Budget continued

Yesterday's post was about the budget and the wording was straight out of the guest lecture book.  Today it is time to do some calculations, so get your spreadsheet ready.

The first thing to determine is how much weight you want to lose, or the caloric debt.  Put that at the top of the page.  On the next line, multiply the number of pounds by 3500.  This is the caloric debt.  If you take a pound of fat and place it in the lab, it will take 3500 calories to burn it.  For example, if you want to lose 50 lbs of fat, you need to burn 175,000 calories.

Next we determine the income.  The income side can be split up into base income and other income.  The base income is the RMR as discussed previously.  Other income is the calories burned from exercise.  We're going to assume that our unit of time here is a week.  So, for the base income, multiple your RMR by 7 and add up all of the calories burned through exercise for that week.  This will be the total caloric income on a weekly basis.

Now for the expenses.  Expenses are easier to track, so add up all of the calories consumed through food for that week.

Take the total income and subtract the total expenses to get the total caloric savings on a weekly basis.  Divide this number by 3500 to get the number of pounds lost that week.

At the bottom of the page, list your current weight and goal weight.  Subtract the two numbers to get the number of pounds that you'd like to lose.  Hopefully this will be the same at the number at the top of the page.  One last calculation.  Divide the number of pounds that you'd like to lose by the number of pounds that you're going to lose that week to see how many weeks it will take to reach the goal.  You can even use the spreadsheet to tell you what date you'll reach the goal.

You might be saying this is too simple and there's a lot of variables.  I understand about the variables.  Part of loosing weight is gaining muscle.  I've heard people say at first you're only loosing water weight. Of course life happens and we can't work out as much some weeks.  Sometimes the body reacts differently.  The quality and quantity of sleep is a variable.  Life happens and we become stressful, which will become a variable.  Sometimes we hit a plateau and won't lose weight one week.

The key is to control or track the variables, which is harder said than done.  If stress is a variable, then control the variable by relaxing however you like to relax.  Life happens and you may need to adjust the caloric budget to reflect not working out as much.  The muscle mass gained is a variable that I know can be tracked.  I think with a scale and a body fat percentage measurement, the pounds gained of muscle can be calculated.  I'm going to check it out and get back to you later.

So, like I said earlier, this budget is the basis of the program here at the BLR.  They do a good job of providing food that is low calorie, but filling and full of good nutrition.  The exercises are interval based and are never boring.  It is a great program and I highly recommend it.

Closing thought for the day:  Another personal record was broken today.  My van was assigned to the beach hike and it previously took me 50 minutes to hike from the van to the bottom of the stairs on the second beach section, then another 20 minutes to hike to the end of the beach.  Today the first part took me 45 minutes and then 18 minutes to the end of the beach.