I have made a pact with myself, to cut out sweets until my weight is in the 140’s. I am in the mid 150’s at this time. Actually the last I weighed I was 153. However, since Christmas, I haven’t been on a scale, and the Christmas week, was pretty bad for me, so I refuse to touch a scale for the next few weeks.
Today, I started my second round of the P90x 90 day routine. I am drinking a lot of water, and I am getting my system back in check.

I can eat healthy and cut out sweets for the most part, my weak day is Sunday, I don’t know if it is because it is the most laid back day of the week for me, but it’s the day I tend to eat badly. If I can start doing well on Sundays then I will be great overall.

I won’t be buying anymore sweets to bring home, but when I go to the movies, etc. I need to increase my willpower.

Fingers crossed, I need to get this all under control. I don’t plan to cut out sweets from my life completely, but I need to have control and willpower to know when enough is enough.

The truth is that 1lb of muscle does, in fact, weight the same as 1lb of fat (no kidding right.) But the volume of fat required to make up 1lb is much greater than the volume of muscle required to make up 1lb because muscle is denser that fat. So you can pack much more muscle inside of a smaller space than you can fat. Additionally, it is physically impossible to turn fat into muscle, they are two completely different types of tissue. You can burn fat and gain muscle, but one will never transform into the other.

The best way to think about muscle and fat is the same as steel and wood. If you take a 1’x1’x1’ block of steel and a 1’x1’x1’ block of wood, the steel will weigh much more. Steel is denser, stronger and more rigid much like muscle is to fat; and no matter how hard you try you can not turn wood into steel.

So what does all of this mean? It means that having a focus on “weight loss” is a very poor measurement of fitness and healthiness. In other words, stop worry about what the scale says and start taking body measurements instead. Focus on fat loss.

Anyhow, today is a whole lot colder than yesterday, and I don’t see myself going outside today. I am going to see if I can find something on FitTV to watch, hopefully there is something fun to do and burn some serious calories….

Most fitness conscious people have heard that there are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, so if you create a deficit of 3500 calories in a week, you lose a pound of weight. If you create a deficit of 7000 calories in a week, you lose two pounds, and so on. Right? Well, not so fast…

Dr. Kevin Hall, an investigator at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda has done some interesting research about the mechanisms regulating human body weight. He recently published a new paper in the International Journal of Obesity that throws a wrench in works of the “3500 calories to lose a pound” idea.

Some of the equations in his paper made my head hurt, but despite the complex math he used to come to his conclusions, his article clearly prompts the question, “3500 calories to lose a pound of WHAT?” His paper also contained a lot of simple and practical tips you can use to properly balance your caloric intake with output, fine tune your calorie deficit and help you retain more muscle when you diet.

Below, I’ve distilled some of the information into a simple bullet-point summary that any non-scientist can understand. Then I wrap up with my interpretation of how you can apply this data in your own fat loss program:

Calculating the calories required to lose a pound and fine-tuning your caloric deficit

* 3500 calories to lose a pound has always been the rule of thumb. However, this 3500 calories figure goes back to research which assumed that all the weight lost would be adipose tissue (which would be ideal, of course).

* But as we all know (unfortunately), lean body mass is lost along with body fat, which would indicate that the 3500 calorie figure could be an oversimplification.

* The amount of lean body mass lost is based on initial body fat level and size of the calorie deficit

* Lean people tend to lose more lean body mass and retain more fat.

* Fat people tend to lose more body fat and retain more lean tissue (revealing why obese people can tolerate aggressive low calorie diets better than already lean people)

* Very aggressive low calorie diets tend to erode lean body mass to a greater degree than more conservative diets.

* whether the weight loss is lean or fat gives you the real answer of what is the required energy deficit per unit of weight loss

* The metabolizable energy in fat is different than the metabolizable energy in muscle tissue. A pound of muscle is not 3500 calories. A pound of muscle yields about 600 calories.

* If you lose lean body mass, then you lose more weight than if you lose fat.

* If you create a 3500 calorie deficit in one week and you lose 100% body fat, you will lose one pound.

* But if you createa 3500 calorie weekly deficit and as a result of that deficit, lose 100% muscle, you would lose almost 6 pounds of body weight! (of course, if you manage to lose 100% muscle, you will be forced to wear the Dieter’s Dunce cap)

* If you have a high initial body fat percentage, then you are going to lose more fat relative to lean, so you may need a larger deficit to lose the same amount of weight as compared to a lean person

* Creating a calorie deficit once at the beginning of a diet and maintaining that same caloric intake for the duration of the diet and after major weight loss fails to account for how your body decreases energy expenditure with reduced body weight

* Weight loss typically slows down over time for a prescribed constant diet (the “plateau”). This is either due to the decreased metabolism mentioned above, or a relaxing of the diet compliance, or both (most people just can’t hack aggressive calorie reductions for long)

* Progressive resistance training and or high protein diets can modify the proportion of weight lost from body fat versus lean tissue (which is why weight training and sufficient protein while on calorie restricted diets are absolute musts!)

So, based on this info, should you throw out the old calorie formulas?

Well, not necessarily. You can still use the standard calorie formulas to figure out how much you should eat, and you can use a 500-1000 calorie per day deficit (below maintenance) as a generic guideline to figure where to set your calories to lose one or two pounds per week respectively (at least that works “on paper” anyway).

Even better however, you could use this info to fine tune your caloric deficit using a percentage method and also base your deficit on your starting body fat level, to get a much more personalized and effective approach:

15-20% below maintenance calories = conservative deficit
20-25% below maintenance calories = moderate deficit
25-30% below maintenance calories = aggressive deficit
31-40% below maintenance calories = very aggressive deficit (risky)
50%+ below maintenance calories = semi starvation/starvation (potentially dangerous and unhealthy)

(Note: According to exercise physiologists Katch & Mcardle, the average female between the ages of 23 and 50 has a maintenance level of about 2000-2100 calories per day and the average male about 2700-2900 calories per day)

Usually, we would suggest starting with a conservative deficit of around 15-20% below maintenance. Based on this research, however, we see that there can be a big difference between lean and overweight people in how many calories they can or should cut.

If you have very high body fat to begin with, the typical rule of thumb on calorie deficits may underestimate the deficit required to lose a pound. It may also be too conservative, and you can probably use a more aggressive deficit safely without as much worry about muscle loss or metabolic slowdown.

If you are extremely lean, like a bodybuilder trying to get ready for competition, you would want to be very cautious about using aggressive calorie deficits. You’d be better off keeping the deficit conservative and starting your diet/cutting phase earlier to allow for a slow, but safe rate of fat loss, with maximum retention of muscle tissue.

The bottom line is that it’s not quite so simple as 3,500 calories being the deficit to lose a pound. Like lots of other things in nutrition that vary from person to person, the ideal amount of calories to cut “depends”…

Please feel free to share your opinions in regards to this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/health/16really.html?no_interstitial

After week 12, I plan to do the same routine over, I won’t upgrade to doubles or anything like that, because I have yet to master a lot of the moves, plus I am still only doing the routines with 10 pound weights.

I can’t wait until my body is leaner and looking fit.

I have changed my weighing to Wednesdays. I usually weigh on Monday, but someone mentioned they weighed on Wednesday, so they get a couple days to recoup from a possible bad weekend, and I thought it was a good idea. Sundays are a bad day for me drinking water wise; I really need to work on drinking water on Sundays. Now that I start weighing on Wednesday, I should have a couple days to flush out my system and get a more accurate reading on the scale.

I am hoping I will have good numbers on the scale this Wednesday. Fingers crossed.

I still have quite a few left, but I am working on some tough love. I don’t have the balls to give them away, but I have put them away, and I am hoping I can ignore them for a long time.

I really need to get back on track. I use a website called myfitnesspal.com to log my calories and my weight. I finally went in and updated my weight increase. I realize that I weighed 150.4 at my last weigh in, I almost past out. I thought it was 152, and that I only put on 5 pounds, but I really out on seven pounds. Yeah I know, two pounds shouldn’t make a big difference, but you would be surprised as to how these little figures affect me.

It helped put me back in gear, and I am focused again, as I was a few months ago.

Need less to say, I am working hard to get to my 140, so I will be out of the overweight region.

10 Reasons Your Boyfriend Is Making You Fat
posted @7:00am ET on February 16, 2009

Ladies, with Valentine’s Day behind you, it’s time to take off your love blinders and face the truth: YOUR BOYFRIEND IS MAKING YOU FAT!
It’s not just that seven-course meal he gave you as a gift… or the 10-pound box of caramel-choked chocolates you and he feasted on afterwards.

No, it’s more the pattern of behavior that comes with the territory when you’re entrenched in a relationship with a man.

Jenna Bergen, author of the hot-selling new book, Your Big Fat Boyfriend: How to Stay Thin When Dating a Diet Disaster (Quirk Books), says, “Gaining weight is every woman’s worst nightmare. Unfortunately, your boyfriend may be to blame!

“Studies show that when a woman is in a relationship, she almost always gains weight.”

Jenna, a Spinning instructor and yoga guru who’s also the health and wellness expert for PhillyMag.com, isn’t trying to break up anyone’s relationship. She merely wants you to break the cyle and regain control of your weight and health.

“Your Big Fat Boyfriend doesn’t have to be fat to make you gain extra pounds,” she notes. “And it’s not like he’ll force you to join him in bad eating behavior.

“It’s a simple matter of genetics and behaviors that are not as deadly for a man’s weight as they are for a woman’s.”

Your Big Fat Boyfriend will make you laugh while it makes you go “A HA!” Follow Jenna’s tips and advice and you can be happy in a relationship and happy with your body and diet.

Jenna promises readers will discover:

• The differences in male and female metabolisms
• How to eat healthful meals when dining at not-so-healthy places
• Creative date ideas that will keep couples active
• Good-for-him (and her!) recipes that taste great and won’t leave the guy hungry

Get ready now to check out Jenna’s top 10 reasons why you’ve been gaining pounds since you’ve gained a boyfriend or husband.
10 Reasons Your Boyfriend Is Adding Baggage to Your Backside
1. He’s a guy.
His mind stores sports stats and music trivia like a sponge sucks up water — not health and nutrition facts. No matter how often you tell him, prod him or outright throw up your hands and scream, his mind will not hold onto the following words: fat, calories, daily allowances, nutrients, vitamins, antioxidants, or food groups.

2. He can always eat.
He just consumed a humungous lunch. An hour later, he’s hungry. Again. And while his metabolism burns faster than a head full of hairspray, allowing him to shovel in huge quantities of food without it showing up anywhere on his bod, you have to …
spend 30 minutes on the treadmill to burn off a single piece of chocolate.

3. Big is better.
His palms are almost three times the size of your little hands, and his idea of a “serving” is equally as large.

4. You’re his new BFF.
You love him, he loves you, and you’ve secured a spot in his top five. You’re now the first person he thinks to call — about everything. But this new title of BFF is heavy — pun intended — with responsibility. You’re also now his first call for midnight Taco Bell runs or grabbing wings and beer for Sunday night football.

5. He thinks dieting is dumb.
A girl who pounds beers with the boys or is as excited as he is over the three-pizzas-for-$10 deal is much cooler and fun than a dieting diva who refuses to eat anything other than rice cakes.

6. He loves you in sweatpants.
Nothing is better than finding a boy that loves you just as much in heels and a skimpy top as he does when you’re lounging in front of the TV for a four-hour Entourage marathon. Of course, lounging usually comes with snacking.

7. He’s too cozy with the couch.
Don’t be surprised if the last time he swung a racket was playing Wii. If you’ve got your own personal lazy boy, it’s safe to assume the most weekend movement he’ll muster is the short path between the couch and the fridge — and the chances of burning any calories with him are probably pretty slim.

8. Cooking = Takeout.
Unless you’re one of the lucky few that dates a chef, the extent of your boyfriend’s culinary skills is grilled cheese, Ramen noodles and a drawer stuffed full of takeout menus.

9. He shops like a 5-year-old.
Now that Mom’s not around to keep the fridge filled, it’s a good chance he’s living out his childhood fantasy and buying every snack food he pleases. One-hundred calorie packs? Please. One foot inside his place and you’re held captive by a multitude of bottomless bags of mania-inducing munchies.

10. The only veggie he eats is fried.
If broccoli is his kryptonite, chances are that his plate will be filled with foods you’d normally avoid.

Hungry for more great insights and a smorgasbord of testimonials from women like you who’ve packed on weight since entering a relationship?

We urge you to head out and buy a copy of Your Big Fat Boyfriend. Or you could get a FREE COPY of this delightful book and lose weight by becoming a Diet.com Premium Member.

Yes, to lose weight and get a free book, all you need to do is click here and join today.

Now that’s what we call one big fat deal!