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The Alphabet of Manliness

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JUNE: COUNT EVERY CALORIE. DONETH!

by:Pox

2015/07/06

First, the most important thing: Making you blind.

Here's a smaller progression so it's easier to compare!

First thing we notice: My head got a lot larger this month, thanks to inconsistent camera angles! It really doesn't take a lot to fuck with before/after pictures. People can make it seem like they lost 30 pounds in a day, so a 5 pound difference can often be impossible to notice.

All month I've been tracking my weight and body fat using my Fitbit scale, and behold, it madeth a SWEET GRAPHETETH:

Obviously losing weight isn't always good, you want to be losing FAT. Thankfully Fitbit keeps tracks of body fat% ( as best it can...)

The goal is for the green line (weight)to go down and for the blue line(non-fat mass) to go up

Sadly there isn't yet a shortcut to counting calories you've eaten, so I had to write it all down in a .txt file, mostly using CalorieKing and a food scale. Pretty tedious to get started, but you do get the hang of it and the more things you eat often, the easier it gets as you don't have to calculate new calories for every fucking thing ever.

Here's a graph of what I ate, day-by-day, this month:

That green line at 1715 calories is my "Base Metabolic Rate" which is the number of calories I burn just being alive, according to some random website. Anything I eat above that makes me fatter and anything I eat below that makes me lose weight! As you can tell, I went way above almost every day yet lost 5 pounds. What could be the secret?

Total KMs biked: 1063 ( 664 miles )
Total excess calories burned: 26 515 (7.6 pounds of fat)

To put it in more understandable terms:

How far I biked:

What I burned biking, in Big Macs:

What 5 pounds of calories looks like, also in Bic Macs:

5 pounds is a crazy amount of big macs you don't get to eat. 32, to be exact. That's one delicious Big Mac every day that you have to sadly pass up on if you want to lose 5 measly pounds over the course of a month. You can take shits bigger than that. No wonder people get demotivated.

Some final stats:

Average Calories Burned per day: 2598
Average Calories Burned Through Biking Each Day: 884
Average Caloric Deficit per day: 585
Average Calories Eaten per day: 2467
Average Grams of Protein Eaten per day: 125.5

Protein is important to keep your body healthy and to let it repair itself. If you only count calories and end up drinking nothing but Gatorade for a month, you'll lose fitness and muscle mass. Lame. Similarly, if you don't bike an insane amount and want to lose mostly fat, you have to control what you eat extremely carefully. Prepare to eat a shitload of chicken breast and asparagus and not a single drop of alcohol or slice of yummy cake.

5 pounds of fat in a month at my body fat% and weight is actually a lot so I'm pretty pleased with myself right now. Woo.

Counting calories remains the best way to lose weight because it's the only way you know for sure what you're eating. It will confront you every day with your bad habits and will shame you into not eating that 5th Klondike bar, no matter how warm it may be outside.

There's no shortcuts to losing weight, until you get fat enough that surgery is your only option.

You have to suffer. You'll go to sleep hungry most nights and wake up starving. You'll WANT to eat twice as much as you get to eat. You will think about food all day, every day.

Your hunger mecanism is designed so that a roaming hunter-gatherer who moves 10 miles per day in the woods doesn't starve to death eating berries and tiny wild forest carrots.

This is why you're always hungry.

We don't burn nearly enough calories and our food is way way too rich and delicious so the price you pay for not caring about what you eat is to slowly get fat.

In conclusion: Fuck wild carrots.