Food/Exercise Diary Continued

Since I posted about my food/exercise diary a couple weeks ago, I've figured out that I want to do something with the data I'm collecting. I want to see what it means and really track it and figure out what it all means.

How do the calories we eat and the calories we burn by exercising really affect us? How do you know if you're burning enough calories to lose weight? Etc.

Being the nerd that I am, I did some research and then set up a ginormous spreadsheet on Google Docs so I can update it every day.

I can even forecast out when I should hit my goal weight by estimating exercise and food that I'll do and eat every day based on the two weeks I've been tracking so far.

I learned from this website the difference between gross vs. net calorie burn. Exercise machines like the elliptical will tell you an average gross amount of calories burned during your workout. The gross calorie burn is the total amount of calories burned during any activity you may do during the day.

But, did you know that you are continually burning calories throughout the whole day? Your body burns calories all the time to digest food and keep your body functioning properly. These calories are called your resting metabolic rate (RMR). There is another formula you can use to determine what your RMR is on the website mentioned above. I entered my info into the formula and figured out that I burn about 1560 calories per day no matter if I exercise or not.

So, if you are tracking your calories in order to lose weight, you need to know the proper way to do it. One pound of fat contains 3500 calories. In order to lose one pound, your body has to lose 3500 calories.

If you are only tracking the gross calories you burn during exercise, you will become frustrated when you aren't losing the weight like you thought you would because you have been overestimating the amount of extra calories you are actually burning off during that exercise.

The correct way to track the amount of calories you are burning (I even confirmed this with Cody and he was so proud of me!) is to follow this formula:

          Total Calories In   -   Total RMR Calories Out   -   Total Net Calories from Exercise Out

To calculate the total net calories from exercise, I use a heart rate monitor to tell me what my average heart rate is during exercise, and then I use a formula to tell me the gross amount of calories burned.

Then, I subtract the RMR calories burned for that period of time. For example if I exercised for 1 hour, then I would subtract my RMR (1560 calories) divided by 24 hours which is about 65 calories. So if the gross amount of calories I burned during an hour was 700, then I would subtract 65 and the net calories burned would equal 635, and this is the number I record.

Here is a screenshot of my spreadsheet:

If anyone is interested in this spreadsheet, let me know and I'll send a copy! I think that it's really going to help me stay motivated to keep it up and reach my goals!

It's already helped me...yesterday I worked out in the morning, and then when I got home from work, we ate a big supper, and after entering in all my numbers for the day (I apparently ate a lot yesterday) I got my butt off the couch and went to the gym for some cardio. And before looking at my spreadsheet I was NOT motivated to go.