Help me raise $500 for the homeless through the charity Back on My Feet.
As of this past Saturday, February 15, I have completed one full month of the activity monitoring / fitness plan. So far, I have dropped my BMI (Body Mass Index) by 1.9 and my weight by 11.10 pounds. I have increased my average number of steps from 4,000 per day to 11,000 per day. On an average weekday, I am burning 2,700 calories, where previously I was burning no more than 2,200 a day.

I am now waking up closer to 6:30 AM, vs the previous 7:45 timing, and I’m going to bed regularly at 10:30 PM in contrast to my previous 12:30 – 1:00 AM timing (usually mistakenly on the couch). My sleep score has risen around 4% on average, and the number of interruptions per night is now at maximum (and rarely at that) just once. In the past, it was regularly two or three.

My calorie composition has also changed during the weekdays, as I consistently run about a 55% Carbohydrate, 25% Protein, 20% Fat makeup of my calories. I previously was trending at a 53%, 18%, 29% breakdown.

Going forward, I need to decrease my carbohydrate percentage, relative to protein, and I’d like to keep my fat intake at about the range I have established. I will need to up my overall calorie consumption, which is going to require a parallel increase in activity to keep the 1,000 calorie deficit I have established. In fact, as I have been losing weight, my results for each workout are, as expected, less than what they previously were. So I have had to compensate with varying my workouts and extending my time in the gym to still hit certain thresholds.

Saturday itself was a good example of needing to compensate for a higher caloric intake: I had gone out with friends for dinner, and before I knew it, I had consumed 2,766 calories for the day (and not the best mix of to carbohydrates to protein to fat). Having already done a hike in the morning (yes, it’s a ritual now with my dog), I elected to hit the treadmill after dinner for two hours. The end result is that I had burned 3,849 calories over the course of the day, maintaining the 1,000 calorie deficit. I also realized for as good as Fox and Hound’s burgers are, they essentially are their own day’s worth of food.

The below graphs shows that I essentially had to double the amount of exercise, resulting in quite a bit of soreness the next day. The peak heart rate was when I was hiking uphill in two feet of snow that had yet to be traversed. So while every step was itself a chore, I knew it would produce results.

With one month down, I am happy to report significant progress. I am right at the upper band of what is an acceptable range of weight to lose over the course of a month. I know it will become more difficult as my metabolism fights the consistent calorie deficits, and as my body becomes more efficient from all of the exercise. My hope though is I should have a decent gauge of those changes in my fitness tracker. I am shooting for a consistent loss of ten pounds each month, so I should expect, by the Broad Street Run, to have lost forty pounds. It will not be the end of my training, only an important inflection point and goal to propel me into the spring and summer months to finish up my weight loss efforts.

Thanks for reading.