Weight Loss II

"We are each an experiment of one" --- George Sheehan





An overweight runner said to me once how he hoped

to lose 10 pounds and how that might help him

in the upcoming marathon. While I am not sure

about the boost in race performance from

weight lost, I certainly shared his determination

to shed off some unwanted fat.

But trying to lose weight while training for a marathon

at the same time can be very difficult and frustrating

experience. You need to experiment with lot of

variables and try to find a balance in calorie intake

and expense so that you still have enough energy to train

through all those long runs, tempo runs, interval workout, etc.

that will instill progression in performance while at the same

time lose some pounds.


If you try to do the same, I might be able to give some pointers,

but again, I am no expert whatsoever and you are warned to take this

with a grain of salt.


First of all, never ever lose weight fast.


A single pounds of weight lost in a week is the absolute upper limit.

I seriously doubt that anybody can still maintain a decent

quality training schedule if he lose weight faster than that.

Honestly, I lost 10 lbs in about 12 weeks, and I personally

find that I was not as energetic as before and the quality of my quality

runs like long run, tempo, interval workouts are usually compromised.

Most importantly, I find myself more prone to injury.

I felt that I seriously need to slow down the weight lost progression,

may be losing a pound in every two or three weeks is the

more appropriate formula.



Secondly, you need to weight daily regularly and

log it. You can use a spreadsheet software like Excel to log and

graph it. If you don't like to turn on the PC every time after you

weight yourself in the scale, by all means, use that pencil and

log book graph book. The important thing is that

you log the data and be able to plot a graph to see the trend.


You then have a choice whether you want to log the daily

calorie intake and expense. If you decide to be meticulous

about it, then, you need to have a system to estimate the calorie

content of the food you take as well as your calorie expenses.


First let's talk about the easier of the two, which is daily

calorie expense. You need to estimate you

Basal metabolic rate(BMR) as well as

your daily activity calorie expenditure.

You can visit
BMR Calculator to calculate your estimated BMR.

Then you can visit

Calorie Calculator

to calculate your calorie expense for various training that you do, i.e., running.





Now let's look at the more complex part of the two, the calorie intake.

To be able to estimate your daily calorie intake, you need to do a bit

of research and experiment. You can visit the following site

Food calorie

to get a rough idea of what the calorie content for various kind of food

to begin with. Don't worry that you don't know how to relate how

much is a cup, how much is a portion, etc. Just get a rough idea of

how much calorie each food carry.

What is important is that you slowly developed a system of estimating

the calorie content of the food that you take daily. It doesn't matter

whether the estimate is accurate or not, what is important is that you

employ the same system in estimating the food calorie content throughout.


With the BMR and calorie burnt information, together with your own way/system

of estimating the food calorie content, you can now log daily calorie intake

and expense. You will keep logging these data for an extensive period of

time, then, you will try to analyse the relationship between calorie

deficit(calorie intake - calorie expense) to your weight change and find

a relationship between the two. For example, from 3 months of

data analysis, you can conclude that with your own system of estimation,

your average daily calorie deficit of 400 will lead to a pound of weight loss in

two weeks or something like that.


Forget about what people tell you that to lose a pound of fat you need to

burn 3500 calories, etc. In addtional to the fact that this requires you

to know the exact calorie content of the food together with the exact amount

(could you tell me how much calorie to count for my mum's secret recipe of

Cantonese fried noodle in oster sauce with black pepper that was served at dinner),

your body chemistry and metabolism is much more complex and

complicated than that, and each individual's mileage may varied.


What is important is that you find your own formula that describe yourself

best. And isn't in that sense "We are each an experiment of one"?



Through an extensive period of data gathering, logging

and analysis, fine tune your calorie intake and expense estimation

system so that it will best correlate with your weight gain or loss.

It took me two years of fine tuning and it is still ongoing, though,

I now already developed a fairy accurate estimation system

that can correlate well between my estimated calorie deficit with my weight change.



Once you found that formula, it seems that you are now totally in charge of

the rate of weight gain/loss. Unfortunately, things doesn't always go that way

and you will find you need to revisit the analysis again and again. I

suspect that there are other influential factors involved, like the intensity/

volume of the training, stress level, sleep pattern, etc., that somehow

affect the metabolism rate of the body.


Lastly, losing weight is not as easy as it is said.

We all need a fair amount of discipline and persistence to carry

out the plan. As always, when we find ourselves wondering

why we live a life resemble a great deal to that of a monk's,

let's treat this as we are doing ourselves great favour by adopting a

healthier lifestyle.


Hope this help.

Crank on.