And then there were 7.1...

Today's Entry:

06/09/2008 - Swimming: 1.1Mc

More than one complete megacalorie today. It wasn't a super hard day it just took a little longer than usual to jam out 1100 kilo calories. Believe me I am feeling it.

I was actually a little deluded when I thought about taking some before pictures that 'It wouldn't be dramatic enough' because I have already toned up what feels like quite a bit. However some careful scrutiny revealed, after laborious observations that I am in fact quite the fat fuck I was three weeks ago when this project bubbled out of my consciousness.

No I am not going to post them just yet on the off chance that I get hit by a bus or something. No one knows my password and I don't want my parting contribution to the blogosphere to be 'hey he's fat here...and then dead...'

It's not becoming. I've also decided to multiply the scope of the project. After taking into account my age at 26 years old and running the numbers its pretty safe to conclude that I will live past age 31 barring meteors, buses and singularity.

Five years is a long time and coincidentally it synchs up my lust for epic projects with my innate human desire for good wholesome base ten numbers. So the original goal of 205 megacalories in one year, splayed out over 4 additional years becomes 1025 megacalories.

And so, after a few short weeks my goal has become crystalline. By May 1st, 2013 I intend to burn one full GIGACALORIE. (cue the ethereal music and choral 'hallelujah')

That's right. 1 thousand Megacalories is a full million food calories (enough to eat that giant floating pastry that homer ate) or a billion calories. That means if I am successful the energy I will have burned would be enough to raise the temperature of one gram of water ONE BILLION DEGREES!

And people think science isn't awesome. Punks.

To clarify I need to set some things straight so here goes.

I am only counting overt, directly burned calories during exercise that I can monitor/control to some extent. This includes readouts from the exercise machines and really despicably convoluted method of determining swimming calories. It's a real pisser trying to figure out an accurate assessment. There are so many factors to consider and I want to be close without spending forever trying to weed out errors.

Look at this nonsense for a 190lb person:

Swimming laps, freestyle, fast, vigorous effort 863
Swimming laps, freestyle, light/moderate effort 690
Swimming, backstroke, general 690
Swimming, breaststroke, general 863
Swimming, butterfly, general 949
Swimming, leisurely, general 518
Swimming, sidestroke, general 690

However according to the self.com calculator an hour is only 633 for moderate and 995 for vigorous.

This poses a problem since I am not 190 lbs or even 200lbs or even close. Sad to admit but I am currently almost exactly 250lbs. At this weight the moderate/vigorous rate is: 833 /1310 But what the Frick beans is the difference between moderate and vigorous?

Another calculator turned out these figures 838 / 1200

It also appears that swimming one mile tends to burn 7-800 calories. Therefore I have arrived at the following formula for calculating my calories burned swimming.

Calories by Distance + Calories per hour / 2 = Magic Number

Its an ugly compromise I admit it but it will work. Consider this morning's workout. 1.5 miles in about 1.5 hours (that includes stretch time which I exclude from calculation)

1.5 miles (750 calories per mile) = 1125
1.25 hour (850 calories per hour) = 1062

And the average figure is now: 1094 rounded up to 1.1 megacalories for the day. So we add to the grand total to get...

7.1/1000 megacalories (easier to break down than just saying i am .71 % complete because that's just depressing)

Now the rules as I alluded are that I am only counting directly burned calories, not resting calories and I am not going for net or gross calories either. Going by gross calories per day it would only take 400 days (2,500 calories per day)

Going by net calories it'd be a near impossibility since a gigacalorie is close to my weight in pure fat and there are bones and muscles and organs I don't really want to part with just yet in there.

So the goal is not to drop a hundred pounds or rock out hard tasty abs or anything so grandiose and vain. Instead the goal is to improve the phenotype somewhat, get back in shape and ensure a healthy existence with the dual goals of raising the midge and surviving until the singularity (using S-words all the while)

This endeavor has made me hopeful, especially since today was such a victory. If I can smash out 1+Mc days already then multiple Megacalorie days are not too far off. I don't intend to over do it but I have been thinking of epic adventures to keep the daily grind a little more interesting.

For example if I wanted to retroactively add the Mount Whitney climb to the list it would account for something like 8.6 Megacalories. It's a 22 mile hike, what do you expect?

I for one expect great things to come. For once I do not predict catastrophic failure.