6 days in a row...

That's right 65+ hours of work this week, plus prepping and cooking meals, plus minimum of 40 minutes of tough cardio, plus shoveling 4 times this week, plus homework helping, and thankfully even a few snuggles with my 8 year old daughter. (Yes she still cuddles with me, and I will accept every cuddle I get no matter how old she is).
It's damn tough. Anyone that's decided to get healthy knows this is true. Tough indeed. I can see how people decide to, "take it easy", because it's EASY. Was it hard to loose the weight in the first place? HELLZ YEAH. The work and sweat and energy it takes to lose 1 pound is incredible. You sweat, A LOT. You breathe hard, you ache, you want to stop.....BUT, you decide to keep going.
Finally, a loss on the scale... success, albeit, a small one. If you loose 2-3 pounds a week it's a pretty incredible thing, after all, every pound lost is a deficit of 3500 calories. You have to deprive your body 3500 calories, and you can only do that 2 ways. Less food, or using it up moving your body.
So in order to do this the healthy way, I have been taught that a healthy male needs 2000 calories a day, minimum. However, I am not healthy, I have poundage to lose. I need to run a deficit, but in a healthy way. Eating 1500 calories a day I am depriving my body of 3500 calories a week. 1 pound! Exercising 40 minutes a day my body uses about 250 calories a day, another deficit of  1750 calories, 1/2 a pound. Not impressive right? Wrong.
When you see the scales really move...that you have lost 4 pounds this week, it's not all fat. You are losing water, you are losing muscle mass, and fat. The sad reality is, you have only lost 1-2 pounds of fat the rest is water, and muscle. But don't get discouraged, its still a huge deal, and you should be congratulated on the hard work it took to lose that 1-2 pounds of fat.
NOW, here is the kicker. I love pizza, I mean I love the stuff. In fact love is not strong enough word for it. I adore it, I love the cheese, toppings, sauce and most of all, crust. But there's a problem. Each slice has about 400 calories, and I can't stop at, 1 or 2 or 3......yes that's right I can eat 4 slices, and that's 2000 calories and that my friends will wipe out almost an entire weeks worth of loss. Now remember what I said above about all that hard work needed to lose that fat in the first place? You just put it back on in 30 mins or less. Congratulations, you have just set yourself back a minimum of 5 days. Now, I said everything above to set up this final thought. Try not to waver, stay on track your entire weeks hard work depends on it.

CHD - Nfldman