Tuesday, February 05, 2013

fluctuations

It is now Day Five of my Taubesian regime. I'd say I've been faithful to the low-carbs rule, ingesting not more than 30 grams of carbs per day. My brother Sean wrote to ask whether I had lost weight, optimistically remarking that I should have by now. I told Sean I had indeed lost a few pounds (about four or five), but that this fluctuation wasn't significant because I can easily vary plus or minus five pounds in a single day. It all comes down to how much I drink, you see; I love to guzzle, and since I'm never far from a bathroom, I also love to whiz. My weight thus far:

Thursday, January 31: 301 pounds.
Friday, February 1: No weight recorded.
Saturday, February 2: 296 pounds.
Sunday evening, February 3: 302 pounds.
Monday morning, February 4: 297 pounds... but 295.5 pounds after second poop.

Could you make an interpretable graph out of that? The Sunday evening weigh-in was just out of curiosity: I had finished my large meal, and had gulped down several cups of fluid-- two cups of tisane and perhaps three cups of water-- so I was curious as to how much I had gained. Six pounds! Each of those cups holds at least 16 ounces of liquid, so I was gaining a pound per cup drunk. Of course, later in the evening, I was pissing like a racehorse, and I imagine I metabolized a good bit of food while I slept, so this morning I woke to another five-pound loss, all within a twelve-hour space of time. Incroyable.

This proves the wisdom of not weighing oneself daily. You can't trust daily fluctuations; you need to go by longer-term trends. So Be It Resolved that every Monday morning, after the ritual intestine-voiding constitutional and the requisite ablutions, there shall be an official weigh-in. I will also post other stats in the same blog entry-- stats about exercise, for example.

I'll let you know when the lower end of my fluctuations reaches 290. That will be significant.


_

4 comments:

Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

"Friday, February 1: No weight recorded."

Good God, Kevin! I'm amazed you survived that little encounter with nothingness!

Jeffery Hodges

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Elisson said...

My suggestion: Weigh yourself no more than once a week, else you will get all excited (or upset) over moment-to-moment fluctuations that are really not meaningful.

Elisson said...

Errr, ahhh, just as you note in your penultimate paragraph.

Kevin Kim said...

As am I, Jeff. As am I.

Elisson,

Repeated wisdom is still wisdom. Thanks.