Realism and motivation through math

haniay

My love of math and Excel spreadsheets can sometimes get me labelled as a geek, but this morning, as I was waking up and doing a bit of math in my head, I realized that to lose the 40 pounds I'm setting out to lose, I will need to consume 140,000 calories less than my body needs to maintain its current weight (assuming I'm right that it's 3,500 calories per pound). It took me five years to put this weight on and I knew it was going to take me a while to take it off, but that number really brought it home for me. That's a lot of calories to NOT consume. At 250 calories a day (I'm going for the slow and steady goal) that's a year and a half. Although normally that would feel discouraging to me, this time it doesn't. It seems realistic and honest and takes the pressure off of expecting huge changes quickly. It reminds me that a 300 calorie workout here and there matter because I need to string them together to make them add up. And it also reminds me that this isn't about losing weight. It's about creating more healthful habits for the entire second half of my life. So I created my latest Excel spreadsheet, with lines for every day between now and the end of June 2014. A full year and a half. I will keep the geeky side of myself motivated by tracking my total net caloric deficit. (And throw in a little scientific indulgence by seeing if my "calculated weight" based on calories and my "actual weight" at weigh-ins match up). For my first three days I'm at "net deficit" of 1,268 calories. Only 138,732 deficit calories to go

lkenn67

I have at least 35 lbs to lose. So that is 105,000 calories to burn. Maybe I need to make a spread sheet too!!!

issyfit

If you click on "reports" you can bar graphs of a lot of items, including net calories, but I don't see an option for calorie deficit. Have fun with your spread sheet.