No offense to New Year’s Resolutions, but those just seem too easy to quit or give up on. I plan to kick off the New Year with a much more intense commitment to exercising, eating better, and, as a result, losing pounds and losing body fat.

While on my long vacation, I developed a new plan that covers exercise and diet. On top of that, I am entering a friendly weight loss competition with my wife and some close relatives. There is a wedding happening in April so my wife along with the rest of the wedding party wants to lose some weight. We all picked a day to weigh-in each week, chose specific weight goals, and we will update each other on our progress every week. With about 6 people involved I think this will provide some great motivation and accountability.

I had previously set a goal of 225 pounds by March 1st, but given my slower than expected start, I figured I would need to tweak that anyway so I have made my new goal 225 pounds by April 2nd. This won’t be easy to achieve, but it is definitely possible. As of right now, that means I need to lose a little over 2 pounds per week. Yeah, I do realize that I still have to meet my first goal of 250 pounds, but I think I will get that done this week (I hope). 

You need to burn 3,500 calories to lose one pound of weight. In order to lose 2 pounds in a week I need to average a 1,000 calorie per day ‘burn rate’ (burning 1,000 more calories than I consume). According to this Mayo Clinic calorie calculator my base calorie burn rate per day should be roughly 2,300). I could burn 1,000 calories per day strictly through diet restriction, though that would leave me only able to eat about 1,300 calories per day.  That’s way too low and probably not healthy anyway. However, limiting my calorie intake to about 1,800 calories per day is much more realistic and that would leave me with a 500 calorie deficit to make up through exercise. That can be accomplished with about 30 minutes of jogging according to this calculator. One problem is that I can’t jog for 30 minutes straight right now, only about 5 minutes at a time. That number will come up soon and I’m just doing my best to keep the intensity up when I’m on the treadmill. So for now, until my shoulder pain goes away and I can start weightlifting again, my plan is 6 days of 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise each week.

The combination of exercise and improvements to my diet will make this goal possible, but it is still a bit of a stretch. Also, I’m not really counting calories anymore, but instead I am working on a complete nutrition overhaul (not a diet), which includes eating 6 small meals per day. More on that later. All I can do now is go forward with my plans and see how the numbers play out on the scale over the coming weeks. Wish me luck!