Stay A Weight

Working as a landscaper in the heat of the summer is the easiest way to lose weight while gorging on every food in site. According to CalorieLab, someone with my weight of 195 lbs burns between 400 and 900 calories an hour with physical activities such as shoveling dirt, carrying material, cutting trees and mowing lawns. I’m usually working 10 hour days during the summer as there is plenty of work to do and daylight to accomplish it in. Calculating my calorie requirements during the workday is pretty easy. 8 hours of actual work * 600 calories an hour is 4800 plus the calories spent before and after work eating, hanging out with friends and sleeping. It’s easy to see how I can burn more than 6000 calories per day.

For breakfast I usually have a cup or two of coffee, 3 eggs with cheese, several slices of toast, orange or grapefruit juice and sometimes get healthy with a huge plate of fried rice and tofu. Sometimes I’ll have a bowl of oatmeal or cereal too. This adds up to 400-600 calories for breakfast.

I always have a bag of granola or trailmix in my truck to snack on. A pound will barely last a day. Figure another 500-750 during the work day.

Lunch is usually a big sandwich, or several slices of pizza, or a greasy chinese lunch special. Snacking helps keep me from being starving by lunch so I don’t have to be a pig then. The real problem is large lunches make me tired and it is uncomfortable to work on a stuffed stomach. Again another 500-750 depending on the day.

So far I’m up to about 2000 calories by the time I get home. I’ll have a couple of bottles of Guinness beer adding on another 350 calories along with some chips and salsa. By that I mean a bag of Garden of Eatin Blue Chips (1260 calories) and a jar of salsa or some homemade guacamole for another 2-400 calories.

Dinner varies, but can be counted on for another 500-1000 calories. No summer night is complete without a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream which is another 1000 and change.

The actual number of calories consumed and burned in a day during the summer may vary but it’s usually somewhere between 4000-7000 a day with 5500-6000 looking like a pretty acurate average number. I wish I had picture of myself from the summer when I weighed the same I do now, but with a lot less fat and a little more muscle.

I’ll add up my winter calorie intake and burn rate. Seeing that I get by on 2 or 3 meals a day and sit around typing on my computer all day makes me believe it could be under 2000. Scary, right?

What’s the most you’ve ever eaten in a day?

Back in August, this was almost a six pack stomach. I’m not sure what has happened since then, but if I don’t do something immediately it will keep on growing all winter long.

I’ll be blogging here in a sad attempt to stay a weight. Trust me, I know from experience that this usually gets worse. I’m not ready to give up my eating habits or freeze myself on the streets of NYC trying to run everyday nor am I willing to fork over big bucks to move metal in a stinky sterile gym. If only blogging burnt more calories.