Weeks -25 and -24

Week -25 was characterized by way too much food and no exercise. According to Lose It! I was 1414 calories over for the week. I suspect it was closer to 2000 or more.

Week -24 was fine, 653 calories under and three days of exercise. Christmas lunches are done, so things are a little saner food-wise. The only major issue is that I felt very hungry a lot of the time.

The frustrating thing with both those weeks is that the weight is not moving. I'm running on a target of 1843 calories per day. Lose it! calculates a daily intake of 1893 should be enough to get me to lose 1.5 pounds per week. In the four weeks that I've been doing this, I've been under my weekly limit by 151 calories, 430 calories, over by 1414 and finally under by 653.

My metabolism isn't slow, it's special :)

So, the only cure I know of for this is to first increase the running and decrease the percent of calories by fat. Lose It! has this fantastic feature where you can review your nutrient balance for the past as well (depending on entering it, of course). Although some of it is estimated, my % of calories from fat for the past 4 weeks was: 32%, 37%, 25% and finally 17%.

Everything I read indicates that fat breeds fat. Some authors (remember Pritikin?) advocate a diet where only 5% of your calories come from fat. That's a bit extreme for me. I think if I can keep it in the range of 20% and pump the running, we'll see if that will turn the corner.

Exercise this week consisted of a 30 minute fast walk on Thursday and two 25 minute runs on the weekend.

The weirdness is that walking still hurts my hip and stiffens my leg. Running doesn't. Note that the running is not particularly speedy. I think I was about a 14 min/mile pace on Saturday and a 13 min/mile pace average on Sunday. (Each day, though, I did a minute at 8 min/mile, just so my body remembers). The speed keeps my heart rate in the high training zone, so that's the speed I need to go. I expect that will improve quickly as heart/lungs tend to respond pretty quickly to the training effect.

Likely no post next week, I'll do a two week summary again in January.