Weight loss By the Numbers
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Dadof8
Posts: 146 Member
I’m a numbers guy; I work in the computer industry and have always liked math and numbers. Most people can tell you that PI is 3.14; off the top of my head I can tell you it’s more precisely 3.1415926535898. I know it goes on forever but I could only memorize that much cuz my calculator display only shows 14 digits. I grew up with my mother and 4 sisters now have a wife and 8 children (8 as in 2 cubed or 10 in octal or 1000 in binary). I remember my oldest daughter’s birthday is October 24th because 1024 is 2 to the 10th.
When family members went on diets I could never figure out why they counted calories. I understood that a calorie was a measure of energy, 1 calorie of energy is required to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius. I understood that we burn calories when we move our bodies eating sleeping breathing all burn calories. I had read that there are 3500 calories of energy in a pound. They couldn’t tell me what it was based on, it was a relative number with no basis point. What I was missing I found when a coworker showed me MFP. Calories Burned from Normal Daily Activities (NDA) (found on the Goals page under My Home in MFP). From this number I could see that a 5’ 8” guy who had a sedentary life style and weighed say 220 pounds needed to consume 2250 calories in a day just to maintain that weight, Anything below this number that I eat or anything above sedentary that I burned would allow me to calculate my gain or loss. I had to try this. Without boring you with too many details I calculated my daily weight loss based on the difference between by (NDA – net caloric input for the day)/3500 and I tried to match it to what I saw on my scale. I realize that on a daily basis our bodies don’t act like machines and in the short term the numbers would be off but I was looking to see what they looked like over the long haul.
Findings:
In the 9 weeks from Monday, October 31st through Sunday, January 1st my scales said I lost 13 pounds by the numbers I calculated that I should have lost 13.3 pounds, I was shocked to see these numbers so close.
In the first 2 weeks of January and my scales said I lost 5 pounds, the numbers said I only lost 3 pounds. I had a cold the 2nd week and was probably dehydrated. Although the numbers say I’m still burning more calories than I need the scales are not showing the change. I’m not discouraged though because I could see by the numbers that an adjustment was coming.
Is anyone else this numerically nerdy?
When family members went on diets I could never figure out why they counted calories. I understood that a calorie was a measure of energy, 1 calorie of energy is required to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius. I understood that we burn calories when we move our bodies eating sleeping breathing all burn calories. I had read that there are 3500 calories of energy in a pound. They couldn’t tell me what it was based on, it was a relative number with no basis point. What I was missing I found when a coworker showed me MFP. Calories Burned from Normal Daily Activities (NDA) (found on the Goals page under My Home in MFP). From this number I could see that a 5’ 8” guy who had a sedentary life style and weighed say 220 pounds needed to consume 2250 calories in a day just to maintain that weight, Anything below this number that I eat or anything above sedentary that I burned would allow me to calculate my gain or loss. I had to try this. Without boring you with too many details I calculated my daily weight loss based on the difference between by (NDA – net caloric input for the day)/3500 and I tried to match it to what I saw on my scale. I realize that on a daily basis our bodies don’t act like machines and in the short term the numbers would be off but I was looking to see what they looked like over the long haul.
Findings:
In the 9 weeks from Monday, October 31st through Sunday, January 1st my scales said I lost 13 pounds by the numbers I calculated that I should have lost 13.3 pounds, I was shocked to see these numbers so close.
In the first 2 weeks of January and my scales said I lost 5 pounds, the numbers said I only lost 3 pounds. I had a cold the 2nd week and was probably dehydrated. Although the numbers say I’m still burning more calories than I need the scales are not showing the change. I’m not discouraged though because I could see by the numbers that an adjustment was coming.
Is anyone else this numerically nerdy?
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Replies
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I work in electronics and computers (laid off now though) but not at the precise level that you do. We know MFP works and we know our bodies still throw in a curve ball but it is nice to know the science and math is behind us cheering us on. Thanks for your post!!!! We need to stick with it and believe. It will all balance out mathematically eventually!
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