Seven Thousand Calories

It's been a tough week.  It's been a tough week in a way that wouldn't normally be considered tough.  After starting this exercise regime with the personal trainer, I got to talking with both him and my neighbor and I decided it would be helpful if I gained a few pounds.  Last week was a test.  I was going to try and gain two pounds and see how it went.  I was also not going to weigh myself during the week because I was suppose to be going up in weight and not knowing what was happening was probably for the best.

My plan was to overeat by seven thousand calories.  A pound of body fat is the equivalent of thirty-five hundred calories.  So for each pound you'd like to gain, you need to overeat by five hundred calories each day.  I was targeting a two pound weight gain so I had to overeat by a thousand calories each day.

This might sound like fun.  It might sound easy, but I've been working on managing my hunger level and eating appropriately-sized meals for a year now and it was difficult at times.  Not weighing myself made it easier because I had no idea how things were going. 

I didn't really pay attention to how much I was eating and I didn't count any calories or grams of fat or any other measurements.  I just ate more.   I metabolize, without exercise, about seventeen hundred calories per day.  I exercised six times during the week adding on average another five hundred calories to the day's total and then I added a thousand calories on top of that.  I was almost doubling my food intake every day and I was full.

When you're looking at losing weight, that thirty-five hundred calories is a lot of hunger pangs to deal with in a week's time.  But it can be a little daunting to gain as well.  Do you know of the delicious glazed Krispy Kreme donuts?  They are two hundred calories each.  That means to gain two pounds you'd need to over eat by thirty-five donuts.   Go buy three dozen donuts, chuck one to the dog and then sit down and eat the rest.

Okay, don't do that.  That's not a good way to gain weight and it just might turn you off to donuts for the rest of your life, but you get the picture.  At today's weigh-in I did gain weight.  So I accomplished my mission.  This week, it's back to regular eating.

The Big Boy Update:  "Watch out chicken!"  It's almost that Art Linkletter: Kids Say The Darndest Things time with my son.  He is starting to say things out of context that just make us laugh.  On the way home from Costco yesterday he was talking about cars and trucks and other things on the road and we mentioned lunch.  Suddenly he said from the back seat, "Watch out chicken!"  We don't know if he was warning his future lunch or he saw something on the road.  Either way, I've got to start writing these things down.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Shoes on!  We went through this phase with her brother where he wanted nothing more than to take off his shoes as soon as we got in the car.  He keeps his on now, and he even tells his sister, "shoes on!" when he sees her trying to take them off, but it's a daily battle.  Once the shoes are off, the socks only stay on for about three seconds longer.  And she flings them.  If only we could get her shoes and socks back on as quickly as she takes to remove them.

Fitness Update:  Back to the gym.  I didn't have a reason to be dragging this morning but for some reason I was.  It felt like a Monday.  That, or maybe it was all the burpees he had us doing. 

Someone Once Said:   ‘Love’ is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.