Day 1...er...2!

The story so far:

The company I work for is sponsoring a weight-loss competition ("Largest Loser")...which is inspired by "Biggest Loser". I filled out the 6-page application, reviewed it with my wife and some friends, and viola! I'm a contestant (even managed to place 4th among 82 applicants!).

So...what does this mean? Well, from July 7 through December 12 2009 I'm workin' my arse off so that I can...well...work my arse off. Twelve competitors are given a bevy of resources. We get a free Bodybugg, three weekly hour-long sessions with a personal trainer (woot!), and weekly group sessions with a wellness coach, all with the intent to get us to establish new, healthy habits and in the process lose weight. Oh...and if you win, you get $1000 towards a new wardrobe.

Why would I join this competition? When I graduated high school, I was a pretty big kid weighing in at 180 lbs. Not fat, but not terribly fit. 25 years later, I'm 43 years old and weigh 315 lbs. I'm of the opinion that the only people that have a justifiable reason to be that big are professional sumo wrestlers and NFL lineman. I'm neither of those, which means that by my own definition, I am a fat bastard. Not to worry. I don't call myself a fat bastard to be hard on myself. It's a motivational tool...intended to keep me honest about my situation.

I love to eat. I love to cook. I haven't established regular excersise patterns. That's a handy recipe for getting fat. It works, too! :

Anywho. The competition officially started yesterday. We weighed in, calibrated our Bodybuggs, and were off and running. Based on the data collected by the 'bug (and me logging what I ate) yesterday was a pretty good day: 3355 calories burned all day vs 2213 calories in. That's a 1142 calorie deficit for the day (this kind of deficit is a good thing) vs my 750 calorie target. Yay!

That brings us to today.

I slept with the 'bugg on last night, to compare it's estimate of my overnight caloric burn rate (1 calorie/min) with actual (2 calories/min). Interesting (to me)! Had my first session with the personal trainer - 80 minutes of non-stop activity on the treadmill, lifting weights, doing crunches and situps...the idea is not to rest between activities, but instead to work one musclegroup until you're tired, then work another muscle group while the first one gets some rest. The result is a good sweat and a gradual progression to being pretty worn out all over. It felt great, actually.

Lessons learned:
1) bring a water bottle, dumb@ss!
2) bring a hand towell too so you can mop up the sweat

Checking back in with the 'bugg, the results today are even better than yesterday! I've already burned over 2700 calories and am well on my way to hitting the 3800 calorie target...and will fall short of the 3000 calories worth of food that I'm budgeted.

How does this translate to results? That's the best thing. I'm an engineer. I like math. I like facts. Turns out, there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat. My caloric net yesterday was -1100...and I'm on pace to do that again today. That's 2/3 of a pound in 2 days!

Sustainable weightloss is supposed to be around 1-2 lbs/week. I expect that I'll be well over that at first as I settle in to new habits and lose the easy pounds (including a bunch of water weight...I got myself extra hydrated for the weigh-in...it's a bit of gamesmanship, I admit). I should settle in to a more reasonable pace in a couple weeks.

So there you have it. Two days in and everything's rosy. I love the 'bugg, don't mind logging everything (EVERYTHING) I eat, love my trainer...it's all good!

I'm sure that'll change over time.

Bottom line is, if I can just stay in this to the end, I can't help but benefit from it...a lot...I mean, a LOT. I don't know what to expect in terms of weight loss. Something tells me that anything less than 30 lbs would be abject failure. 50 lbs seems like a lot but possibly achievable. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Initial stats:

weight: 319.2 lbs
body fat: 38.1%