One of the first things I wanted to do this time round was to take a baseline. My previous attempts at weight loss have always been preceded by a bout of laziness. Over the past few months though my exercise regime has been up and down and my diet has gone along with it. As we trained for our walk I tended to be a lot more active at weekends and tended to eat more. Once we finished the walk I found that my eating didn’t drop as much as it should’ve done considering I had stopped exercising as much.
So during this past week I wore my heart rate monitor for a couple of days, I kept a brief food diary and I just paid a little bit more attention to what I was doing. Here’ what I found.
As an office worker I burn very few calories during the day.
The recommended calorific intake for an average man is 2500 calories per day. Meaning the average man could eat that much and maintain his weight. Basing the calculation on my current weight and activity I should be able to eat 3149 calories per day and maintain my current weight of 115kg. (Have a look at my delicious bookmarks if you want to delve into this a little deeper.) However, I wore my heart rate monitor for a couple of days and accoring to my Polar F6 and the maths it works out for me I burn on average just under 2000 calories a day if I don’t exercise. It really shocked me to learn I used that few calories during a day.
I actually eat pretty well
My food diary was full of fruit, veg, white meat etc etc. It contained very few biscuits, cakes and all the other food stuffs you would associated with obese types like me.
I exercise hard
When I exercise I tend to go at it quite hard burning up to 1000 calories per hour. That’s probably the only reason I’ve been maintaining my weight as well as I have considering how few calories I burn. However, it does mean recovery can be a problem and sometimes I can’t manage 5 days in a row.
I eat when I’m bored
I already knew this but I eat, or at least go to eat, when I’m bored.
I enjoy gym classes more than the gym
Someone shouting at me gives me plenty of motivation. I struggle to motivate myself sometimes.
I drink to much tea
5 cups a day. Far too many.
So that’s it. My baseline. Where do I go from here? I don’t know yet. Next steps are goals and motivation.
Do you guys know your own baselines or how did you guys start?
Sid.