Yay! I’m still drinking beer this week.
Last week, I made the commitment to lose a pound a week or stop drinking beer until my next weigh-in. When I stepped on the scale this Saturday, I needed to weigh 221.7 lbs. or less to continue drinking beer. The good news, the scale read 217.4 lbs.
That’s a loss of about 4.5 lbs, which is a bit more weight loss than I want, long-term. Losing weight slowly (i.e. 2 lbs. a week), means you are losing mostly fat. Lose weight faster than that and you lose other stuff, like muscle. At least, that is what the experts report on the internet.
With a family celebration planned for Saturday night, the pressure to reach my weight goal was high; our celebration included consuming crabs, beers, and poppers. It would have been very sad to eat crabs without beer. Even more tempting, I had just picked up a 4-pack of one of Howard County’s finest beer – Hysteria Trash Panda.
My diet plan is fairly simple. I plan to cut back on snacks and limit my simple carbs like sugar and bread. I’ll track my calories using Lose It!, an easy to use phone app – and it’s free. For my age, height, and gender, I need to consume about 2,140 calories a day to lose a pound a week. It’s pretty easy to log food with the app.
For instance, for the crab feast, my logging looked something like this:
- 4 Med Steamed Crabs – 150 calories
- Corn, White – 77
- Trash Panda – 200
- Cheesecake, slice – 257 (ouch!)
- Beer, Grapefruit Shandy – 150
- Jalapeno Poppers (3) – 213
Beer usually logs in around 150-200 calories or about 1/10 of my daily calorie allotment. So, for Wednesday Pint Nights, I’ll need to budget for about 300 calories for a couple of beers.
Next week’s target – 216.4.
Cheers!
Warren
Excellent sir. I need to join your beer diet.
I like the term “beer diet”. I think I’ll steal it.