Cold Day and Low Turn Out.

After Sunday is was a bit hard to get back into the swing of walking again. But I made it fine. There were fewer people this time than in anytime I have seen since I began going to Reavis BRKS RD last week. There were only eight people Today and one of them I saw after I made my turn to go on up Reavis toward home. As a policy I don't count people I see walking on the road unless they are dressed as if they are doing exercise.

I think the reason that it was a bit harder Today walking and getting in the grove was because I had ate more than I had Sunday than I had most of the past two weeks. I made waffles for Cheryl and I then my Mom made us a nice dinner from Macaroni Grill. Then I went to Emily's birthday party and had chili and sour cream and cheese plus cake. However I did take the icing off the cake so that was a few calories I saved. Then late night I made some stew from the noodles of the meal from dinner. So that was quite a bit more food than I have ate calorie wise in a long time.

Happy sixth birthday, Emily.

But with Today's walk I used up almost 900 calories so that should take care of a lot of the food I ate Sunday. Plus I didn't walk Sunday so I think that has something to do with me not getting off to a good start Today too.

Along Grant's Trail, Gravois Creek is getting more and more frozen. I haven't ever seen it totally solid but a couple of weeks ago when we had the snow was still out it seemed a lot more frozen that it does now even though the temperature has been colder.

Some of the milestones I have reached Today include 10,861 calories used, almost 68 miles, My trend for my blood pressure is moving the systolic lower and my pulse has been getting lower too. That means my pulse is getting stronger.

Sad to say the death of my scale. It was a very old on to begin with but yesterday I got on it and it said I was at 240 pounds. I was so tempted to accept that but that wouldn't make me any thinner. So I looked at the “zero” and it was off and I tried to reset it and it wouldn't reset any more and since then my weight has been way off. In my favor but as I said a broke scale doesn't help me reach my mark. That is what a mirror is for.

Body Mass Index 

Another indicator of good weight is your body mass index. That is a guideline for the amount of fat your body should have according to your height. The standards range from less than 18.5 to 18.6 to 24.9 is normal, 25 to 29.9 is over weight. A body mass index of 30 or more is obese by medical definition. These guidelines come from the Department of Health and Humans Services website. The website also indicates the increase risk of other health problems that come along with the extra weight. I am sure many people already know that heart disease and type II diabetes and high blood pressure are three of the major additional conditions to be concerned about.

For me the on line scale says that my BMI is 37.7. This is 7.8 over just being overweight. The HHS BMI index is really strict and requires a lot of work to get within range if you are a person that is out of shape like me. For me to get within the normal range on the index I need to have my weight down to 170 pounds. That is 100 pounds from where I am Today. To be just in the normal range I would have to be about 155 pounds. That is a weight I have not been at since I was in high school.

Find out what your Body Mass Index is from the HHS.

My current goal is to reach 200 pounds with this current fitness plan. If I reach that goal then my BMI will be at 27.9 and mid-range of the overweight standard. But don't be discouraged, the websites says, "The good news is even a small weight loss (between 5 and 10 percent of your current weight) will help lower your risk of developing those diseases."

I am currently near 4% of my goal which is on the way to reaching a 30% reduction from my starting weight. The 5% to 10% standard is from 14.5 to 19 pounds to see improved health benefits. These numbers that I amusing and from the HHS website do not compare exactly but they are still guidelines. With my percentage I am looking at the total amount of weight I want to lose. The HHS numbers are difference in starting weight to goal weight.If I reach the 200 pound goal that would be a 31% reduction in my total weight. Far above the range of where the health benefits improve.

Body Mass Index Tool

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Do you hate having to watch what you eat? Having to consider the fat and calories of everything you put in your mouth? Well too bad. That is how it works. You have to eat better and modify your bad eating habits, what ever they happen to be, for good ones. Do you think German chocolate cake makes for a good breakfast food? Maybe if your an Olympic athlete training for long distance running but for most of us try a bowl of cereal or oatmeal.

Do you think a candy bar once or twice a week is “OK” for you? It is OK if you are walking the calories off. For example a bag of plain M&Ms has 236.16 kcal. To work that off you need to walk about a mile and a half extra from your normal routine. If you eat a more healthy Snickers bar you have 273.03 kcal. This requires about two and a quarter miles to burn up that amount of energy. So how much is that candy bar worth? If you have a goal of getting your weight down it is “weigh” to much.

Will you walk 2.25 miles to burn this?

Calorie Counts

My line of reasoning goes something like this. If I eat a candy bar after I walk four miles I just wiped out the effectiveness of half the work I just did. Granted the four or five miles is more than I have been doing in the past when I was still eating candy bars and higher calorie foods but now that I am focused on getting the results I need I see no reason to add to the struggle of my goal. 

Beer Calories

A beer belly is built.

For anyone that drinks a beer the results are the same. A Bud Light has 110 calories so if you were to consume one you would need to walk more than a half mile just to work off the calories? If you have a six pack of Bud Light you are looking at more than four miles to work off those calories. Miller Lite is 96 calories and so with that one you have a slight advantage but the results for a six pack comes to just over3.5 miles to burn up those calories. Of course those are the more popular light beers if you drink any others it will only increase the distance plus shots and drinks will similarly increase your distance to burn those calories.

So the secret to my Amazing weight loss is simply this. Eat less and move more. Use up the number of calories that you want to lose. Granted this is not a one to one correlation because there is the baseline metabolic rate to consider and the additional benefits you get due to the work of your body becoming more active. Your bodies increased heart rate, the increase in respiration and the digestion processes and the healing of muscles that are damaged during such increase in activity also add to the over all burning of calories by the body.

This is Grant's home at Grant's Farm. The fence in front was made from the barrels of Civil War guns.

With that said, There were only nine people on Grant's Trail Today. I hope that people have not already gave up on only the third day of the year. It was a bit colder but that is fine. The only day I didn't go out was Sunday. But Today I went ahead and walked to the Grant's trail and Reavis intersection. It didn't take much more time and it did add about another mile so I think I might go ahead and keep doing that. I hope everyone is doing well that is following this blog. It has been good to see so many people reading it so far. It has been useful to me as well to make me keep focused on my goal. So for that I thank all of you that have took the time to read my journey.

I also began tracking a new statistic on my walks; miles per hour. This is done by recording the time I start and stop. I convert that into minutes and then divide my distance by that and then multiply that to produce a miles per hour total. So far I am averaging about 3.5 miles per hour.