A rather odd couple quit everything to travel the world on bikes....

Putting the Science into Weight Loss

So my first weight loss plan involved the construction of a nifty little spreadsheet that calculated the balance between my food intake and calorific expenditure to assign me a daily allowance. Ths allowance would set me on track for a minimum 2lb a week weight loss.

I measure intake by basically weighing everything I eat on a little electronic microbalance - the typical way to count calories. The expenditure is a little more tricky. I use online calculators to determine what intake is required to maintain my current weight given my age and lifestyle behaviours. To this I add the calorie expenditure from exercise as detailed on my polar heart rate monitor.

This seems fool proof but the figures seem too high. The spreadsheet suggests I can eat 2800 calories a day and still lose weight. This scares me half to death cos I can't imagine I eat that much now. I don't want to stick to this harsh regime only to find that I put on weight.

Anyway, I havn't given up - just changed track a little. I intend to go back to the spreadsheet when I have developed a little confidence and have determined experimentally what my intake must be to maintain a loss.

At the moment I am monitoring the results of sticking to 1800 calories a day and will gradually move up to 2200 calories over a number of weeks if it seems appropriate.

I am really keen to work out exactly how many calories I require to tick over and then set up the balance equation on the spreadsheet. How relaxing it would be to know whether you were in calorie deficit or more likely in exercise deficit at any given moment.

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