Shortly after nine p.m. on New Year's Eve, Kathy proudly proclaimed that she had achieved her 2009 goal of reading 12 non-fiction books. As she smugly entered the latest tome into her handwritten log book, she announced that she had read 104 books over the year. "That's two books a week!" In addition to her reading skills, she's really good at math.
We both keep logs of our favorite activities. Mine involve exercise. I've long since abandoned the handwritten variety for computer based versions, and in 2009 I actually succeeded in keeping a year's data intact on one hard drive without losing it to crashes or gremlins. Some interesting and unexpected results sprung from the year-end summary:
I exercised 275 hours and 20 minutes in 245 days, with 120 "rest" days interspersed. In that non-marathon year I ran 1,040 miles in 193 hours and 26 minutes (11:10 minutes per mile pace). I also bicycled for 1,187 miles in 73 hours and 23 minutes (16.2 mph, including hills and traffic lights). Miscellaneous activities such as calisthenics made up the rest of the time. Altogether I burned over 203,845 calories through exercise, or an average of 832+ calories per activity.
"Not a bad year," I thought, until I compared my weight on this New Year's Day to the same day a year ago...a net gain of 3 pounds! That means I consumed 10,500 more calories than I burned. (A large part of that consumption probably occurred in a banquet in Kuala Lumpur. I am not nearly as compulsive about logging caloric intake as I am output.)
To my knowledge, Kathy doesn't regularly keep track of her weight, but she appears to have gained nary an ounce over the last year.
So this leads to my 2010 New Year resolution: Not to exercise more, but to eat less and keep better track of intake as well as output. Or maybe I just need to read more books...
1 comment:
I suspect those three pounds can be chalked up to a bacon-wrapped quail egg.
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