A Post About Health
I last wrote about how I intend to use my smart watch going forward; that was I supposed technically about technology, but really it was a post about my health. And, since the software I need to use at work is down and I have nothing to do, I might as well post some more about my health. I was going to make a thread on Mastodon but realized it would be a better use of my time (and everyone else's) to throw this in a blog post.
On top of changing what I'm tracking more meaningfully (that would be sleep, steps, and exercise) I modified my calorie tracking to stop including burned exercise calories in my daily goal; that means that the food I enter into my diary has to fit within a fixed number. This is better for two reasons:
- Eating back your calories is not a good idea. I think I mentioned it in my last post but smart watches and estimations are notorious for being inaccurate compared to what the body actually burns.
- I found it difficult to properly gauge my progress because Cronometer would change my calorie goal based on how many calories I was consuming; now with a static goal, it's easier to see what I'm doing.
With that said, yesterday I went over my calorie goal by approximately 1400. Part of that was because we had a free pizza lunch at work and I had three slices, and then I ate some more when I got home, partly out of stress (see work situation mentioned above). But you know what? That's okay.
If you look at a single day in a vacuum, it looks bad. But with weight loss, you need to look at the bigger picture. Maybe I overate by quite a bit yesterday, but that represents 14% of the week. I can reduce my calories for the rest of the week by approximately 280 calories a day and I'll be fine in the bigger picture.
It'll take a little bit of planning and a pinch of willpower, but I can do it. And I will continue to exercise and keep track of that progress as well. For example last night my softball game was cancelled, so instead I went to the gym and had a half-hour workout. It could have been longer but I have bad knees and needed to ice them. It's a long softball season so I'd like to have working knees1.
Well, that's all I got for now. Maybe the rest of this week I'll have some other topics to talk about. I don't like boring people with personal numbers and stats that don't have a lot of meaning to other people.
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Because of the personal training I've been doing, my muscles are holding up wonderfully. It's those pesky joints...the joints!↩