BRIENMALONE's CalorieKing blog
Sunday, Feb 3 2008 - What to Believe
View BRIENMALONE's food & exercise for this day
So, today I weigh 3 lbs lighter than yesterday. Three friggin pounds on the day AFTER my official weigh-in day. But here is the dilemma: the weigh-in yesterday showed a 0.1% fat loss (26.1%), but today shows my body fat percentage UP by 1% (27.2%) and registers a lean mass loss of 4 lbs and a fat gain of 2 lbs. *laugh*. (This is, of course, impossible.)
So, What's the Score??
It's really hard to know where I really am today... am I just extremely dehydrated? Is the electrostatic bodyfat monitor just way off because of the rain and humidity?Friggin water goblins. With 7 days of cardio and perfect net calories, 232.5 lbs at 25.5% bodyfat would have made sense... but not 27.2%!
Truth in Charting
Well, I'm going to keep the weight and bodyfat levels from Saturday in my excel spreadsheet, but I'm going to record the 232.5 weight from today in CK because my interim goal weight when I started was 233 and its time to set a new goal.
History Repeating?
It will be interesting to see what happens over the next two weeks. Seems like I'm dropping "weight" in fits and starts, but steadily losing body fat. If my weight behaves like it has in the recent past, I'll drop 4-5 lbs (230ish) by next saturday and 2-3 lbs the week after.
The weird thing in all of this is that I had a high calorie day yesterday. High calorie days are usually followed by water retention and a slight gain in weight... but all day I felt like I was under budget on food. Very strange. Maybe it was because I ate my first meal so early - but who knows?
Cravings - Footnote
Just so I have this in writing: I had a monstrous craving that lasted HOURS last night. I wanted sugar in the worst way and was concerned that I wouldn't be able to sleep. Well, I did get to sleep... and I awoke without... that is without any cravings at all. It is now 7:15am... I'm very hungry, but I don't crave anything in particular. (Perfect time to go do my cardio!)
Think about how it was in comparatively recent history...
The thing I try to keep in mind with cravings and hunger is this: Remember that we are living in a unique time (and place) of plentiful food. In fact, food is now so plentiful that westerners have the ability to be self-indulgent. Instead of asking ourselves "what should I eat" right now, we ask "what sounds good right now". Our bodies are trained through the generations to be attracted to things that promote fat storage because until comparatively recently, food was scarce.
So, imagine back 6 generations. You're a peasant farmer in New England America in the early 1800s... You have a few fruit trees in the back yard, a small field of oats, wheat, corn, tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes and some other rotatable crops. You have a small collection of livestock. You grow enough food for your family plus some to take to market.
When people asked themselves "what do I want to eat" back then, the choices were limited to what was in season. "What should I eat" wasn't an option... more often it was: "What is there to eat". If food wasn't available, people went to bed hungry. If children didn't want to eat what the family had for breakfast, they didn't eat (there was no "he only eats junk food, so that's what I give him" nonsense).
The point is: we can all survive without indulging our cravings because, until the last two generations or so, few humans had the ability to be self-indulgent (regularly).
Here is a nice child rearing analogy: If a child throws a tantrum and the parent gives the child what he/she wants, then the child learns that tantrums are how to get what he/she wants. Our bodies work in much the same way. If you feed a junk food craving, your body will learn that it can get junk food when it issues the craving. When you don't respond to a craving, your body will get the message and it will shut the craving off eventually. (Not as quickly as you might like - but its time for some tough love
(Before I get blasted by biologists, I know cravings are triggered by insulin spikes and crashes, so there may not be a 'physioloigcal' learning, but we can train our brains to understand that cravings are temporary and if we choose not to satiate them, the cravings will go away.)
So, What's the Score??
It's really hard to know where I really am today... am I just extremely dehydrated? Is the electrostatic bodyfat monitor just way off because of the rain and humidity?Friggin water goblins. With 7 days of cardio and perfect net calories, 232.5 lbs at 25.5% bodyfat would have made sense... but not 27.2%!
Truth in Charting
Well, I'm going to keep the weight and bodyfat levels from Saturday in my excel spreadsheet, but I'm going to record the 232.5 weight from today in CK because my interim goal weight when I started was 233 and its time to set a new goal.
History Repeating?
It will be interesting to see what happens over the next two weeks. Seems like I'm dropping "weight" in fits and starts, but steadily losing body fat. If my weight behaves like it has in the recent past, I'll drop 4-5 lbs (230ish) by next saturday and 2-3 lbs the week after.
The weird thing in all of this is that I had a high calorie day yesterday. High calorie days are usually followed by water retention and a slight gain in weight... but all day I felt like I was under budget on food. Very strange. Maybe it was because I ate my first meal so early - but who knows?
Cravings - Footnote
Just so I have this in writing: I had a monstrous craving that lasted HOURS last night. I wanted sugar in the worst way and was concerned that I wouldn't be able to sleep. Well, I did get to sleep... and I awoke without... that is without any cravings at all. It is now 7:15am... I'm very hungry, but I don't crave anything in particular. (Perfect time to go do my cardio!)
Think about how it was in comparatively recent history...
The thing I try to keep in mind with cravings and hunger is this: Remember that we are living in a unique time (and place) of plentiful food. In fact, food is now so plentiful that westerners have the ability to be self-indulgent. Instead of asking ourselves "what should I eat" right now, we ask "what sounds good right now". Our bodies are trained through the generations to be attracted to things that promote fat storage because until comparatively recently, food was scarce.
So, imagine back 6 generations. You're a peasant farmer in New England America in the early 1800s... You have a few fruit trees in the back yard, a small field of oats, wheat, corn, tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes and some other rotatable crops. You have a small collection of livestock. You grow enough food for your family plus some to take to market.
When people asked themselves "what do I want to eat" back then, the choices were limited to what was in season. "What should I eat" wasn't an option... more often it was: "What is there to eat". If food wasn't available, people went to bed hungry. If children didn't want to eat what the family had for breakfast, they didn't eat (there was no "he only eats junk food, so that's what I give him" nonsense).
The point is: we can all survive without indulging our cravings because, until the last two generations or so, few humans had the ability to be self-indulgent (regularly).
Here is a nice child rearing analogy: If a child throws a tantrum and the parent gives the child what he/she wants, then the child learns that tantrums are how to get what he/she wants. Our bodies work in much the same way. If you feed a junk food craving, your body will learn that it can get junk food when it issues the craving. When you don't respond to a craving, your body will get the message and it will shut the craving off eventually. (Not as quickly as you might like - but its time for some tough love
(Before I get blasted by biologists, I know cravings are triggered by insulin spikes and crashes, so there may not be a 'physioloigcal' learning, but we can train our brains to understand that cravings are temporary and if we choose not to satiate them, the cravings will go away.)
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