Quick Diet HowTo Community

Okay, perhaps that’s a bit of a stretch…however, I do have some interesting observations to share this week. By the way, this is “Al’s Weight Loss Plan – Week 13″ — if you’ve been following along. I thought a catchy (and relevant) title would get your attention–this is important.

Here’s the beef, or should I say, pepperoni?: I lost another 1.6 lbs this week, for a total of 26.4 since I started my weight loss diet and exercise plan. Here’s how I did it (you can do it too): 2170 calories in pizza, 4895 in beer, and the rest; relatively good food. That’s an average of 1009 calories per day of pizza and beer!

Yes, really. Here’s this week’s pound-shedding revelation: exercise counts too. Keep track of your workout numbers in a spreadsheet, or by hand…whatever; just do it. Then, strive for roughly 280 exercise “burn” calories per day.

A brief explanation: let’s say you like walking. For a 150 lb person, this will burn 258 cals/hr. So, if you walk 1.1 hours, you’ll burn ~284 calories. There are a myriad sources on the Web for finding your favorite exercise burn numbers–one is, the Activity Database at caloriecount.about.com.

This week’s lesson learned: even of you go slightly over your target calories for the week, getting sufficient exercise will save your diet, and perhaps eventually, your life; you will lose weight. Of course, try to get back to your target calories next week.

Happy dieting.

This week’s active numbers:

• Average calories: 2396/day
• Average exercise: 49 mins/day
• Average exercise cals burned: 222/day
• Last week’s weight: 264.4 lbs
• Today’s weight: 262.8
• Weekly weight loss: 1.6
• Weight loss 2010: 11.2
• Average weekly weight loss: 0.9
• Total weight loss: 26.4

P. S. Tune in next week as I try to cut down on my beer consumption…