About a couple weeks ago I decided I needed to go on a diet. I’m 5’5″ and weighed 180.5 pounds, which, while quite alright for other folks, is too much for my own comfort. Plus I don’t eat very healthily, most of my meals fitting into the Geek Food Pyramid, and I also eat as much as one of the guys. My cholesterol level is thus rather concerning, and in any case, none of this helps when I get anxiety nausea near PTSD trigger dates, so yeah, a change in diet is all around a good idea for me.

I’ve only dieted once on purpose before; and it wasn’t a good way to diet. I tried to only eat 1000 calories a day, which is bad for your health and your body’s sanity. I understand that there are some diets out there which attempt to do this: do not do this.

So the thing about proper dieting is that apparently you only do this for a little while before you go back to a more roomy calorie “budget”, although “a while” could mean “months.” And you can only lose a certain amount of calories per day from your weight maintenance calorie budget; losing over 1000 calories a day is apparently very bad for you. And getting close to losing 1000 calories a day is still difficult. It’s why losing 2lbs a week is a stretch, and trying for more is insane and dangerous, and something more like 1lb a week is probably a good idea.

I decided on losing 2lbs a week until I reach 150lbs, and then gradually walk back to losing 1lb a week, and sometime next year I should be at my target weight, 130lbs.

This is going to take… some time.

But in the meanwhile, I’m going to treat this like a video game. A really, really long campaign video game.

In that vein, I got myself two calorie counter apps. I was recommended one by two guys on my own team, which amused me. Half of us have iPhones, and we’re working on converting the rest.

Anyways… I got a pretty calorie app and a smart calorie app, and I use them both. I go on about them quite a bit under the fold.

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