weight online with PhysicsDiet. At that time, however, I didn’t have enough data to post a meaningful chart. Now I do, so here it is…

As you can see below, I’ve been tracking my weight for nearly two weeks.

Aside from a seemingly random (but repeatable) upward blip on the 22nd, I spent the first week in a very narrow band centered around 244.5 pounds. Over the past few days, however, you can see that my weight has begun marching downward.

I think the biggest driver in all of this has been an uptick in exercise, as I’ve really been focusing on longer and more regular rowing sessions. I’ve increased my standard session to a 5 minute warmup (= just over 1km) followed by stretching and then a solid 10km piece.

In the past 12 days, I’ve done 7 of these 10km rows. Including warmups, that’s nearly 80km. Not a huge amount for hard core rowers, but definitely a step in the right direction for me, and certainly enough for me to be getting “enough exercise” in the eyes of the experts.

In addition to the rowing, the past two weeks have seen one or two good elliptical sessions, a long walk with my wife, and a whole bunch of pushups. While I’m not on a diet per se, I’ve also been eating quite well, so I’m hoping that there’s a graph full of green in my future.

Oh, and speaking of pushups… I just wanted to give a shout out to Andrew for completing the 100 pushups challenge.

I just ran across an interesting document from the US Department of Health & Human Services. In it, they discuss physical activity guidelines for Americans. Guess what? As a country we’re fat and lazy, and we don’t get enough exercise.

Types of physical activity

For starters, they define baseline activity as:

…the light-intensity activities of daily life, such as standing, walking slowly, and lifting lightweight objects.

The first recommendation is to increase your baseline activities to help burn more calories, improve bon health, etc. However, if you only do baseline activities then you’re still considered “inactive.”

In contrast, health-enhancing physical activity is defined as:

…activity that, when added to baseline activity, produces health benefits.

They go on to specify that such physical activity includes things such as brisk walking, jumping rope, dancing, lifting weights, doing yoga, etc. In other words, things that most of use would categorize as “exercise.”

Four levels of physical activity

In order to make things a bit more specific, they go on define four different levels of physical activity

Inactive is defined as having no physical activity beyond baseline activities.

Low activity is defined as having moderate-intensity physical activity beyond the baseline activities, but for fewer than 150 minutes (2.5 hours) per week.

Medium activity is defined as having moderate intensity physical activity beyond baseline activities for 150-300 minutes (2.5 to 5 hours) per week. Alternatively, you can have vigorous-intensity physical activity of 75-150 minutes per week.

High activity is defined as having physical activity beyond baseline activities for more than 300 minutes (5 hours) per week.

Low activity is listed as providing “some” health benefits, whereas medium activity provides “substantial” health benefits, and high activity provides “additional” health benefits.

Recommended activity levels

In recent years, the standard recommendation has been for adults to get 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on five or more days per week. This roughly corresponds to the low end of the “medium activity” category, which provides “substantial” health benefits.

The Health & Human Services guidelines affirm this long-standing view, but go on to argue that it’s too restrictive. The reason for this is that existing research doesn’t allow us to say that 30 minutes per day spread across 5 days per week is any better (or worse) than 50 minutes per day spread across 3 days per week.

Thus, the new guidelines simply specify that people should be getting a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week and leave the specifics up to you. Are you getting enough? Most people aren’t.

Source: US Dept of Health & Human Services via GetFitSlowly

Earlier this week, I created an account on PhysicsDiet.com. In case you’re not familiar with PhysicsDiet, it’s a great (and free!) charting tool for tracking your weight loss progress online. I’ve only been using it for a few days, but so far I’m impressed.

One of the major annoyances with tracking your body weight on a regular basis is that they are seemingly random ups and downs that aren’t really reflective of your progress. Given the sheer amount of input and output that we experience on a daily, it’s not surprising that there’s some noise in the system.

The beauty of PhysicsDiet is that it plots both your real data as well as a moving average. The moving average smooths out the daily fluctuations and provides you with a nice curve which is very useful for estimating your “true” weight.

As long as you keep that line trending down, you’re losing weight — even if you have days where your weight blips up or down. When your “blips” above the line, it turns red. Stay below, and it’s green.

Another nice touch is that it provides you with an estimated “daily deficit” (or excess, I presume) of calories based on your recent weight loss progress. These calorie estimates are a powerful motivator (at least to me) as they provide a connection between daily decisions and longer-term progress.

Side note: I’m not posting my graph yet because there’s so little data and not much to see. Once things get rolling I’ll probably post periodic updates.

As I write this, there are two mozzarella sticks sitting in the kitchen. My wife made them as a treat for the kids this evening, and boy do they look good. Amazingly, I haven’t eaten them, and I’m not planning on doing so.

On any other night, I might have eaten them. But tonight? Tonight I was saved by our apple slicer. For background, my wife went to a Pampered Chef party a few months back and came home with a fantastic apple slicer. At first I was skeptical. I mean, who pays $12 for an apple slicer? But I was wrong. This thing rocks.

As goofy as it sounds, this little beauty has often been my saving grace when it comes staving off junk food. You see, I love sliced apples, but I’m also rather lazy. If given the choice between spending a minute slicing an apple by hand or grabbing a snack out of the pantry, I’d almost certainly go for the pantry. Pathetic? Yes. But true nonetheless.

I’ve come to realize that, at least for me, little conveniences like an apple slicer, baby carrots, etc. can be the difference between success and failure. It’s all about minimizing whatever barriers stand between you and your goals. It sounds trivial, but with this apple slicer in hand, I can whip up some wedges in ten seconds flat, making it significantly less likely that I’ll opt for crap.

And tonight, that’s exactly what I did. I grabbed an apple, sliced it into wedges, and sat down to savor my victory over those greasy (yet ever so tasty) cheese sticks.

Earlier today, while rowing my way toward the end of an 8km workout, I was struck by how much I prefer workouts of a specified distance vs. those that go for a specified time. This got me to wondering how others feel…

Given the choice between a timed workout and a distance-based workout that would take roughly the same amount of time to complete, would you have a preference? If so, which would you choose?

In my case, it would be the distance-based workout hands down. As for why, I’m not entirely sure. I guess it’s mostly a psychological difference. With a distance-based workout, a bit of extra effort gets me to the finish line more quickly. In contrast, a time-based workout means that I have to push through for the full time no matter how hard I work.

Over the past week or so, I’ve noticed a bit of tenderness along the inside of my elbow joint. The symptoms are most consistent with the beginning of medial epicondylitis (commonly called Golfer’s Elbow or Little League Elbow), so I’ve decided to take it easy in hopes of avoiding a chronic problem.

Medial epicondylitis is actually caused by overuse of the wrist flexors (which pull the hand downward) and is a common complaint amongst rowers (as well as golfers, . I’ve actually skipped out on doing any push-ups since I noticed the problem, and tonight I decided to skip rowing in favor the elliptical.

I’ve actually had this sort of elbow pain in the past, and it’s generally cleared up on its own when I’ve backed off on the rowing, so I’m hoping that will happen again. I’m also taking some ibuprofen to minimize inflammation, and will progress to the full-blown R.I.C.E. treatment regimen if things don’t improve.

Fingers crossed, but I think I’ll be back at it within a few days.

I just ran across an interesting study on the effects of soft drink consumption on the risk of pancreatic cancer. Apparently the consumption of two or more soft drinks per week increases your risk of pancreatic cancer by a whopping 87%.

Of course, this is an 87% increase in a rather small number, but still… Pancreatic cancer is a very scary disease, with a 5% five year survival rate. I guess this is just one more reason to avoid soft drinks.

While the researchers aren’t sure of the underlying cause of this relationship, they suspect it has to do with the sugar in soft drinks increasing the insulin level in the body. This, in turn, could contribute to pancreatic cancer cell growth.

Not surprisingly, the beverage industry has taken exception to this research.

Source: Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention