So here is my number crunching spreadsheet.

If you’re more interested in playing around with your own numbers: Download it here. I don’t think I have any male readers, but if so you’ll need to change the BMR formula if you want to use it.

Basically I put my weight, height in inches, and age and I put the calculation for female BMR in to dynamically generate it. Like today I lost weight and I went from losing over a pound this week to .96. Although I guess to be completely accurate I’d have to put in a weight each day so I don’t mess up past BMRs. Hmmm…Well anyway, then I multiplied BMR by 1.2 (sedentary) to get my daily caloric burn. (Indicated by BCR.)

Then I set up a week’s worth of inputs. I record each day how many calories I ate and then subtract any exercise plus my BCR to get my daily delta. I then add up all the daily deltas to get my calories burned (or stored) for the week, and then I divide that by 3500 to get how many pounds that equals.

I know that this isn’t an exact science. Salt intake, weight lifting, water retention, etc will skew these numbers but it was just really interesting for me to see exactly what goes into this. For instance after months of just half-assing it I would wonder to myself why I didn’t lose weight, but without exercise and hovering around 1800-2000 calories a day–a range I eat in pretty regularly–that makes sense now. Even if I had a couple good eating days and I worked out for 2-3 miles a couple days a week it’s not enough to lose weight. That would still be maintenance.

I’m going to finish out this spreadsheet for the rest of the week, I’m not sure it’s something I want to look at every week, but it’s definitely a wake up call. I really need to pay more attention to calories in if I want this weight loss thing to happen.

In other food related news my goal for gathering some delicious recipes to try out is going well. I stumbled upon this blog where I found links to a grilled sweet potato salad and grilled shrimp over white beans. (I’m going to jazz that last one up based on an orzo salad I make.)