I suspect (don’t know) that Chris misspoke- it makes sense that it takes fewer calories to sustain a smaller body, not a larger body.

And muscle is the right way to make yourself “larger”. I have little muscle mass: more now than I did when I moved out here, but far less than many “former athletes” since I’ve never been athletic. My baseline activity level (something you set when you create your profile at LiveStrong) is one step above completely sedentary: I walk a bit, go up and down stairs at work a bit, but my normal routine doesn’t involve much moving around.

I spent three or four months at the beginning of 2009 exercising three or four times a week. Nothing heavy: basically just treadmill (cardio). But I saw absolutely no weight loss, and that disappointed me. My current theory (and one of the reasons why I’m tracking calories) is that I eat a lot of stuff that I *think* is not high in calories, but really is. In other words, I have been underestimating how many calories I take in.

And purely looking at it psychologically: if I have a calculator that tells me when I hit my daily intake limit, I’m far more likely to not stuff that last handful of chips/chocolate/what have you in my gaping maw. Its a gadget, and I have a somewhat Pavlovian reaction to gadgets 😉

My weight is about 200 pounds (198 today) and my BMI (calculated using an electronic “resistive” measure) ranges between 24 and 27%, so I’m at the “overweight” but not yet “obese” level. When I was working out regularly on the Bowflex, I got my weight down to 169 pounds and a BMI of 16-17%: I have never been fitter than that, although I expect my BMI was very low when I was about 20-25 (i.e.: I was skinny, probably unhealthily so).

Right now, I have one main goal: understand and control my calories. My secondary goal is to establish a pattern or habit that lets me lose about 1 pound per week until I get back to around 170-180 pounds. Then I’d like to find a happy place regarding activity/exercise, so I’m not quite so immobile (side benefit: the more active I am, the more beer I can drink 😉 ). That might sum up my “next year or so” objective.

If I could add 10 pounds of muscle to my upper body and get my BMI to around 15-18% or thereabouts and establish habits to keep it that way, my mission would be accomplished. Given my procrastination/laziness, I might never get to this point, but its a nice goal.

But any craziness about 7% body fat, having “perfect abs”, or powerlifting a Toyota Corolla… not going to happen 🙂