I’ve lost 7.6  in 9 days.  My energy levels are fine now as long as I get my timings right.  I have been working late; and so I have been eating dinner late.  I have to cover the longer time gap between lunch and dinner with a snack of about 200 calories.

The science says burn more calories than you consume.

In 2010 a college professor named Mark Haub did just that. He went on a “convenience store” diet consisting mainly of Twinkies, Oreos, and Doritos in an attempt to demonstrate to his students “that in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most—not the nutritional value of the food”. He lost 27 pounds over a 2 month period.

I want to test this out. Not with junk food, but by monitoring my calorie burn to consume ratio.

I’ll be using the Tap and Track app to help me record the data.

Here are my starting details:

According to the math, if I consume 3,498 calories a day, I will maintain my current weight.  So in theory, to lose weight, I need to consume less than this or burn more calories through the course of the day so that the net effect is less than 3,498 calories.

Let’s see what happens.

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Here are my results at the end of day one:

Note: I will continue to do my normal exercise routine.  Tap and Track adds the number of calories you’ve burned to the remaining calories count.  I burnt 1,181 calories during my exercise routine.  So in the picture below, you’ll see that I still have 2002 calories I could consume if I wanted to maintain my present weight.

Watch the video of Mark Haub being interviewed on CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

peace, out.