The same people who came up with the idea of doing a chocolate-inspired party for the squadron's spouse support group also decided to do the San Angelo Get Healthy Challenge. What the hell were we thinking?
Anyway, there are some facts that are pretty handy to know when trying to lose weight.
1. 3,500 calories = 1 pound
2. Running 1 mile expends 100 calories
I've always been a bit math challenged, but these numbers are speaking to me.
I found two websites that have helped me with the harder math:
- http://www.nutritiondata.com/ for calories in
- http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.html for calories out
This second site is pretty thorough with its list of activities. If you need to know how many calories you can expend shearing sheep or harvesting wild rice from a canoe, this is the place to go. Being a minimalist when it comes to exercise, my first calculation was for sleeping; anything more than sleeping is going to expend more calories, so I figured that would be a good base calculation. For me, sleeping expends 54 calories an hour (that's 1,296 calories per day). Note also that kneeling in prayer expends 60 calories an hour. If praying is so close to sleeping, where's the motivation?
