Game on!

so I got the BodyBugg activated yesterday. AFTER I'd eaten probably a full day's worth of tamales, leftover Christmas cookies and See's candy. And after I ran 4 miles at the gym yesterday morning. So we're counting today as the starting point. The game of moving my body to burn 1000 more calories a day than I take in is officially on.

There is no mystery to weight loss -- there is only burning more than you eat. That's not to say that it's easy, because if it was, we wouldn't be a nation of overweight people, with a billion-dollar industry tied to weight loss. But the challenge has always been making sure you're burning what you think you're burning. And knowing exactly what you're eating. So for me, there will be no more mystery. I will need to be meticulous with the logging of the food, but the interface of the online tracking is pretty user-friendly (or it is now that I've installed the IE add-in to my Firefox browser). And I can custom-add any food that I need to. And I'm going to be brutally honest. That's the only way this will work. If I eat that piece of candy, or hit the snack machine at the office, then I will have to pay for that candy with a trip up the stairs or a walk around the block. And I know that I will eat that piece of candy. And I will hit the snack machine, because that's how I roll. But now, there is a concrete cost connected to it that I will have to pay. Simple as that. I think once I start to see results I'll be more motivated to keep it up, and I'll be more motivated to make those decisions. But I'm not going to tackle that all at once.

This is what the interface looks like, with my real data for today so far:


I like the graphs at the bottom -- I can mouse over them and it gives me a count of the calories burned per minute during that time. The spikes at the bottom were from cleaning the kitchen this morning. I've not done anything really out of the ordinary so far, so it will be interesting to see how this afternoon's run shows up on the graphs. And what a leisurely stroll around the park looks like, too. Wonder how much I can burn by taking down the tree later? I still have a lot of learning to do about the different views, and the more data I have, the more info it will give me. And I will share here as much as I can. The accountability is good for me.

So game on. Should be a good one, with hopefully me as the big loser AND winner. Happy Sunday!