Richard Ha writes:

Since I got that email from Mike Tanabe I wrote about here last week, I have a new goal. I’m going to lose a bunch of weight.

Aside from health reasons, my reason for losing weight is to be able to ride my bike on the Kulani trails and have fun. The Kulani trails are an insider thing that only mountain bikers know about. I’ve ridden there before, but that was ten years ago when I weighed about 195 lbs., and at that weight it was more work than fun.

I estimate that I need to get down to 180 lbs. to have fun, and 175 to have a lot of fun.

Right now I weigh 214 lbs., so I have 39 lbs to lose and since I’m planning to lose a pound a week, 39 weeks to lose it.

About losing one pound per week: One pound equals 3,500 calories. To lose one pound per week I need to either eat 3,500 less calories or exercise 3,500 calories more than I do now. Or, some combination that results in a 3,500 calorie deficit. I can’t do diets and I can’t count calories, but I can do exercise.

My plan is to exercise so that I use up 500 calories per day. That times seven days equals 3,500 calories per week. I use an elliptical trainer, which is easy on the joints so fat old guys can use it. So it’s all doable.

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now, sort of like when I quit smoking cigarettes. One day, 25 years or so ago, I quit cold turkey. I carried around a partial pack of cigarettes in my glove compartment for many months without even seeing it.

I’m at that point now with the weight loss. It took running into Mike and then his email to push me over the edge.

I’m going to post here every Tuesday re: how it’s going with my “pound a week” goal. Knowing I’ll be checking in here will keep me on track.

At 8:00 am Sunday, May 21, 2006:
Weight was 214.8 lbs.
Goal 175 lbs.
Weight loss to date —–
Resting heart rate* 65 beats per minute.

* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest resting heart rate was 52; that was many years ago.