At a 23% deficit I lost 4 lbs in a week. At 18% I lost 3 lbs in a week. It is so odd to think that I need to eat more and slow down when I have a hard time eating enough to make my target calories (well... when I work out anyway).

30% Low, 0% High
Because I'm cycling with low and high calorie days, my low days have been around 30% and the high days have been at maintenance. With two high days per week, the average calorie deficit is around 21%. If I do 750 calories of cardio 5 days per week, I have to eat 2500 calories per day to hit that mark. That is actually a LOT of food. In fact, I have yet to be able to eat anywhere near that amount. (Of course, I haven't done 5 days of cardio either - so it sort of worked itself out.)

Last week I did my 750 calorie burn on 3 days... and felt guilty about not being able to hold to my 30% deficit on the non-work out days... but since I lost 3 lbs, I see that I really need to make my calorie cut more shallow.

Changing to 25% Low, 0% High (net deficit 18%)
Originally I was going to bump my low days up to a 20% deficit, which would mean eating more than 200 calories more per (low) day than I do currently... but I don't think I should make such a radical change. At 25% on the low days, I will have to consume 1854 calories... which is a 100 calorie increase. A 25% low schedule will net an 18% deficit for the week. If last week was an indicator, 18% will result in another 3 lb loss.

I think I'll try 3 days of cardio, to see if the combination of diet and exercise will create the same results.

Lean Mass Loss and Maintenance Calorie Change
According to the Omron (electrostatic bodyfat measuring device), I've lost some lean mass with the weight. Unfortunately, that means that my maintenance calories have dropped a little. Instead of 2497, I'm at 2472... 20 calories is completely insignificant in the short term, but the lower this number goes, the less I can eat. Once I can start weight training again (and once I slow my weight loss rate), this shouldn't be an issue.

(I know this was a really nerdy post... but I just LOVE calculating this stuff!)

Today
Junk junkity junk junk splat. Wow - what a rotten food and exercise day. I sat here and blogged my way right through my workout. I got up at the right time, got dressed and sat in front of this stinking computer until my wife and son got up. Major negative points.

Colin (2 1/2 year old son) managed to get sick again and ran a high fever. We were really worried about him last night... Fortunately the motrin knocked the fever down and the antibiotics took effect today - so he was back to normal. We did our usual trip out to see mom at work. (My wife works for a vet.) Today we were surprised when her boss gave her the day off! It was SO nice... We finally got to spend some non-sick quality time together as a family.

Colin loves planes, so we drove out to the old March Air Force Base. It has been converted to an aircraft museum and has lots of really cool planes from World War I to the present. My wife and I both have a little piloting in our backgrounds so we really got a kick out of it. I think Colin was disappointed because he couldn't touch anything.

On the way to the base, we stopped at a convenience store... and that is where I made my first food mistake. I bought a small thing of whoppers and a container of whole milk. I'm so used to 1% now that drinking whole milk is like licking crisco. I'm overestimating when I say I drank 8 oz of the 20 oz bottle. The Whoppers, unfortunately, tasted really good.

When we got home around 2 or so, I had a fantastic meal. I thought I was going to need help getting to my non-workout 2500 calorie limit, so I added a shot of cashews into my low fat minestrone soup. I didn't find out until just now that the little packet of nuts was 330 calories. BAM!~ I also added my usual 2 potatoes to the mix.... so that meal packed a much bigger punch than I was expecting.

At dinner time, I figured that I was still pretty far off of 2500, so I took the liberty of having dessert. The good news is that I had originally grabbed 6 joe joes (140 x 3 =420 calories!) and put 4 back. Then I grabbed an oreo mini snack pack (170 cal). Still - that means I ate about 700+ calories of junk on a NON workout day. Not good.

By 8:30pm, I realized that I hadn't journaled my foods. I was blown away when I saw that I ate over 3000 calories today. Holy smokes. I'm sitting here stuffed... but I've got to go to the gym and burn 500 or more calories - even if it makes me throw up. I've got to end the day at or below 2500.