My company has a new health incentive for employees this year. Be active for 360 minutes, for any 6 months from January through October. I knew I'd have no trouble earning this incentive and found my first months results to be quite interesting. I know I am busier than most with all of my extracurricular activities but it turns out over all the minutes in January, I only spent 3% of my time "exercising". I would have thought it would have been higher because I rarely sit still.
So this made me want to run some more numbers. If I spend an average of 2 hours a day eating or prepping a meal, that's 8% of my time. The easiest rule to losing weight I've always used was Burn more calories than you take in. But now I can add, Spend more time burning calories than eating calories.
A little recommendation for those that are still in New-Years-Resolution-I-Am-Going-To-Lose-Weight mode... don't just use a scale to gauge your weight. You need to know your body composition too. Knowing what percentage of your body is fat versus muscle is crucial in my non-professional opinion. It sucks to know that number but it is very helpful. I convinced 2 co-workers to go get theirs done so they knew what their potential really was. Neither one talked to me the day after they got their results (it does suck) but we are friends again. Ask your gym to do a pinch test so you know where you are at too.
If you don't know that, you don't know what a scale could really say. Based on my body fat percentage, I'll never weigh 115. Let alone ever weigh 120. I'd have to go anorexic or cut off the twins. Neither of those is going to happen. So my goal is to reduce my body fat by 2%. I don't care what the scale says if I know I have more muscle than fat on these ole' 34 year old bones. I need to get my "activity" % closer to my "eating" %.
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