calories

Losing weight is easy, absent some real medical problem. Ready? Here we go:

If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight.

If you burn more calories than you eat, you will lose weight.

The more of a difference between burning and eating, the faster you will gain or lose weight.

Now, burning calories doesn't just mean exercise, although that's an important part of it. It's also what you burn just walking around during the day. Or sitting in front of the computer. Or sleeping. What this means is if you take in 2000 calories in a day, you don't have to burn 2000 calories doing exercise....

"Knowing your Daily Calorie Needs is more than knowing how many calories your body needs for its basic physiologic functions (known as your Resting Metabolic Rate or BMR). It's also important to know how many calories your body needs to maintain certain daily activities. By combining your resting metabolic rate and your daily activity level, you will get the total number of calories your body needs during the day."

24hr Fitness daily calorie needs calculator. A tip: if you're not sure what activity level you should use, calculate each in turn and make a separate note of them, so you can get a sense of both the range you should be in on a given day, but also giving you some flexibility -- if I want to eat that stuff I should incorporate some exercise.

Bicycling.com: "Fly Up Hills: Four climbing secrets that'll have you soaring in 30 days"

This climbing regimen, from Ultrafit-certified coach Andy Applegate of a2coaching in Asheville, North Carolina, will put so much power into your pedals, your buddies will swear they see wings as you leave them in your wake. Start today and you'll see results by the end of the month....

Starling Fitness: "Liquid Calories Count"

A University of North Carolina study shows that liquid calories are to blame for the obesity rates in the United States....Since we don’t tend to eat less food when we consume more liquid calories, and their study shows that consumption of extra calories when they are in drinks is linked to weight gain, they have suggested the following recommendations for drink consumption...

Ready to Ride: "Fair weather rider?"

If you are the kind of rider that cringes at the thought of getting wet when riding, here is a way to stay dry and still get your miles in....

Kent's Bike Blog: "Good Gear for Bad Times"

Living and cycling in the Pacific Northwest I perhaps get too many chances to test foul weather gear. The Ultra Marathon Cycling Association (UMCA) decided to tap my expertise and had me write about some of my favorite bits of nasty weather gear....

"Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is the minimum number of calories your body needs to support its basic physiological functions, including breathing, circulating blood and all of the numerous biochemical reactions required to keep you alive. Your RMR is generally 60-75% of your total daily caloric expenditure."

24hr Fitness RMR calculator

"Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) shows the number of calories your body needs to operate. This doesn't account for any activity, it's simply the energy needed to sustain a heartbeat, breathing and normal body temperature. It measures the body at rest, not sleep, at room temperature."

24hr Fitness BMR calculator

See also BMI.

While the Body Mass Index is inaccurate for certain individuals (such as elite athletes), it will give the average person a basic idea of where they are at with their body composition. There are numerous calculators, both web-based and standalone, available online.

"Body Mass Index (BMI) is an index used to estimate ones body fat. BMI indicates your health risks by comparing your height and weight. Males with a BMI above 27.8 and women over 27.3 are considered overweight. Males with a BMI less than 20.7 and women below 19.1 are classified as underweight."

24hr Fitness BMI calculator

See also BMR.

An AP article -- Study: Low-Calorie Diet Keeps Heart Young -- is interesting by itself, though nothing particularly earth-shattering. "Eat less and eat well" can do even more than "Eat right, exercise" for overall health. Pretty cool.

On top of that is this paragraph at the end:

[The Doctor] stressed that simply consuming less food is not the answer. Members of the study group favor a diet resembling a traditional Mediterranean diet, focusing on vegetables, olive oil, beans, whole grains, fish and fruit. They avoid the likes of refined and processed foods, soft drinks, desserts, white bread and other sources of "empty" calories.

Three weeks straight of no weight loss -- there were two 'blow-it' days in that time period, but otherwise pretty okay (and the blow-its weren't horrific). I guess it's just one of those plateau things, which is funny due to much more regular gym-going. I think it will take some calorie cutback to keep things on track.

Actually, I suppose a better way of putting that is to knock things off track, as a plateau means the body has gotten used to the program. Coincidentally Denyse forwarded me a 24 Hour Fitness article today which talked about this.

So I'm trying to work out in my head how I want to handle the whole journaling/blogging/writing thing.

However, I'd definitely like to add journaling capability to Celsius1414 soonish, but it will be in the context of Notanda. Really the decision there is how soon I want to make that happen.

And do I want to use a version of Notanda to do what I'm doing in VoodooPad now?

I've enjoyed the journaling I've done this past month or two. It has been a real beneficial part of both my writing and my life as a whole. What's less clear is how much of that would have been desirable on a website.

Not that much, really.

That I think has been my difficulty, the breakdown in my thinking about all these different writing projects: the pie being divided amongst Public, Private, and Fiction.

Really it's not the same. Ideally, here's what I thinking about:

Celsius1414: personal site, but more along the lines of Tao of Mac in execution (and amount of personal info for that matter).

blogging.la: SoCal-related stuff, but it will probably be an outlet for humor and surreality.

Journal of the 'project': whatever I'm working on at the moment will have its own journal.

Collaborative work.

Personal journal: not for public consumption, although pieces may wind up public eventually.

This is something I can live with I think.

First thing, though, is to figure out a new design for the site. Need something really new.

Thought a bunch of times about moving these time-based entries into their own pages. Still might someday.

Apropos of nothing. ;)

In preparation for potentially installing File::MacOSX and psync, I set fink going updating itself, which is taking forever with all the compiling and whatnot. Also making the laptop hotter than normal on the old lap. :)

Funny thing is I'm really sleepy, so I almost just have to let it go -- if it weren't for having to interact with the damn thing, I'd go to sleep right now.

Finally finished outlining Part I of the novel tonight, which is spiffy-cool. I'll be able to jump back into things tomorrow, especially while I'm waiting for all the backup copying and dvd-burning to finish.

Need to run:

• fink configure
• fink index
• fink update-all

Taking the day off work for our anniversary and to get a few things done.

Got quite a bit of work done last night on novel plotting and larger-picture type things. Characterization needs a lot of work -- need to make sure the book isn't on rails like a fun house ride.

Dog barking this morning at 6:30 am did not help my need for sleep. ;)

Had an anniversary dinner at La Costa with Nyse earlier, and both of us are entirely too full. Nice to have a 'blow-it' evening on the diet front, which is a good thing to do every so often. Also gave myself permission not to go to the gym tonight, but to resume on schedule Wednesday. What that does as well is give me another day to work out how I'm going to resolve the various workouts I've researched and the equipment available at 24-Hour Fitness.