PhysicsDiet.com

160 Calories

That is the number of excess calories that I had to eat per day to gain 124 pounds.

When I learned that a pound fat contains about 3,500 calories I realized I could calculate the number of calories per day I had to overeat to gain weight. I just needed two reference dates where I knew what my weight was.

On 5/25/1998 my weight was somewhere around 200 pounds. I know that because that is my third daughters birthday. The spring before she was born I lost about 60 pounds on the Atkins diet.

On 10/28/2005 my weight was 324 pounds. I know that because that is when I permanently changed my lifestyle and started losing weight again.

In 2,713 days I gained 124 pounds. That is just an average of course. Some times I gained weight faster. Some times my weight even stabilized for a period of time. And at the beginning of 2005 it even dropped a few pounds. But that doesn't matter. The simple fact is that over a period of 2,713 days I became 124 heavier.

I gained 0.0457 pound per day. That is just 20.7 grams. To put that in perspective, a AA battery weighs 25 grams.

Now I know how many pounds per day I gained. Since I know how many calories are in a pound of fat I can calculate the number of excess calories I ate per day to gain 124 pounds.

A single serving, or 1/2 cup, of vanilla ice cream contains about 150 calories. When I realized that I only had to reduce the number of calories I was eating by 1 small bowl of ice cream per day I knew I'd never be fat again.

This week I'll publish a series of short articles that explain the simple plan and the various tactics I used to drop nearly 50 pounds (or 5 belt inches and one shirt size) in the course of last year. [Jeremy Zawodny]

I look forward to reading about what worked for Jeremy.

rangerpretzel talks about how he has lost 20 pounds since December of 2005. He has consistently lost about 1 pound per week.

People have asked me:

• How do you do it?
• How is it so easy?
• Why haven't you gained it back?
• How can I do it?

You probably already know everything that rangerpretzel talks about in his post. But that doesn't make it any less valuable. Sometimes you have to see someone you know achieve something before you believe it is possible for you.

When your weight loss starts to become noticeable you'll be amazed by the number of people who come to you for advice. When that happens you should do what rangerpretzel is doing and share what you've learned. Chances are they've already heard what you are going to tell them. But who knows, maybe this time they'll give it an honest effort. And when that happens it is an amazing feeling. It is great to know that you've inspired someone to make a positive change in their life. Nothing motivates me more than knowing that my success is helping others achieve their goals. It is a lot of pressure. But it is a good kind of pressure.

Here are the top 10 fastest losers right now when you sort the list by the 30 Day Weight Change column. This is great. I'd love to hear what you guys are up to on the forums. I'm sure others would love to hear too. No pressure though

The entire public list is amazing. I'm really glad I added this feature. For example, right now the average 1 Week Weight Change is 1.25 pounds. That is about exactly what all the experts say you should reasonably expect to lose per week.

Playing with the list does make want to add a bunch of new features though. I need to include Height, Calorie Deficit, and BMI. I also need to add a summary row so you can see the averages for each column. There is always more work to do

The Traveler's Diet

...

Greenberg's final answers are not the best sales pitch in the world:

Q:Will this diet ever end?
A: If I told you I love this diet, I'd be lying. I don't love this diet, and I'm not a gym rat. But it's a discipline. I can't let it drop.

Q:Do you ever miss the days of flopping on a hotel bed with a Snickers from the minibar?
A: I miss every single day.

I can't imagine you could ever succeed following a lifestyle you don't enjoy.

I enjoyed overeating. And I enjoyed sitting on the couch watching TV. Or sitting in front of the computer working through the night. I used to enjoy smoking too before I quit in 2001.

But I also enjoy never being hungry. I love having the energy to work all day and then go home and play soccer with my kids for an hour and still work in front of the computer until midnight. I love biking and swimming and hiking. I can't wait to live somewhere that will let me add kayaking and mountain climbing and swimming in the ocean to that list.

Life is too short to be miserable. You don't have to trade happiness in your diet to be happy with the way you look and feel. Eat the foods you love, but in moderation. Don't do exercise that bores you to tears. Find fun activities that also happen to burn calories and improve your fitness.

Life isn't a zero sum game. You can have your cake and eat it too. The sooner you find a way to spread the joy you receive from overeating to other parts of you life, the sooner you'll find your new happy, healthy, lifestyle.

Zippygirl is looking for examples of Hacker's Diet success stories. I think the PhysicsDiet.com public profiles page is a great start.

That page only include active users that have chose to make their PhysicsDiet.com profiles public. Users are considered active if they have logged an entry in their Fitness Log within the last 7 days.

Holly (hja) started tracking her average weight in 2001. She recently started tracking it on PhysicsDiet.com, and her public profile is a great source of inspiration.

My profile is currently at the top of the Biggest Losers list. I expect this is only a temporary phenomenon. I want to lose about 30 more ponds and then I'll transition to maintenance mode. That will put me down a total of 120 pounds. Eventually I expect others with public profiles will lose more than that.

quipark and polar are off to great starts. They've both lost almost 38 pounds so far.

Nolan (kwirq) is also doing well. He hasn't recorded any entries this week though, so I hope things are going ok for him.

ttgf is doing great too. And his blog is one of my favorite health and fitness blogs.

quotidianlight just started tracking her weight on PhysicsDiet.com. So far she is off to a great start. I look forward to tracking her progress both through her public profile and on her blog.

So far there 37 public profiles on PhysicsDiet.com. They all inspire me. I hope that list continues to grow. I look forward to seeing all of them reach their goals and maintain a healthy lifestyle for years to come.

A lot of people recommend that you drink a glass of water before you eat to fill your stomach so you don't eat as much. I've never understood this advice. Water, or any beverage really, just doesn't fill me up the same way food does.

Eat fresh fruit or raw vegetables first

Fruit and vegetables are bulky foods that have few calories. They are incredibly filling.

Try to stick to raw vegetables. Cooked vegetables aren't nearly as filling. And depending on how they are prepared, they may have a lot more calories than the same vegetables in their raw form. If you must cook the vegetables then steam them.

Drink a protein shake first

My daily protein goal is 195 grams. My normal diet usually doesn't come close to this so I supplement my diet with Whey protein powder. After I drink an 8 once protein shake I'm stuffed. If my meal include a protein shake I eat it first.

Holly's Triathlon is tomorrow. I can't wait to read how it went.

I won't be able to do a triathlon this year, so I have to live vicariously through Holly and others. Next year I'll review all of Holly's posts while I'm training for my first triathlon.

TTGF has a great post about why he weighs himself in the morning. This was my favorite though:

It motivates me to exercise in the mornings. If I go out for a run before weighing myself, I know from experience that I’ll lose maybe a half to one kilogram (1-2 pounds) from sweating. Some might call it cheating since you’ll put that weight back on as soon as you have a drink, but if it motivates you to exercise so that you can clock up a slightly better score, it can’t be all bad! I find this motivation is especially powerful if I gained weight on the last weigh-in.

This is genius. If you struggle to stick to a consistent exercise routine this might just be the perfect mind hack for you. Personally I prefer to exercise in the morning. But lately I have been staying up too late working on the site and I'm struggling to stick to my exercise routine. I might have to give this strategy a try.

I added the first bit of statistics to the homepage. Now when you are logged in, you can see a summary of your weight loss/gain, rate of weight loss/gain, and your daily calorie deficit/excess for 3 different periods of time. Here's what mine looks like today:

The Total Weight Change column shows the amount of weight you've lost or gained for that period of time. So you can see that I've lost 82 pounds since I started my diet. I've lost 8.4 pounds in the last 30 days. In the last 1 week I've lost 2.5 pounds.

The other two columns are the same calculations that the Weight Chart uses to show the Weekly loss & Daily deficit numbers. They are based on the best fit line on the Weight Chart. Right now the Weight Chart only shows the All Time figure. Soon I will change that so the figures shown on the Weight Chart matches the timeframe of the weight chart. So if you are a looking at last month on the Weight Chart the Weekly loss & Daily deficit will be calculated for last month instead of for All Time like it is today.

I'll be adding more to the home page in the coming days. Right now I'm working on a BMI chart that shows where your current BMI sits in relation to the different BMI categories. Eventually it will show your starting BMI, current BMI, & goal BMI. I will probably also add some of these things to the public profile.

Let me know what you think.