Day 3

At some point, the United States Department of Agriculture put their heads together and decided that the average adult human requires around 2000 calories to function. Give or take, this number is the basis of all the recommended daily allowances on the labels of the food you buy every day. Frankly it's not a number that I have ever given much thought. Last year I did the HCG diet and survived on 500 calories a day for one week. Predictably, I lost a significant amount of weight, but couldn't function very well. But that was the only time I had ever given any thought to how many calories I actually consume in a day.

At the beginning of this little project, I downloaded the LoseIt app for my Ipod to help me track my calories consumed and burned. These first few days I haven't bothered to add up all my foods because I knew they were in excess of my budgeted 1627 calories a day(based on a plan to lose 2 pounds a week until I weigh 165lbs).

Tonight I was sacked out on the couch and decided to actually do it. It's a little tedious, especially for homemade recipes. But with the broad strokes it gives you a reasonably accurate idea of what your eating.

Two things happened today that affected my total. Each year around Valentines my mother-in-law takes us out to breakfast. Denny's, IHOP, whatever everybody agrees on. I didn't go nuts, but got a basic breakfast combo. Pancakes, bacon, eggs, hashbrowns. Shortly after that, my soon-to-be diet buddy Jeff called me for a ride. We decided we'd take the fixies out. For the uninitiated, a fixie is a singlespeed, fixed gear(no coasting) bike. Popular of late with the girl-jeans and horn-rimmed hipster crowd. Ours are pretty standard but they make you work a little harder uphill, not being able to grab a lower gear, and they turn fast downhills into a frightening ordeal to be endured rather than enjoyed. It was a beautiful day, and with no computer I have no idea as to how far or fast we went, but I got the heart rate up for about an hour and went around twenty miles. I considered this "vigorous" and entered it into the calculator as such. It spit out 1100 calories for this activity.

When I started punching totals in, I started with the exercise, which bumps up your allowance for food. 1627 became 2727. For a moment I thought I was going to end up with a credit or something.

Not the case. After IHOP, a few cookies, and some lovely homemade taquito's for dinner, my calorie intake was a shocking 3700 calories. I would like to point out that I didn't eat lunch. So I broke my budget by a cool thousand calories. This will be an interesting next few weeks.

Morning weigh-in:

• 198 lbs
• 28%

*Be sure to tune in tomorrow for some hot topless action. I will be posting unretouched "before" photos. Hide the women and children.