February Challenge
I decided this month I wanted to try and see what life would be like without eating meat. I will find this one extremely difficult because I like the taste of meat. At least February is a short month so if I hate it I only have to do it for 29 days this year.
The best thing about doing monthly challenges, is that you get to give something a real go and at the end of it you don’t have to feel guilty if you go back to how things were before.
My starting weight is 163lbs, it will be interesting to see what effects this has on my mind and body.
I will be drinking alcohol this month, however something has changed within me, I no longer have to reason with myself to not have a drink. I just don’t feel like I want one any more. I will however still have a few when I socialise with friends on a night out, but I wont be drinking when I watch football, movies, or sat in the house anymore.
Posted to Life, Nutrition, Productivity
January Challenge Update
Since beginning my January challenge I have been recording my weight on a daily basis. My eating habits are still the same, fairly clean eating with the odd bit of indulgence. The results so far are pretty amazing really since I have only dropped alcohol.
01 Jan - 173lbs
02 Jan - 173lbs
03 Jan - 172.5lbs
04 Jan - 172lbs
05 Jan - 172lbs
06 Jan - 169.5lbs
07 Jan - 169lbs
08 Jan - 168lbs
09 Jan - 167lbs
10 Jan - 167lbs
11 Jan - 166.5lbs
12 Jan - 165.5lbs
WOW that’s 7.5 lbs in body weight gone it 12 days. Most of that will be water but a few lbs will be body fat.
I get weighed every morning at the same time right after a visit to the toilet. This keeps things consistent which is important otherwise you have no real idea of the progress your making. To demonstrate this fact I got re-weighed today after breakfast and I had gained 2lbs.
I will continue to keep track of my progress and will post another update on my January challenge at the end of the month. One thing I can say is I feel more energetic for it and more motivated. There really is nothing like progress for giving you more motivation you should really try it, it doesn’t need to be the first day of the month to start either.
Go on, give it a try, write down your goal and todays date with your current stats in a .txt file. Stop drinking, start running or whatever it is you want to do and take your measurements at the same time everyday. Only then will you really know how your body responds to things.
Posted to Life, Nutrition, Productivity
January Challenge
I am not a massive drinker, however I do like a beer now and then and the odd bottle of wine. As a new years resolution I have decided to set myself a January challenge and try and go the whole month without a single drop of alcohol of any kind.
For a (almost) 30 year old this is harder than it seems, however I do know people who have stopped drinking all together and they assure me it makes you feel like a different person. Combined with regular exercise it can transform your life.
So lets give it a go and see what happens. Not a drop for January, I am already 6 days in.
Posted to Life, Nutrition
Macronutrition - Part 1
Macronutrition - What is it? Why should you care?
To understand what my application is about and why I am creating it I thought I would share with my readers the problem I will be solving - Managing the reduction of my body fat percentage through diet and exercise.
My application will be for the people who realise what it takes to get that washboard stomach, and are willing to do it to get there.
With all the lose fat quick schemes that are around today it surprises me that people are willing to try them and pin all there hopes on them due to clever marketing without actually taking the time to learn how their body actually uses food for energy, and why it stores some of the intake as fat.
The primary source of energy for our bodies is via food in the form of calories. Calories are made up of macronutrients, carbohydrates, protein and fat.
Losing body fat is not just about what you eat and what exercise you do; its about math.
Take note of the following information :-
1g of Fat contains 9 calories
1g of Protein contains 4 calories
1g of Carbohydrates contains 4 calories
1lb of Fat equals 3500 calories
As you can see eating the same weight in Protein or Carbohydrates results in less calories consumed than if you ate the same amount of Fat. We can also see that to burn away 1lb of fat we need to have a deficit of 3500 calories which should be spread over the week.
So how many calories should you be getting?
This is where we use the Harris Benedict Equation to calculate. Its has slightly different constants for men and women but the formula is still the same.
BMR for Men = 66 + (13.7 x Weight in kg) + (5 x Height in cm) - (6.8 x Age in Years)
BMR for Women = 655 + (9.6 x Weight in kg) + (1.8 x Height in cm) - (4.7 x Age in Years)
Once you have your Base Metabolic Rate you need to perform one more calculation to figure what your daily calorie intake should be.
Little or no exercise = x 1.2
1 - 3 times per week = x 1.375
3 - 5 times per week = x 1.55
6 - 7 times per week = x 1.725
Very hard twice daily = x 1.9
Take your BMR and multiply it by your selection from the above table and that is the amount of calories per day your body needs to consume to maintain. I cannot stress how important it is to be honest here, it’s about what you actually do not what intend to do, you can always change this figure as you progress and you will need to as you lose body fat anyway.
Summary
So now you know how to work out how many calories per day your body needs to maintain it’s current position. You also know that to loose a lb you need have a calorie deficit of 3500 calories. This deficit needs to be over a week so 3500 / 7 = a daily deficit of 500 calories from your daily allowance.
In part 2 I will be educating you on the best ways to create that deficit and where Protein, Carbohydrates and Fats come into to play.
Posted to Nutrition
If you build it they will come
I thought it best to let my readers know what I am going to create and why I have made this particular choice.
As I mentioned before I would like it to combine my areas of interest in some way to keep it enjoyable, that list included :-
• Computers
• Self Improvement
• Mountain Biking
• Camping/Bushcraft
• Nutrition/Fitness
• Business
My choice will include a little something from all of them, I will be building an online application that will allow me to manage my health and fitness, something I have a keen interest in.
Diet tracking software is in no way new and it’s very saturated so why bother?
Well to answer that I have to look at my biggest competitor namely www.fitday.com, they provide an excellent service, have over 2.2 million registered users and it’s not going to be easy to knock them off the top spot.
A fitness app is in a verticle market, it maybe saturated , however there are over 5.5 billion people connected to the Internet and how many of them are happy with their appearance? Exactly
What I have found with other applications though is that it is so difficult to keep track of what exercise you do, and what food your eating. It like all the others promises to be the holy grail of fat loss and will give you a beach body by using it.
No, my web app will be different, it will be for the people who are serious about their health, know that a tool can’t do it for them and hard work is needed for them to obtain their goals. Both in terms of diet and exercise.
With my application will be easy to track information but it won’t try to do everything everyone else’s does with every feature and every gizmo. It will do exactly what it says on the tin and it will do it very very well.
Unfortunatly I can’t talk about all the things I intend to include in my app at this stage. Not because I don’t want you my readers to know, I just realise that it’s going to take me about 6 months to get release 1.0 out of the door; way too much time for my competitors to take my ideas.
My current mood: optimistic 
Posted to Nutrition, WebApp
