589 Days of Logging - a look at CICO over a long duration

I periodically download my complete food and exercise log from MFP into a database for analysis, the last time being 01/08/15 – this was my 589th day on MFP (fully logging everything save for about 30 “Quick Calories” entries for single meals) and I thought I’d share the sheer magnitude of activity that goes into that duration of food and exercise logging! I think most people (especially those that don’t log their diet) don’t understand the massive amount of food / drink that goes into fueling us.

Food/Drink
15,396 individual food entries
1,663,312 calories consumed
475 lbs of equivalent body weight (3,500 calories = 1 lb) consumed
196,322 carb grams (49%)
46,838 fat grams (26%)
102,403 protein grams (25%)
56,174 sugar grams (50,575 refined (25.7% of overall carbs, I need to improve upon this), 5,599 from natural sources)
2,824 average calories consumed per day

Exercise
372 days exercised
25,989 minutes exercised
225,788 calories burned
64 lbs of equivalent body weight burned
383 average calories burned per day

CICO Summary
1,663,312 Calories In
1,710,068 Calories Out (1,484,280 TDEE calories burned (2,520 calories x 589 days) + 225,788 exercise calories burned)
(46,756) Caloric Deficit
(13.35) lbs projected weight lost (caloric deficit / 3,500)

I’ve been in maintenance for about a year, at about 2,520 calories per day, so the calories in/ calories out (CICO) methodology is working very well. My aggregated deficit of 46,756 calories, divided by 3,500 calories per lb, equals to about 13.35 lbs that I should have lost. I actually lost over 11lbs, so factor in **a few TDEE tweaks along the way and the inevitable instances of imprecise calorie consumption or burn estimations**. A 7,000 calorie variance across 1.6 million calories isn’t bad…