Brother Simpleton

So far, the progress is much more rapid than I expected. I lost 7 pounds in 8 days, almost 1 pound per day. This, of course, seems to be contradicting the theory that 1 pound is equivalent to 3500 calories: it is highly unlikely that I spend 4500 calories per day.

What could be the explanations? Maybe the theory is wrong. Or maybe I have a highly unusual metabolism. Or maybe (and most likely) this is a fluke and my weight loss will slow down and average to a more reasonable amount.

I am going to wait one more week, and if it is still that fast, I’ll start to increase my daily calorie budget. Which will be a pity, because I have no problems maintaining 1000 calories per day, and I like loosing weight fast :)

For the first time in my life, I seriously decided to loose weight. I am going to document the process here, for two reasons: to encourage others to do the same (as needed, of course!) and to make it harder for me to back out.

I always hated dieting, diets, and diet books. However, recently I have (completely by accident) read one which I found quite readable and sensible: Hacker’s Diet by the Autodesk founder John Walker. The book can be summarized in a few sentences, and the rest contains motivation, rationalization and ideas of result processing. Exactly what I needed.

The basic idea (which is, of course, not Walker’s invention) is called calorie counting. You decide at what rate you want to lose weight, calculate how many calories per day you should consume to achieve it, and then count your calories every day to satisfy your calorie budget.

Here is what I started from. My weight was around 200 pounds, and I wanted to decrease it to roughly 160 pounds as soon as possible. Multiple sources say that it is not healthy to lose more than 2 pounds per week, so I am going to try to do 1.5-2 pounds/week; at this rate it will take me 20-26 weeks to achieve my goal. Now, each pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories; thus 1 pound/week equals 500 calories/day (nice and round number; that’s why we the dieters count in pounds and not in kilograms). Thus, I need to eat 750-1000 calories per day less than I spend.

I guessed that I was spending 2000 calories per day (which was probably too low, see later); so I decided to try to follow a 1000 calories/day diet and see what happens. The beauty of the diet, of course, is that I can eat whatever I want. It is just the quantity which is limited, not quality.

My first week report is coming in the next message.

Update. You can see all my progress reports, up to now, if you follow the weight-loss-progress category.