Sew fit

When I decided to begin my healthy lifestyle and start losing weight, I picked 125 as an arbitrary number. I mean, I knew I wanted to be a smaller size, and I wanted to be healthy. Anything below 175 pounds was going to be a step in the right direction. Now that I have a better understanding of fitness and nutrition, I’m going to re-evaluate my goals.

Through wiishfulshrinking, I found this great formula on how to figure out your body fat percentage at home.

Measurements You’ll Need to Take:

• Body weight in pounds 
• Wrist (at fullest point) in inches
• Waist (at naval) in inches
• Hips (at fullest point) in inches
• Forearm (at fullest point) in inches

Formulas:

• A = (Body Weight x 0.732) + 8.987
• B = Wrist ÷ 3.14
• C = Waist x 0.157
• D = Hip x 0.249
• E = Forearm x 0.434
• A + B - C - D + E = Lean Body Mass (LBM)
• Body Weight - LBM = Body Fat Weight (BFM)
• (BFM x 100) ÷ Body Weight = Body Fat Percentage

Math Time!:

• A = 112.199
• B = 2.229
• C = 4.396
• D = 9.213
• E = 4.34
• 105.14 = Lean Body Mass (LBM)
• 35.86 = Body Fat Weight (BFM)
• 25.43 = Body Fat Percentage

What does it mean? (results for women, sorry guys!)

• Essential Fat- 10%-12%
• Athletes- 14%-20%
• Fitness- 21%-24%
• Acceptable- 25%-31%
• Obese- 32%+

This gives me pretty decent idea of where I’m at, and where I need to be. I wish I was better about logging where I was, so I can see where I came from, but I can only assume I was pushing the obese range. Essentially, nearly 36 pounds of my body is fat. Granted, the human body needs fat to survive, but I don’t think mine needs the whole 36 pounds! I’d like to see my body fat percentage realistically at 18%-20%

• A rough, rough estimate of my BF% would be 15.8%, a little lower than I’d like
• Right around 130 pounds is a great weight, putting me at 19.12% 

That’s an eleven pound loss, being careful to make sure it’s fat loss, not just fluctuating water weight, or muscle/protein loss. Since it’s not that far behind where I’m currently hovering, it’s super important to really focus on fat loss, rather than overall weight loss.

Just to really put things into perspective, here’s what five pounds of fat looks like

But wait! What if that’s just an extremely petite person? Here’s something else, pull a dollar out of your wallet and take a look

Yowza! Remember those old Wendy’s commercials where they equated the monetary value of things in regards to their dollar menu items? Like, “Well, that’ll cost you five Jr. Frosty’s” Imagine how many dollar cheeseburgers are in that blob!

Special thanks again to wiishfulshrinking 

So far, I’ve gotten great success from My Fitness Pal with the app and website. I highly recommend it for those of you who are just starting out and need some direction. It’s fantastic and super beneficial to see how many calories you’re consuming versus expelling. That’s what weight loss is all about, math! As a nerd, once it was put into these terms, it was a piece of delicious, forbidden cake ^_~

My only problem at this stage of the game, is that I don’t really think 1,200 calories a day is enough! I feel that, as a server, I need to consume more than that, especially on workout days, to avoid my body going into starvation mode. SO! With that, and the aforementioned interest in math, let’s use the Harris-Benedict formula and double check the geniuses at MFP!

Harris-Benedict:

Women: BMR (Base Metabolic Rate) = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)

• BMR = 655 + (4.35 x 143) + (4.7 x 66) - (4.7 x 24)
• BMR = 655 + 622.05 + 310.2 - 112.8
• BMR = 1,474.45 cals

Now! We’ve figured out that my Base Metabolic Rate is 1,474 cals. To find the Active Metabolic Rate, or AMR, plug that number into the following formulas, depending on your level of activity:

• Sedentary (little or no exercise) - your AMR = BMR x 1.2
• Lightly active (light exercise/work 1-3 days per week) - your AMR = BMR x 1.375
• Moderately active (moderate exercise/work 3-5 days per week) - your AMR = BMR x 1.55
• Very active (hard exercise/work 6-7 days a week) - your AMR = BMR x 1.725
• Extra active (very hard exercise/work 6-7 days a week) - your AMR = BMR x 1.9

After doing a little number crunching (no work shown here, kiddies), here’s what I’ve got:

• Sedentary = 1,768 cals
• Lightly active = 2,026 cals
• Moderately active = 2,284 cals
• Very active = 2,542 cals
• Extra active = 2,800 cals

Whoa! Makes you wanna be extra active, huh? Because my job involves quite a bit of anaerobic exercise, and I do work out regularly (or at least go back to working out regularly), I would put me at the Moderately Active range. For the sake of maximized results, however, I’ll put it at the Lightly Active range for now.

So, to maintain my current weight and level of fitness, I should be consuming 2,026 calories per day, 14,182 calories per week. If I want to lose a safe and reasonable amount of weight per week, that’s two pounds. One pound is 3,500 calories. So in one week, I must create a deficit of 7,000 calories per week, from exercise and nutrition. That breaks down to a daily deficit of 1,000 calories. That’s a very high number! I cannot subtract 1,000 straight off the 2,026, because that will put me under the bare minimum 1,200 calorie mark to live.

• 2,026-1,200=826 calories can be safely subtracted. Diet alone would yield me a loss of 1.65 lbs per week. Not quite the two pound goal we were hoping for.
• 2,026-600= 1,426 calories can be consumed, this combined with daily exercise amounting to or surpassing 400 calories will get us our 1,000 daily deficit

But wait! Should we eat those calories back? You’ll hear a lot of different opinions on this, some swear that you should eat every single calorie back, others say to be grateful for the loss and move on. Personally, I eat back some, only if I am really really hungry. It depends on the amount of physical activity. I always try to stay ahead, I don’t use it as an excuse to gorge myself on fatty foods. Basically, I make sure to net 1,200, and anything else is just gravy. I have got to stop using food metaphors!

The wiser mathfiticians (eh? ehhh?) will have already seen a slight problem with all of this. As your weight changes, and you become closer and closer to your goal, your dietary needs will change! So, some say to eat like the size you want to be. I want to be 125 pounds. The math montage goes a little like this

• BMR = 1,396 cals
• Sedentary = 1,675 cals
• Lightly active = 1,919 cals
• Moderately active = 2,163 cals
• Very active =2,408 cals
• Extra active =2,652 cals

That breaks down to quite a difference! Since scrolling doesn’t really burn any calories, let’s put all that information into one nice neat little pile:

• 143 VS 125
• BMR = 1,474 // 1,396 (78 cal difference)
• Sedentary = 1,768 // 1,675 (93 cal difference)
• Lightly active = 2,026 // 1,919 (107 cal difference)
• Moderately active = 2,284 // 2,163 (121 cal difference)
• Very active = 2,542 // 2,408 (134 cal difference)
• Extra active = 2,800 // 2,652 (148 cal difference)

That breaks down to not that big of a difference! So what’s the conclusion that you can draw?

I DON’T KNOW, I’M MORE CONFUSED THAN EVER, MFP, I’LL NEVER STRAY FROM YOU AGAINNNNNN!!!!! O_O

Kidding! If there was a larger goal involved, that second theory may have worked out better, but since I’m relatively close to my target weight, I think I’ll just stick to what I see has worked best for me. Drink a gallon of water, net 1,200 calories, work out, eat the right foods, and keep struttin’ my stuff in my awesome Nikes.