I'd like to propose a 2 week unofficial experiment. I hope you'll consider participating. And while this is posted in the TDC, it's okay with me if folks with a little less than 100 lbs to lose want to participate.

We've all been taught in the past that watching calories is how you lose weight. Now, along comes the low carb plans that tell us to not worry about calories. I think they still do matter and would like to try something to see if we can prove out that going low carb AND watching calories can give us better results with our weight loss.

UpTheHill (Lynda) has had tremendous success and has achieved her goal weight with using the concept I'm proposing for this experiment. Just think about it - she made it to her goal weight using this idea. Just how many threads have you seen in the TDC where someone has hit goal?

The concept here for the experiment is to record everything we do now for the first week so that we have a baseline of what we are currently doing. Then, for the 2nd week, change what we do to try to burn a targeted amount of calories every day. Still staying low carb, of course.

Here's the 2 week proposal:

For Week 1, continue eating and exercising like you normally do:
- record your weight on Day 1.
- Log all of your food eaten and your activities at http://fitday.com for 7 full days.
- record your weight in the morning on Day 8.
- Subtract the total calories eaten for the week from the total calories used in the activities for the week and divide by 7. This number is your average daily calorie deficit for the first week.
- Post here the average calorie deficit and how much weight you lost.

For Week 2, change your eating and exercising to hit a target calorie deficit:
- Based on week 1's average calorie deficit, set yourself a goal calorie deficit to hit each day.
- do the same thing you did for week 1, but try each day to hit your goal for the calorie deficit. (Hint: If you find late at night that you are under your goal, you can do a bit more exercise to get closer to your goal... standing in front of the TV marching or jogging in place, take a walk, do some sit ups, etc.)
- Subtract the total calories eaten from the total calories used and divide by 7 to come up with your average daily calorie deficit for the 2nd week.
- Post here the average calorie deficit and how much weight you lost.

I know it sounds like a bit more work to do this tracking, but if it works...

We can each do this on our own schedules...whenever it makes sense for you to begin, go ahead. If you've already been tracking your food intake and activies, then you can just record week 1 from that information. You could also do week 2 whenever you want - just be sure to record you weight on Day 1 and Day 8 so that you can calculate the weight loss.

So who's in?

Your experiment is a nice thought, but be careful not to read too much into the "results" you get. One week is just not enough time to filter the real information out of the noise.

By the normal calculation, you would need a 1000 calorie per day deficit to lose two pounts in one week, yet just a quart of water floating around in your system could nullify - or double - the results.

Yes, calories still matter - Dr. A even says that. He also says that if you are not exercising, you are not doing Atkins. What he is saying is that calories should not be the focus - that if you follow the program they will take care of themselves. A significant number of people find that, for a change, they have to make sure that they eat enough food to avoid letting their caloric intake fall too low - and having to learn why letting that happen would be "a bad thing".

Finally, the benefit of exercising isn't the calories burned during the exercise itself - those are quite minimal. For instance, just being alive consumes somewhere in the range of 50 calories per half hour. Taking your dog for a walk consumes roughly an additional 250 calories per half hour while most moderately vigorous activites (jogging, swimming) would add another 250 or so calories per half hour on top of that.

So if you exercised moderately vigorously for half an hour every single day, you could account for about a pound of fat loss a week. Not to be sneezed at, for sure. But what if you could raise the cost of being alive from 50 calories per half hour to 60 calories per half hour. Since you are alive for a lot longer than a half an hour a day, that would translate to an additional 3360 calories burned per week - and hence about another pound of fat gone.

This is what REGULAR (aerobic) exercise does for you. After several weeks of demanding your body process oxygen and produce energy at a heightened level for about a half an hour three times a week, your body will adapt and that adaptation will increase your basal metabolism. It's a major factor that exercise calculators and such overlook.

Anyway, I've rambled in your thread long enough. Good luck with your experiment and congrats on the fabulous progress you've made thus far.

i'll give it a whirl and play guinea pig for a week and see if it works. let me put myself in this situation and see if i get it...

last week, i consumed an average of 1740 calories and burned an average of 2937, leaving me with an average deficit of 1197. i don't know what my weight loss was, tho. so, what i'll do is weigh myself tomorrow- contine w/ approx the same average of 1700 calories & see what my weightloss is next sunday on a approx 1200 deficit... then the following week cut my calories by hmmm 200 or so, leaving my daily consumption at about 1500 and up my exercize enough to burn an additional 100, leaving me with a 1500 deficit instead of 1200... the 300 a day or 1500 a week difference should be enough to see if theres a difference in weight. my parents have a digital scale w/ 2 decimal points... so even if its minimal, it should be there. i dont think i have anything working against me for the next few weeks- TOM is gone- no appointments or anything to get in the way of my exercize routine... and i fitday already anyways, so, its no extra burden on me there- the only thing i have to do that i normally dont is weigh myself, so, we'll see

i always thought calories mattered, which is why mine are already fairly low or deficit high depending on how u look at it... not as much as Lynda, but it would be too drastic for me to go from 1700 to 1200, so, 1500 to start makes more sense... and if your experiment works, maybe i'll go down in cals or up in exercize a lil more from there. should be intersesting.

Be wary - very wary - of digital scales. Check out the first page of my journal for a link to a discussion of accuracy and precision issues with scales.

You can do the following simple test - step on the your parent's scale ten times and see how much the ten measurements vary by. Please post the results if you do - I'd be interested to see them.

Even with a perfectly accurate and precise scale, you won't be able to know if the additional calorie deficit had any effect. Your natural weight fluctuations easily swamp a half a pound.

What conclusion you will draw if your weigh in shows that you gained a pound? There in lies the danger of taking what is pretty fundamentally meaningless data and interpretting it as though it has more content than it really does. We draw the wrong conclusions and change our behaviors based on those wrong conclusions.

Go ahead and take the data - but don't draw any conclusions are make any changes based on them until you have collected a minimum of a couple of months of data and then base your conclusions on the overall trend of the data.

Good luck.

OK, wbahn - you made me curious. I just got on and off of my scale 10 times and I got the same reading each time. It is a TANITA BF-625. Now that doesn't mean that I think if I got on someone else's scale the readings would agree. Scales can be very tricky evil things sometimes

Dianne - love the thread and am looking forward to seeing everyone's progress.

Marie

Diane ~

Sounds like fun! I'm in, especially since I track most of this stuff already. But I warn you, the way I lose weight seems to have absolutely nothing to do with calories in or out.

Sort Of Off Topic: One thing I suggest to help make FitDay measurements more accurate is a food scale. I estimated a lot more before I bought one, and I've been surprised how wrong (+ and -) I'd been.

I'd like to get one of those digital scales, but they're too pricey. The cheap grocery store one I got ($2.36) can be calibrated with a knob at it's base - I use a cube or pound of butter to make sure I'm accurate. Hey, it works!

BTW, I have a Tanita BF2001 and I weighed the same 10 times, too. It's also always been accurate compared to the doctor's scale, too.

At least, for weight ... my doctor's body fat scale and the Tanita vary by a lot.

I'll post Week 1 tomorrow!

The Tanita scales tend to be fairly precise - as your results anecdotally verify. I believe they use a partially compensated half-bridge circuit as opposed to the completely uncompensated quarter-bridge circuits in most digital scales. Even so, they don't tend to maintain that precision over longer time periods - particularly in response to temperature changes. As long as the scale is in a room that is maintained at the same temperature, this is not a big issue. They, like most consumer-grade electronic scales, also tend to give different results as the battery voltage drops - but this is pretty long term and fairly minor.

Next time you are at a store that has a selection of scales that you can try, repeat this same experiment (at least three times on each scale) and you'll be surprised how much variation you'll see. Now, having said that, the situation today is not nearly as bad as it was, say, even five years ago. The cost of highly sophisticated IC's to perform compensation for a variety of factors has come down so that even low-end scales now do some pretty high-end processing. My first digital scale - which has long since been ripped apart and turned into a model rocket engine test stand - was so flaky that you could get it to vary by more than ten pounds from one try to the next.

I'd be curious to know what the BF measurement variation is on those scales if you carefully dry your feet verses stepping onto the scale from a damp towel. Also if you take your measurements before and after taking a shower/bath.

wbahn, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I know that some folks can lose without paying any attention to calories (either high or low). Based on what I've been doing, I think it makes a difference for me.

You are right that a 1 week experiment is not long enough. But let's face it, anything we do like this is not scientific anyway. It's for fun and just to see our results. If folks want to do it for longer, then great! Maybe we'll get even more data.

I would not advocate to anyone that they should change their plan based on this 1 week experiement. However, I think there are a lot of people on the boards who could benefit by tweaking their plans, whether it be an adjustment in calories, excercise or other factors of their plan. As you say, Dr. A even points out that if you stall you may need to pay attention to calories. So it's not like it's taboo or anything with his plan.

You don't have to sell me on the benefits of exercise! I've learned that one by doing it. I wholeheartedly agree with the good Dr. that we have to exercise in addition to what we eat. I know it has made a tremendous difference in my weigh loss and in my health.

Having seen this work for someone who has gotten to goal is a very strong reason for me to try it and see how it works for me. If someone else comes along and has done something different to hit goal, I'll certainly take a look at what they did to get there, too. I'm in it to learn what works best for me and what better way to learn than by someone who's reached goal!

Jemman, Marie & Monika, I'm so glad you are willing to try this. I think we'll have fun with it. I think it's good to try something new once in awhile.

Oh, I did try my Tanita digital scales 10 times and they are accurate. I even tried to manuever around on the top of the scale to force a different reading, but it was constant. Maybe the newer models have taken into account the issues that used to occur with the older ones. My scale is about 8 or 9 months old...

I already have a pretty good calorie deficit going and don't really want to drop any lower, I don't have alot of excess fat calories (don't eat red meat, or any type dressings or anything on my veggies ect) in my diet so i tend to average 1300 most days.
but i wanted to add i got a cheap ($30 at walmart) digital scale that weighs the same, everytime i step on it, to the 1/4 lb where as i had a dial scale that was a diffrent weight everytime i stepped on it. now admitedly the BF% part is off depending on if your feet are wet ect but that is why i use calipers :P

My scale is new, too ... I got it the end of February.

Hi Dianne,

Your timing on this is perfect, I have been trying to read some of Up The hill's journal as well as your own and I started to enter my food on fitday yesterday. I was going to write to one of you and get more info on how to use fitday. This post came at a great time, I would like to try and do your experiment with you also. I will be doing some futher reading in the journals to try and get more info. Thanks, Tammy

I would like to try this as well I had just started to try and learn how to use fitday after reading post about how much it helped. If you have any hints or tips in using fitday I would love to know.

Chock full of great info!

FitDay.com How To's

Karen

Week One
1766 average calories in
2500 average calories out
5136 calorie deficit = 1.4 pounds
0 pound actual loss (but fluctuated +/- 2.5 lbs)

Current weight: 234.5


Plan for Week Two ...
~1500 calories in
~3000 calories out*
~10,500 deficit = 3 pounds

* this is going to be a challenge! but I'm expecting a big week starting resistance training and a new water exercise class ... I think I can do it. I'm reminded of what you said, Dianne about how we'd lose so much faster if we treat every few pounds like they're the ones between you and a big milestone!

I'm ready to push some more right out of the way.

Dianne ~

I was just thinking this afternoon that you could call this The UpTheHill Experiment, in honor of our recent goal reacher.

BTW, you've inspired me to challenge myself and track all this for a month and shoot for a specific calorie deficit. I have a few months to compare it with, so it'll be fun to see if there is a difference.