Let's Eat!
Creativity needs its fuel, so whenever Anomie Train gets bogged down in the creative process, they take a break to replenish their energies. Needless to say, they take a lot of breaks. Some times a nice cup of green tea is in order. Other times more serious nourishment is required. But one thing is clear--Anomie Train eats just about anything.
One thing for sure is that sitting around the studio drinking beer and eating donuts does not have a positive effect on weight, so here's a little app--the Losertown Calorie Maintenance Calculator (if you're using your phone, bookmark the mobile version!), to help you figure out your daily calorie needs. The formula for figuring out your resting metabolic rate (RMR) uses the formula derived by Mifflin, St. Jeor, Scott, Daugherty and Koh. Go ahead and try it!
It is surprisingly easy as pie to gain weight. If you eat a large donut every day, you're probably adding an extra 3500 calories per week--that is 1 pound of fat gained per week if you don't burn that off or cut back on calories somewhere else.
Losing weight isn't some magical process. It doesn't involve some wacky diet or magic pills or superduper foods. Basically, it just takes you being mindful of what you eat everyday. Don't buy process foods. Don't eat out. Cook all your own food at home. If you want to treat yourself with cake, cookies, or ice cream, go ahead--but make it yourself--don't buy it. To properly track how many calories you consume, buy a food scale and weigh your food. Use a website like MyFitnessPal to log and track how many calories you eat.
If you use the Losertown Calorie Maintenance Calculator, you can project how much weight you can lose over time. Be sure to aim for a 500 calorie deficit a day. Calorie counting is imprecise--if you only aim for a 100 calorie deficit per day, you might actually be eating a 100 calorie surplus per day! By aiming for a 500 calorie deficit, you can be fairly certain that you are in a calorie deficit. Also, incorporating some kind of exercise--even if it's simply taking a 30 minute walk a day--really goes a long way in helping maintain your weight. Go slow. You don't need to lose all your weight in three months. It took me years to go from 206 to 152! And I did it in chunks.
Please remember--this is not a scientific tool. It's meant to serve as a guide to help people maintain a target weight. So, if you put in crazy, extreme values, you'll end up with nonsensical results. If you put in a daily target of only 50 calories a day, sure, the chart will show zero weight as well as negative values. But the truth is, a person would be long dead before that. Always lose weight safely, folks! Slow and steady wins the race.
This is me now at 154. I've gained a couple pounds over the summer. Whenever I do that, I go back to tracking my macros on MyFitnessPal. Next to that picture is me back in 2003 when I topped out at 205 to 208 lbs! I could never get my weight below 190 lbs--until I bought a food scale so I could weigh my food and figure out how many calories I was actually eating and faithfully logging that every day.