Today I took a tour of Le Cordon Bleu’s cooking school at the Scotsdale Culinary Institute. All I can say is, wow, what a great school! I would love to go there. There is one minor problem though. It is almost $40,000 to attend for 15 months. I am not about to take out a loan for that. I dont need even more debt with my track record.
Oh well, looks like I am sticking with Dietetics. Sounds like an L. Ron Hubbard book huh?
What is a BMR you ask? No, it isn’t a German made automobile. It means Basal Metabolic Rate and essentially it tells you how many calories your body needs each day at rest, which is rest as in doing nothing more than sitting there all day. So, how many do you need? Break out your calculator; it’s time for some math.
If you are a man your BMR = 66 + (6.3 x Body Weight in lbs) + (12.9 x Height in inches) – (6.8 x age). If you are a woman your BMR = 655 + (4.35 x pounds) + (4.7 x inches) - (4.7 x age). So for me when I was 252 my BMR was 2370 calories, if my math is correct. This figure is just the basic as if I never got out of bed in the morning.
Now you need to add your activity in to the mix. To do that multiply as follows for your level of activity.
Sedentary = 1.2 (little exercise, desk job)
Light Activity = 1.375 (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk)
Moderate Activity = 1.55 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week)
Very Active = 1.725 (heavy exercise/sports 6-7 days/week)
Extreme Activity = 1.9 (heavy exercise/sports, physically demanding job)
I fell in to the sedentary category so I take my 2370 and multiply it by 1.2 and by final numbers are 2844 calories per day, and that is just to maintain that weight I had. Now this is not exact but it comes close without special tests. Next we want to take some of that off, remember that dropping more than about 2 pounds a week and you take off muscle as well.
To maintain a pound of fat it needs about 3500 calories a week. Two pounds is about 7000 calories a week and is good to work with because it is about 1000 calories a day. What I did was make a spreadsheet that would do my calorie additions for me and recorded everything I ate for a month. After that one can get a good idea how much they are taking in and stop counting so much.
Of course as you drop weight your BMR changes as well. So now that I am 218 as of today, what is my BMR? 3239 is my BMR now. Why did it go up? Well my activity went up, my BMR without activity came down to 2090 calories per day from 2370 at my heavier weight but that activity multiplier changed from 1.2 to 1.55.
So does that mean I can eat more now? Yes and no. I have increased my intake by about 100 calories per day but I still have a goal to meet and want to make sure I get there and yes, I am still taking off the pounds. Just remember that your body adjusts quickly to change. The first month I dropped almost twice as much as I did the second. Now I have to work smarter to maintain my loss, which does NOT mean eating less, just eating and exercising right.
Well, the bounced check has been replaced and I have two whole sites to work on for the week. That about pays for a dinner. I guess I will have something to do whilst the wife takes the kids out of town tomorrow. Good news though, there is a job fair on Monday. Maybe something will come up.
Fingers crossed.
Tonight my wife and I went to the movies and saw Unleashed. It was a great movie but these kids in front of us kept talking. Thinking out loud and just enough that my wife could hear, I mouthed off about wishing I had something next time so I could silence the little bastards for good. What a mistake that was.
All the way out the door and to the car I got an ear full about how violence was wrong and nobody deserves that and how my temper needs to change. Blah, blah, blah. This after seeing a Jet Lee movie. Whatever. Then silence the entire way home and she goes straight to bed. Now, I am not violent. All talk, etc. I made the mistake on the way out of saying that I don’t care.
I am off to the couch now.
Me and my big mouth.