I'm not special after all......

sijomial

I had my weight, body fat percentage (with BodPod), height & BMR clinically measured yesterday to give me a new baseline to work from now I’m maintaining.
This then allowed me to put all my calorie intake / burn and BMR data for this year into a spreadsheet to do a bit of geeky analysis….

Now I’ve always regarded myself as SPECIAL when it comes to losing weight.
Always had to try harder to lose, always gained faster, exercise never makes a difference on its own, brother who “eats twice as much” and stays slim. Sound familiar to anyone?

Crunched all the numbers – the 46,000 calories burned, the 7 days I burned over 1000+ cals, the 4 days I actually burned more than I ate (I do 5:2 fasting before anyone worries…), the 3 days I did no exercise at all, the weight I’ve lost since Jan 2nd.
By the data I should have lost 6.4lbs.
In fact I’ve lost 5lbs, remarkably close considering all the estimating that goes on.

So it seems I’m not SPECIAL at all. Not a unique snowflake.

What it does challenge is some of the “well known facts” that exist on MFP.
- Electrical impedance scales are useless for measuring body fat – mine was within 1%.
- Eat under BMR and you go into “starvation mode”. (Not recommending this for days on end by the way.)
- You can’t accurately measure calories burned by strength exercise with a HRM. (Seems to be close for me doing circuit training at least – yes I know all the reasons why they aren’t supposed to be accurate.)

Boring as it sounds the key things for weight control are calories in / calories out, consistency and persistence. That won’t sell many books or “magic pills” will it?


(Actually I am SPECIAL – my Dad called me “The One Percenter”, living proof that the contraceptive pill is only 99% effective!)