Hey, guys. How about this east coast weather? On Wednesday, I was out running in shorts and a t-shirt. This morning (Saturday), I was digging my car out of the ice. Crazy.

I’ve been VERY level in my weigh-ins over the past week. I haven’t been doing as well with my workouts (gym closed) or diet (I’m fat). So I’m just happy that I’m not gaining any weight. I’m excited about next week, when our gym opens back up.

I was doing better with my diet when I was recanting everything I was eating on the blog here. But I thought that was boring to read, so I cut it out. Maybe I should get started again.

Great Mexican/Peruvian Food in Lancaster, PA
Today I ate fairly well, but was ruined by a dinner out suffered a setback at dinner. We took Kim’s mother to El Sereno in Lancaster, PA for her birthday. El Sereno is one of our favorite restaurants, making great Mexican and Peruvian food. My favorite dish there is “pollo fundido” — grilled chicken with cheese, wrapped in tortilla dough and covered in cheese sauce. It’s awesome stuff. They used to serve it deep fried, chimichanga style, but recently started simply grilling the stuffed tortilla. I guess that’s healthy, and I had it that way once (they got me by surprise). Since then, I actually ask them to deep fry it like they used to. Because it tastes better that way. Mmmm.

(I wonder if anyone trying to diet will mistakenly come to my site, read that last paragraph, get hungry, and then run out to Taco Bell for a fix. Poor guys.)

Weigh Yourself Everyday
I promised to address some of the things that came up during the Calacanis Cast that I didn’t get a chance to talk about. One of them was when our buddy Tim Elliott mentioned that he only weighs himself every other day. Some people weigh themselves less often. One reason given for these less frequent weigh-ins is that one wants to ignore the day-to-day fluctuations in weight due to things like water retention, how long it’s been since your last #2, or how long your hair is, etc.

They make a fair point. People shouldn’t get caught up on one or two pounds here or there day-to-day. If you’ve gained one pound from yesterday, you don’t want to get discouraged and … who knows what. If you’ve lost one pound since yesterday, you don’t want to get too cocky and reward yourself with a cheesesteak. By weighing yourself just once a week, instead of every day, you give yourself more time to REALLY lose weight so you can trust your weigh-ins more. Not really.

I mean first of all, I’m only on track to lose about 1lb a week. My weight fluctuates 2-4 lbs each day (besides the past few days of very consistent weight ins). I can make progress in a week and still weigh in higher.

But the real reason I like to weigh myself everyday is that I need to be able to make immediate adjustments. I can’t wait one week to find out that I’ve been gaining weight. I need to know right away to fix my leaks and get back on track.

So how can I tell if I’m getting off track without being deceived by my daily fluctuations? I use a Google gagdet called the Google 15, which tracks my weight day-to-day and also graphs for me the 15-day moving average of my weight. The moving average shows how my weight is trending (just like with moving averages on stock charts). If my current weight is above my 15-day moving average, I am risking reversing trend. If my current weight is below my 15-day moving average, I’m in good shape (hehe).
I don’t mean to nag on Tim. Every other day might be often enough to check your weight. You can’t do too much damage in one day. And Tim seems to be doing very well with his system, losing 8 pounds so far since he started fat blogging. So I’d say stick with what’s working. I’m a big proponent of doing what works for YOU.

Still, using a program like Google 15 to track your weight and moving average can help you stay on track by giving you an early detection warning. Check it out. It’s fun and challenging keeping those little dots below my moving average. Anything to turn my weight loss into a video game is going to help me get fitter!

I haven’t weighed myself yet today. My routine is to weight myself before I shower, while I’m in the buff. So yeah, I haven’t showered yet today either. 😛

It’s Spring Break for the young ones at Haverford College, and so I don’t get to use their gym this week. Still, it’s very nice out so I’ll be running some outside. Kim and I ran on Sunday.

I’ll miss lifting weights though. I was really getting into it. Kim was impressed by the veins in my forearms the other day. That’s progress, baby.

My past posts have all been very long. And good bloggers that build an audience mix up the length of their posts (something to be considered in Blog Tycoon). So I’ll cut this one short right here.

I weight 221 pounds and I’m having ice cream for breakfast. My diet is sweet. I’m pretty much going against a lot of the common wisdom out there, trying to find the diet/exercise plan that works best for me. I really hope I can do well with this, because it would be great to prove that one can lose weight without giving up the food they love.

BTW, the ice cream I’m eating is Edy’s Slow Churned, Rich and Creamy, Vanilla Bean. It has 100Cal per 1/2 cup serving, which is much less than most other ice creams. It’s also more tasty I think and goes really well with a spoonful of Kim’s dad’s jam.

So How Much Weight Can You Gain Lifting Weights?
Not much. Probably none. Technically, I’ve read that one could gain about 9lbs (4kg) of muscle weight from “intense” weight training. Who knows what “intense” means, but it doesn’t even matter unless you are already in crazy shape. Because the amount of calories you would burn in that “intense” workout will offset any muscle weight gains for all but the fittest people.

This page also tries to debunk this myth and also talks about how many calories that added muscle actually burns (emphasis mine):

Another common misconception is that if you lift weights and add muscle mass you will lose weight when sitting due to a higher metabolism.

Scientific studies of muscle metabolism have conclusively shown that skeletal muscle burns about 13 calories per kilogram of body weight over a 24 hour period. If a man weighs 70 Kg (154 Lbs), has about 28 Kg of skeletal muscle will burn about 22% of the calories his body uses through the day. Adding 4 pounds of muscle bulk thru weightlifting, during a high intensity 6 month lifting program, would result in burning 24 more calories per day. One bite of an Oreo® cookie contains about 24 calories.

A corollary to this is that you may gain weight due to lifting weights, even while loosing fat weight. This is one of the greatest exercise myths. The myth is based in fact: muscle is more dense and weighs more than fat. The same weight of muscle take up nearly half the volume as the same weight of fat.

The problem with this is that not very many people will be able to add the volume of muscle mass relative to fat lost to gain weight. Remember, the average man will add only 4 Kg of muscle mass in a rigorous training program.

This does not mean that weight training should be avoided. Weight training will result in higher lean body mass. This translates into more efficient fat metabolism for energy. Cellular membranes are more permeable to glucose, reducing the need for excess insulin in the blood. This results in a reduced susceptibility to diabetes.

So let me introduce this rule of thumb:

You won’t gain any net weight through your workouts unless you don’t have any fat weight to lose.

Us fatbloggers for the most part have a lot of fat to lose. So don’t even worry about this one.

My Real Question
I’m still interested in finding some specific numbers, since part of my goal now is to be able to bench 210lbs as well as weight 210lbs. (I’ve already lifted 200lbs once. It was a lot easier than I thought for me to build up my bench press… so far.) For giggles, I posted something at Yahoo! Answers. (link)

How much weight will I gain lifting weights?

I’ve heard one can gain about 9lbs (4kg) of weight through “intense” weight training. Does anyone have more specific numbers like this.

Ideally, I’m looking for something like:
“Increasing your max bench press weight from 150 to 200 will add _______ pounds to your weight.”

Thanks everyone.