Finding Out What Makes Me Fat - Vol. 1

So... I'm fat.

I was fatter, but I am still fat, relatively speaking. I am fatter than I should be at my most healthy. And that's not ideal. 

So... there comes the question, what do I do about it?

Naturally, the answer is, lose some weight.

A nice and simple solution. And how do you do it? You burn more calories than you take in- a principle that is parroted in a lot of online weight loss circles, which I do agree with, but sometimes it's too simplified to see the full picture. So out of the habit to massively over-complicate things to the detriment of the majority of people around me and myself, I'm going to be exploring some of the more nuanced aspects of weight loss. I do believe that in most people, it is very likely that all you need to do to lose weight is to burn more calories than you take in.

1. But how do you know how many calories you are eating?
2. How do you know how many calories you are burning?
3. What factors are changing the amount of calories you are burning?
4. What factors are changing the amount of calories you are eating?
5. And many other related questions that burn in my brain more than calories in my body.

Now, presumably, a reasonable, normal human, would not bother thinking about these things because they have like, lives and stuff. But I do not, so here comes the fun.

I am going to be slowly, but consistently building up a nice selection of data about things that are related to my weight (and my health in general). I am going to be testing out various tools, various schools of thought and whatever tickles my pickle at a particular moment. (Not like that).

So. With that being said, where are we going to start?

Let’s start with the basics. The things we all probably know how to do in some way or another, and where there’s readily available tools to facilitate these actions. 

Namely, I am talking about calorie counting. Eugh, that word sounds so dirty to me. It’s tainted with memories of conveniently forgetting about that scrumptious slice of triple chocolate chip fudge cake and wondering why the scales are not moving. It is really a small effort in theory, but my God does it take some will power to actually consistently build a habit of recording calories. And there’s entire diets and meal plans based around the idea that we all absolutely loathe calorie counting and we need an easier system to follow. And I like those ideas, but in my quest for some of that juicy, juicy data, I’m gonna have to bite the bullet and do the unfortunate work of counting calories, whether I like it or not.

However, thanks to the beauty of modern technology, nutritional information regulation on packaging and the absolutely wondrous open source community, I am not restricted to manually figuring out how many calories are in the food I am eating, looking it up, storing the data, calculating the amounts and all that rather boring stuff.

Instead, I can stand on the shoulders of giants and wield the powerful tools of those who have come before me, and perhaps even improve them so that they are more useful to those creators and the people who come after me. 

With that being said, and as I said before, this is going to be a SLOW process. Why? Because I lied a little bit as well, I do have something that resembles a life. I have work to do, I have family and friends to mingle with, and sometimes y’know, I just fancy binge watching TV, reading a book or bitch-slapping zombies to death in virtual reality. So… I don’t have all of my day, or all of my week, or all of my will power to dedicate to this project.

But it IS important. My health is one of the biggest advantages and privileges I have in life right now. And certain events in the near past have taught me that it is not something that I can take for granted. So, I need to create the initial blueprints for the system, implement it QUICK and improve it QUICK. I’ll be taking what I guess you project management folks would describe as an agile approach on this. It is going to be messy to begin with. It is going to be imperfect, and it’s going to get on my nerves. But let’s embrace that uncomfortable reality and not get stuck in an endless circle of analysis paralysis.

In that spirit, let’s begin with the first question to find out the answer to, in order to start the action in this journey.

Figuring Out Why I’m Fat Vol. 2 - Exploring The Different Meal / Diet / Calorie Management Applications Available