Thursday, June 17, 2010

Diet: Phase 1

Phase 1 is complete and went extremely well. I lost 13 pounds with very little effort, no restriction of calories, and no perceivable negative side affects.

I track calories IN very accurately. Calories OUT is an approximation. I use the estimated resting calories burned for a person my height and weight with an office job, which is about 2,000 calories a day. I add any exercise I get like biking to work, lifting weights, softball, and basketball. So you can see I've been burning about 500 calories a day through exercise.

I estimate about 7 lbs of my weight loss is simply water weight (the weight dropped in the first week). But there is a discrepancy in the remaining 6 lbs. According to my calorie counting I should have lost 1.1 lbs. Where did the other 5 lbs go? Either I'm more active than I'm giving myself credit for, or the type of food I'm eating is raising my basal metabolic rate (BMR).

If you starve yourself or eat a very low calorie diet your body will naturally reduce your BMR very quickly. I don't believe my body is doing that.

I will say that tracking every calorie has made me aware of how much I ate previously. Many times in the first month I wanted to eat more but I was aware of how much I had already eaten so I decided to skip the snack I was contemplating. Also, my limited food selection prevented me from overeating. One other observation I've had is that since fats are more calorie dense than carbs or protein the volume of food I'm eating has dropped dramatically.

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Monday, June 14, 2010

The Jumbo Dog

It was a terrific weekend with the Smiths and Hollemans at the cottage. We had great weather and life is always easier when the kids are having a great time.
Evelyn loves 3 things about the cottage above all others. 1) The boat, 2) The beach, and 3) The Steensma's big blow-up alligator. She got plenty of boat time this weekend and never got sick of it. Her favorite part of riding is counting off "1, 2, 3, JUMP" when someone has to get into the water to go skiing.




The highlight of the weekend was Erin's recent purchase of the JUMBO DOG. The jumbo dog is an impressive 11 feet long and holds up to 5. My cousins had a 2 person version (the TORPEDO) when I was young and I remember loving it. The jumbo dog did not disappoint. It was fun for all.





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Monday, June 07, 2010

Pure Michigan

Ahhhh, summertime.


Like the glassy water surface at 7:15 on a Friday...
Like the soft sounds of a paddle boat gracing over the calm during another stunning sunset...
Like the grunting of 12 men lifting an awkward shore station into place...


Life just feels better at the cottage in a Michigan summer.

Your trip begins at Indian Trails....Pure Michigan

It was one of the warmest Memorial Day weekends ever and we enjoyed it greatly. I'm hoping it is a MUCH warmer summer than last year. So far so good!

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