The Plan

So how do I plan to get back in shape? Well an aggressive diet and exercise program is out of the question. I haven't stuck to a diet in forty years and I am too afraid of an injury for vigorous exercise. No, the plan is to take it slow.

Primarily, I want to eliminate as many calories as I can without impacting meals. For me, this means sugary drinks. I start my day with an average of five cups of coffee with cream and sugar. Going cold turkey on coffee is not happening, but cutting down to two cups is reasonable and saves 600 calories a day.

Next is my juice habit. When writing code in the afternoon, I like to have some juice. I was going through a bottle of V8 Fusion every two days. Cutting back to one reasonably sized glass a day, reduced consumption to two bottles a week. It also saved 240 calories a day.

Lastly, I would usually have two glasses of iced tea with dinner. I cut this back to one and saved another 140 calories.

That is a huge 980 calorie savings that equals .28 pounds a day (figure 3500 calories is a pound). That should result in a loss of close to two pounds a week. All of this liquid was replaced with cold filtered water from the refrigerator. I know there is a line of reasoning that drinking cold water burns calories as you drink it because you body has to warm it up. The problem is the actual calories burned are too few to make a difference.


Now there are nine weeks in June and July. At two pounds a week, I should be able to drop 18 pounds by the end of July. Then again, there was a holiday and a big car club get together and a couple other events that might slow me down so I set a goal of 15 pounds by the end of July. That means I should drop from 225 to 210 before August.

I will tell you that I did start at the beginning of June and I have stuck to the plan. Next post, I'll explain how I'm going to start exercising again while avoiding injury.