Lunar Obverse

It’s always interesting overhearing other people’s conversations.

Walking past the tanning booths at my gym this morning, two women were getting out. One woman said to the other woman, in a happy-and-amazed voice, “I orgasmed twice in there!” She was facing away from me, but turned to see me as I walked by.

I stopped dead in place, and put on a mock-shocked expression, which made the girls (both of them) laugh and blush.

Women do that in there?

An hour and 25 minutes to go.

Wish me luck.

Working on a Saturday?

Yes, I am. And, of course, the race tomorrow.

Another lost weekend. At least I was smart enough (and had enough saved vacation time) to take Monday off.

OK, here’s two days I worked up, and they both fall within the 3000-3100 calories/day range:

Day One: Total = 3026 calories

• Energy bar
• Soy latte
• Candy (snacking throughout the day)
• Roasted chicken SubWay, foot-long
• Sun Chips
• Soy Chai
• Quesadilla, 10″ flour tortilla, chicken, w/salsa and sour cream
• Chips & salsa

Day Two: Total = 3010 calories

• English delight (English muffin, cheese, egg, ham)
• Soy chai, 16 oz.
• Wendy’s Double w/cheese
• Biggie fries
• Baja Burrito, steak (From Baja Fresh)
• Tortilla chips & salsa
• Beer, pint

I just thought about what I would typically eat in a day. Or what I used to eat. And, like I posted before, that’s a lot of food! And, as long as I remain as active as I am now, if that’s all I ate, I wouldn’t gain or lose weight. Interesting, yes?

I mentioned last week or maybe the week before that I’ve started adding more calories per day to my diet. Doing it slowly, so my body can adapt, and so it doesn’t hang on to the calories that are coming in.

Even so, I’m still losing about 2 to 2 1/2 pounds per week, which means that with the calories coming in and my current activity level the numbers still show that I require about 3000-3100 calories per day to maintain a given weight level.

Man-o-man, that’s a lot of calories. Or it seems that way, after months of about half that number…

It’s interesting to me that the numbers seem to match. It’s also interesting to me that there’s so much mysticism about food and diet, when from my experience, it’s pretty much all about the numbers. Sure, there are things you can eat that do other things for you, and maybe I’ll see that in the long run, but in the short term, if all someone cares about is losing weight, it really doesn’t matter what you eat as long as your burning more calories than you take in.

I’m not trying to belittle the process; it’s been hard, and I’ve gone over the self-imposed limit many times, but even so, I’ve had greater success longer with counting calories than I did with the Atkins diet. The Atkins diet, once you’re past the induction phase, is just a sneaky method of reducing calories, I suspect. Someday I’ll run the numbers on that to see if my hunch is correct.

In the meantime, I’m going to calculate what a 3000 calorie day would look like and post it here.