Carry That Weight

Dijon, France is famous for many things; most notably mustard and burgundy.  It is also the birth place of Nicolas Clement.  He is famous for his achievements in physics and chemistry; most notably establishing the value for absolute zero and for being the first person to define the calorie.  (He also married his colleague’s daughter.  Guys with unmarried daughters, ponder that as you consider the single dudes in your office.)

A calorie is approximately the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 degree Kelvin.  We use it when referring to the energy in food which we use to fuel our bodies.  A pound of fat contains about 3,500 calories.  We burn approximately 100 calories with each mile we run.  Therefore, a typical runner would have to run about 35 miles to burn one pound of fat.

The reason for this dissertation is because I decided to step on the scale this past Tuesday (New Year’s Day) and see how much I weighed.  It was not a happy moment.  There was much wailing, moaning and recrimination.  In the interest of full disclosure, the output read 182.4 pounds.  That is about seven pounds over my “normal weight” and about 12 pounds higher than what I weighed at my “peak running form”.

The Thanksgiving / Christmas / New Year’s celebrations have taken their toll.  Bouche de noel for breakfast, leftover Ina Garten’s macaroni & cheese for lunch, calorically dense dinners and an endless supply of cookies and candies at the office were my undoing.  It is time to reverse the trend.

Mary says there is just more of me to love.  This is true, but there is also more of me to carry up hills.  Weight, or more accurately, mass also has an effect on VO2 Max, or the maximum amount of oxygen a runner can use per unit time per unit body mass.  More simply, the lighter a runner is, the higher his VO2 Max and - at least in theory - the faster he will be.  

Research has shown that ten pounds equals 20 seconds per mile, which equates to a minute-plus in a 5K, more than two minutes in a 10K, nearly four and a half minutes in a half-marathon and almost nine minutes in a marathon.  Imagine running a marathon nine minutes faster than last year and all you have to do is loose ten pounds.  What could be simpler?

How do you go about shedding pounds?  The answer has to be through some combination of eating fewer calories and exercising more.  While I track my workouts closely, I need a system to track my caloric intake.  Well, there’s an app for that.  I downloaded LoseIt! – a free app – to my iPhone. 

You create a profile in LoseIt! based on your age, sex, height, current weight and goal weight.  It accesses databases of foods and activities which you select.  It gives you a calorie budget, tallies the calories and tells you if you are over or under budget.  I have been under budget every day this week.  I do find, though, that if I am well under budget near the end of the day, I eat just to get close to the budget.  It is kind of like how government agencies view their budgets.  I’ve got a budget of 2,038 calories per day and, damn it, I’m going to use them!

LoseIt! also gives you a breakdown of where your calories are coming from: fat, protein and carbohydrates.  Not surprisingly, 60% of my calories come from carbohydrates.  I was surprised, though, to see that 25% of my calories come from fat.  I thought I had a lean diet.  15% of my calories come from protein.  This tool is great because now I have something else to obsess about.  This is how technology brings joy to our lives.

Winter is a great time to get your body to race weight.  One way to lose weight is to stand outside in shorts and a t-shirt.  The thermal activity of shivering burns more calories than sitting on the couch watching the Packers beat the Vikings.  You’d burn even more calories if you were at Lambeau Field watching the game in shorts and a t-shirt. 

The other way is to go for a run.  Saturday our little group ran 15 miles at Cherry Creek State Park.