Another week, another pound lost. Week two was a little different from the first in that I dropped the weight almost immediately, on day one. The next few days involved a lot of eating out with family, resulting in my gaining back most of the weight I had lost. As a result, I had to cram in the weight loss the last few days.

In the end, I managed to make weight, with room to spare. I'm expecting to make more progress early this week since I don't have any planned outings until the weekend.

We'll see how it goes.

Metrics:

Targeting a fifteen pound loss at one pound per week:

Week 2
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Current      : -2.4 lbs
Since Last   : -1.4 lbs
Weekly Rate  : -1.2 lbs / wk
Projected by : 29-Sep
Original     : 21-Oct

The bottom line: exercise doesn't work.

Exercise is important for your health, but it does very little to help you lose weight. Don't just take my word for it. The National Institute of Health straight up says:

“It's not a weight loss tool.”

— Kevin Hall, NIH

The Science is In...

“I read more than sixty studies on this. And it turns out that exercise is pretty useless when it comes to weight loss.”

— Julia Belluz, Vox

There's more detail in the Vox video above. But I think we all already know this intuitively. Exercising makes us hungry. And the number of calories you lose from exercise is very easily offset by a small amount of food. From that same video, here are some comparisons:

• one hour of running = a Big Mac + fries
• one hour of dancing = three glasses of red wine
• one donut = a half hour of cycling

Are you really going to exercise for two hours just to offset some McDonalds and a couple of donuts? Keep in mind — this is just to maintain pace. You'll need to hit it even harder to actually lose any weight.

I know I don't have time for that.

If I actually want to drop weight, I know that I can just follow one, simple rule: eat less. It's not easy, but it works.

The first week was pretty typical, as far as my weight loss weeks go. Any time I need to drop a few pounds, I use this strategy.

The goal is simply to lose weight at the end of each week. Since an accepted, healthy rate of weight loss is approximately one pound per week, that's what I shoot for.

In this instance, I took it easy the first few days of the week and basically ate whatever I wanted. I was careful not to gorge, but I didn't try too hard either. Near the end of the week, with the deadline in sight, I buckled down, ate a lot less, and dropped the weight.

Other weeks may unfurl differently, but hopefully with similar results. This week, my weight bounced back up hard after a couple of unanticipated social dinners Monday and Wednesday. At least I got to eat some insanely delicious Napolitano pizza and a couple of amazingly tasty deli sandwiches, not to mention some flan that magically appeared in my fridge the other day. Oh, and let's not forget the ice cream either.

I'm paying back all that good eating today and tomorrow, working to get back on track for Monday morning's weigh-in. In the morning, we'll see how I did today and how much work I'll have to put in tomorrow. But for now, my week two score is over a pound in the wrong direction.

Metrics:

Targeting a fifteen pound loss at one pound per week:

Week 1
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Current Weight  : -0.2 lbs
Since Last      : +1.2 lbs
Weekly Rate     : -1.4 lbs / week

Success! It's just the first week, but I'm glad to get off to a good start. Net loss so far is about one and a half pounds for the week. I'm ahead of schedule, but I don't expect to maintain this pace at all.

I had to get around a little roadblock last night in order to make weight this week. I have family in town for the party later today. So after picking them up, we got together for dinner at the house. We brought home some delicious Korean tofu combos from a local place. There was a lot of tasty, uber weight gaining stuff in that meal. However, I managed to stay on target. I sat with the group, but just ate a few pieces of meat to kill my hunger. Because of this, I managed to drop an additional 3/4 of a pound for the week.

Now today is the big party day, so I'm going to slack off a little bit (not too much). I'm also planning to take care of some of those leftovers from last night today. The good thing is, I have a bit of leeway (that extra 0.4 pounds). Also, since I'm at the beginning of the week, I have enough time to get back on track and lose pound number two by next Monday.

Anyway, now I've proven out my technique (or strategy?). Just rinse and repeat about a dozen more times, right? Not really. Keeping on track is the hard part, as most probably know. Again: this is simple, but not easy.

Metrics:

Current Weight  : -1.4 lbs
Rate            : -1.4 lbs / week

I lost another quarter of a pound yesterday morning. I don't remember what I ate Thursday, but I know I paid attention. Yesterday, I finished off my leftovers from earlier in the week. The leftover kielbasa scramble was my breakfast. Then last night, after avoiding any big meals all day, I killed off that delicious meat sauce I made on Tuesday (no brown rice this time). As a result, this morning I weighed the same as the day before.

So with attendance at a party planned for tomorrow, today is the day I cram in as much weight loss as possible for the week. If I hit one pound of loss today (i.e. tomorrow morning's weigh-in), then even if I gain a little of the weight back on Monday morning, I will consider the week's goal achieved.

Again, the key is to eat less. And today, I'm just going to watch what I eat and eat as little as possible.

This is almost like doing reps while working out. When I get a little hungry, I will test myself to see how long I can hold out. If I find I can't stand it, I'll just eat a little whole grain bread and then some water to keep me full.

“Sleep is the poor man's dinner.” — Alexandre Dumas

Going to bed a little hungry does wonders.

Current Weight: -0.6 pounds

As of yesterday morning, I was losing ground. The previous day, I cooked up a tomato meat sauce from some ground beef I had in the fridge. It was a simple enough recipe, but it was really tasty. So tasty that I ended up having two servings of the delicious sauce over brown rice for lunch. It was really good. I went pretty easy the rest of the day, but the damage was done — I woke up the next morning (yesterday) even heavier than the day before. At that point, I was a half pound over my starting weight and not really living up to this blog's name.

This was obviously a problem.

So yesterday, I kept better watch of my food intake. I still started out with a delicious kielbasa scramble (no potatoes, extra veggies) from a nearby diner for breakfast. The gravy they place on this dish is really something else. Although I didn't finish the whole plate, I followed it up with a really good blueberry pancake.

The rest of the day, I didn't really eat any big meals, just a couple of bananas, one or two servings (I can't remember) of some greek yogurt, and a piece of bread.

This application of the one rule worked really well. I woke up this morning almost a full pound lighter than yesterday. It's halfway through the week, and I'm on pace for my average weekly weight loss target.

Current Weight: -0.4 pounds

Whoops, here's the rule: eat less.

Really simple, but not necessarily easy. I've got a few systems in place that help me eat less. The first one is this blog itelf. It's keeping me accountable. If I don't commit publicly, then it's too easy to let it slip (...and not eat less).

Second, I weigh myself every day in the morning. Mornings because this meaures my weight at a baseline level everyday. Every day so I can monitor my progress and know where I stand.

The cool thing is, because I only have one rule, and that rule is to eat less, I don't necessarily need to be picky about what I actually do eat. For instance, on my first day (two days ago), I ate ice cream. I ate a lot of ice cream. But because I made up for that by skipping dinner, I woke up the next morning a quarter of a pound lighter than when I began.

The pitfall is that I can still eat anything I want. So for example, yesterday, I ate cheesecake. Someone brought over a delicious cheesecake a few days ago. Yesterday, I decided to just get rid of it — into my belly. That incident brought me back up to being a quarter of a pound heavier than when I began. (That's a half pound of weight gain yesterday.)

Of course all these fluctuations will eventually be smoothed away once I check my weekly weight, next Sunday morning. But at least today, I know where I stand and whether or not I need to watch what I eat super stringently or just casually over the next few days.

Hint: I need to buckle down starting today.

Current Weight: +0.2 pounds

I'm going to lose fifteen pounds using my one simple rule. My target date for hitting this goal is 21-October; that's one pound per week between now and then. I'm using this blog to track my progress and hold myself accountable.

Ready...go!

Current Weight: +/- zero pounds