specious math

Okay, so I lost half a pound this week. This is extremely good news, considering I was on vacation part of that time and didn't have a single day below 1900 calories all week. As is my custom with extremely good news, I've spent my spare time this morning dissecting it to bring forth metabolic rates that are too good to be true, and that experience will disprove in the very near future.

That said, the numbers? They please me. :)

Per fitday, my total daily calorie intake last week was 16,575. My total calorie burn through exercise was 2,657. If I subtract burn from intake, I get 13,918. Divide that by 7, that's 1,988 net calories in per day.

Scientists say it takes a 3500-calorie deficit to lose a pound, right? So, if I lost half a pound last week, then it stands to reason that my deficit was around 1750 calories, or 250 calories per day. If I add that to the 1988, I should get the number of calories I burn in an average, idle day--2,238.

2,238. Even though fitday has been telling me for weeks that I burn 2198 calories doing "background activities", that still boggles my mind. After trying to eat 1200-1400 per day for so long, I just can't get my head around that number. Of course, I can't really etch my resting metabolic rate in stone based on those calculations. However, I think I can safely say that I have a straight-up normal metabolism for someone my age. (What this says about the way I was treating my body 3 years ago...don't even want to think about that.)

So, with this gloriously average metabolism I have, I would need a net calorie intake of 1740ish to lose a pound a week. Considering my current workout schedule burns around 300-400 calories per day, I could eat an average of 2000 calories per day and still see those results. A 1500-1700 calorie average should get me 1.5-2 lbs per week.

There are a lot of other variables, naturally--nutrition, how much water I'm drinking, whether I'm getting enough sleep, just to name a few. However, if these numbers wind up being even close to true, do you have any idea how happy that makes me? It means that all this time I've been feeling guilty for setting my daily calorie goal so high (1600 officially, though I usually hit 1700-1800), I've actually been setting a better target than I thought. I thought I was being stubborn and gluttonous, but it turns out that my instincts may have been right all along.

Of course, if these numbers turn out to be a fluke, I'll deny that I ever posted this. ;)