oldpoxbox.com

STUFF TO BUY:

GOOD vs EVIL poster

Shirts!

Pixel Posters 4 pack

The Alphabet of Manliness

FRIENDS:

Going down to 22.5

by:Pox

2010/03/25

So it's been 4 months after the Calorie Ladder Experiment and according to all known data on fat asses who do crash diets, I should be fatter than ever at this point after I had lost a hilarious Gandi-shaming 20 pounds in 41 days while mostly sitting around being an idiot. Especially after the holidays and all the chair-warming my buns have been implicated in during that time. But no, I'm still sitting right here on the edge of 160 pounds of pure, lean average Canadianeness with my " not fat but not really thin" spare tire going on there ( It's a spare tire for a tricycle).

So in my ever-vain quest to stop being distracted by me pawing at my blubs, I've decided to trim down some more. But by how much? According to the BMI Calculator , which is the equivalent of an atomic clock when it comes to evaluating overall health and fitness, I currently have a BMI of 24.3, which is 'normal', or as it's better know in the school system: C-. Since only dumbasses are content with being only slightly worse than acceptable, it's time to keep climbing down on the fat meter.

So again, how much is enough? What does the SCIENCE say? That very science that will instruct me to NOT do this in a stupid way like living on a diet of carrots and beer for a month?
According to various sources, a good goal to shoot for is anything under 22.5. That's the magic number after which your health risks increase with every pound of mayonaise that hitches a ride around your vital organs.
As evidence, I present to you this random blog I found http://coloncancer.about.com/b/2009/07/01/the-wrong-direction.htm . Doesn't get much more official than this.

So how come a BMI of 24.5 is considered in the normal weight range? Well it was invented over 150 years ago and let's just say that people's standards for a healthy weight back then weren't quite up to par with ours.

Today known as the 'nice girl

So 22.5... alright fair enough. But just losing weight? Yawn that's boring, any moron can do that, right? I mean, I just haven't done it because... I didn't... feel like it... yeah. So I need a stupid challenge! A friend of mine came up with this brilliant question: is there a relationship between the weight of the food you eat and how much you gain. In other words, is the caloric density ( calories / weight ) of food a factor in weight loss or does it really just amount to the total number of calories? I admit that I've thought about this because it seems you lose weight a lot faster when you eat two hot dogs during a day instead of a large bowl of salad.

So here's what I'll do. Eating around 1500 calories every day, I will spend one week eating the most calorie-empty yet heavy foods I can find ( within reason). That probably means vegetables and their juices.

Then the next 2 weeks, I will eat the most calorie-dense crap. Again within reason... I mean I'm not spending 2 weeks eating mayonaise and sticks of butter. To find out what awaits me, here's a handy graph I made:

Let the madness begin

So for hilarious comparison's sake:

Calories	Low Weight	High Weight
1440	180 grams of olive oil	5.76 kilograms of raw celery
1920	320 grams peanut butter	13.4 kilograms of dill pickles
1500	10 twinkies ( 420 grams)	10 kg of raw spinnach
576	1 Big Mac ( 215g))	3.75 kg of raw baby carrots

Wow ok so this is fucked up, I can't eat 10 kilograms of spinach in one day, that's crazy. Now I guess you understand why cavemen started eating meat. Who the hell wants to spend all their day foraging for lettuce and beet roots? Plus how much is this going to cost me if I have to eat 5 jars of pickles per day? Haha.

Ok I'll need some rules here to figure out what I can eat and what I can't. So the lowest density food I could find were dill pickles, coming in at 7 grams per calories and the worst offender is probably any type of oil, coming in at 9 calories per gram, making it 63 times richer. Holy crap. I have prepared this handy chart to help me make decisions on what I should eat!

Food	Caloric Density (cal/g)
Olive oil	9
Butter	7.18
Lays Potatoe Chips	5.17
Beef Jerky ( depends)	4
Aged Cheddar	3.92
White Flour	3.6
Twinkie	3.5
McDonald's Hamburger	2.4
Beef 85% lean	2.4
Salmon	2.14
hummus	1.64
Spaghetti (cooked))	1.24
Skinless Chicken	1.09
Shrimp	1
Banana	0.88
Orange	0.46
Vanilla Coke	0.42
Onion	0.4
Skim Milk	0.32
Guiness Stout	0.3
Spinach	0.2
Dill Pickle	0.14

Right off the bat we notice that BEER is pretty damn low on there. And that's guiness stout to boot! Why is that? Because beer contains a lot of WATER. So I guess I'm gonna drink a lotta beer. Ok so For week 1-2, I'll try and stay with anything below 0.4 and for week 3-4, I'll try and keep it above... 3? I'll subsist on a diet of cheese and baked goods apparently.

Another control to this experiment is the fact that I typically drink 6-8 cups of green tea or water every day, so this would offset any water loss from doing weeks 3-4. A lot of fast weight losses come strictly from water loss. Sadly I also predict that water loss would be the main differenciating factor between a high calorie density diet and a low calorie density diet. BUT WE SHALL SEE NOW SHALL WE?

As for exercise..er... I guess if I do any on week 1-2, I'll try and match it on week 3-4 so it's fair. Same goes for fluctuations in calories. The ides is to have eaten the same number for weeks 1-2 and weeks 3-4. So I'll start on this tomorrow, march 26th 2010! Woohoo, a grand day it shall be! When do I stop? After 4 weeks. Eating around 1500 calories per day should yield a weight loss of only 4 pounds according to "science", but I know from experience that's bullshit. I expect twice that loss, but we'll see!

See you in 2 weeks.

Follow My Stuff ( cause it's rad, and you are rad, therefore must do this):