Chapter 3 deals with Tracking Your Progress
One of the key things that I thought was essential was the idea of keeping a food journal. He shares one study that shows that overweight people who kept a food journal lost 2x as much weight opposed to when they did not log.
It is amazing how much tracking your food helps you stay focuses. It is amazing how many times I casually grazed by the food pantry or snack sitting out at school and grabbed a little of this or that. That all adds up. I am keeping a food log for P90X. I am not counting calories so to speak(I could, but I am not). Instead I am tracking portions. P90X has you eating a lot of food which is good. This is a lifestyle changer. I am not dieting. Instead I am changing my approach to what I eat. Snacks are the hardest part for me. The time period from 6:00 – 9:00 at night is so hard because I am so used to grabbing food and sitting and reading or watching college basketball. I cannot do that now. I slipped up on Day 2 and ate a Sundae and it instantly made me sick to my stomach. I am already adapting(slowly), but my body will soon no longer crave my bad habits.
There are three variable relevant to reaching my goals
1. Body weight and composition
2. Calories consumed
3. Calories consumed
There was some interesting reading about weighing yourself. It is suggested to only weigh yourself once a week. I weigh in every morning after my morning workout, but I do that to gauge my workout and how thing are progressing. The key here is not to get obsessed with day to day influx of the numbers. You should be more concerned about every week or even every 4 weeks. Don’t get obsessed with the numbers.
A couple of tips for weighing yourself
1. Measure same time of day using same location and scale
2. Stay well hydrated
3. Use the bathroom before weighing in
4. moisten a towel for conductivity to check body fat %
As mentioned before I am not going to calculate calories. I am using the portion approach of P90X which has you go through some more calculations. It determined that I am the highest level (three) so I need 3000 calories a day. The crazy thing is that it does not really matter what method I use because I used the number crunching in Racing Weight to determine my calories need in a day and it came out to 3022. I am right on target for both my Racing Weight and P90X.
1. The first thing I had to go was determine my BMR or Basal Metabolic rate which is calories burned at rest. I went to www.bmi-calculator.net to determine that my BMR is 2222.72
2. I then had to calculate my calories burned through activities. I wore a pedometer for day to see what this would come out to. I did wear my pedometer during my basketball practice as this is something that I typically don’t do outside of the short season. I wore it from 7 to 2:30. I took 7,000 steps and burned 300 calories according to my pedometer.
3. Last I had calculate my calories burned during workouts. I workout at least 5 days a week and this will pick up to six days here soon. I took an average of my running(not the long runs) and weightlifting and came up with 500
You throw these numbers together and you have 3022. This is a rough figure and give or take depending on my day and my workout, but it places me right on track with my current plan of attack to get to my OPW.
You never know what is possible until you try
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