Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Mr. CR: Dr. Roy Walford

I'm starting to really take to this idea that calorie restriction is a fool-proof plan for weight loss and health. One of the pioneers of calorie restriction (CR) was Dr. Roy Walford.


He was apart of the scientific team in Biosphere 2 and wrote books such as "The 120 Year Diet", "Beyond The 120 Year Diet" and "The Anti-Aging Plan". Maybe ironically, he passed away at age 79. He had Lou Gehrig's Disease. Here he is in a 2000 interview with Alan Alda on "Scientific American Frontiers":

Thursday, February 23, 2012

My Diet Update February 2012

It's been three months since my previous summary of macronutrient intake. Now is an appropriate time to reflect back.

Last November I finished twelve weeks of high carbohydrate calorie restriction. After I lost weight during that period, I didn't have a plan moving forward. I suppose I was ready for a break. I would have liked to have lost another ten pounds, but I didn't consciously make that goal.

I continued to keep a food log, but didn't enter the data into my spreadsheet on a daily or regular basis. So, I wasn't aware of how much food I was eating. I ate until satisfaction, not really indulging much. I did fudge a little bit, especially around the holidays. When I say fudge, I'm being both figurative and literal, as well as cookies, pie, cake and ice cream. I was eating more refined carbs from December to February than previously during September to November, which added to my overall calorie intake.

The day of reckoning came this past Sunday. I opened my food log and started to enter the data into my spreadsheet. Three months of food logging is daunting. It took an entire Sunday afternoon to update the data. But it's done. The summary table is below. The bad news is that I gained weight, but the good news is that it was at a slow rate, only one pound per month.


The average daily calorie intake was 2600 with a standard deviation of 500. So most days fit between 2100 and 3100 calories. During the previous twelve week period the average daily calories was 2100. The difference between 2600 and 2100 daily calories translated to gaining weight versus losing weight, respectively.

After reviewing the data I decided to apply calorie restriction for another twelve week period with a target to lose about one pound per week. See you in 3 months.