Energy consumption, stage 1

Post date: May 05, 2015 10:19:5 PM

Before I started I set up a target diet that I pretty much kept to during the 15 days I was away for stage 1. You can see the detail of this on my diet page. I did not know how much energy I would be expending though I was pretty sure it was going to be more than the 2,800 kCal per day target I had.

Turns out I lost 4 kilos (almost 9 pounds) in 15 days. And we're not talking any water loss here. The fat's gone! Which means that I was probably chewing through at least another 1,500 kCal per day from my fat reserves. Being used to a low carb diet, my body is adjusted to being able to burn fat reserves quite well. So I was never really low on energy - I felt I had plenty and when I was exhausted I would still have been however much I could have stuffed my face with fodder.

This was sort of intended as I believe I needed to lose a bit more fat anyway. But for subsequent stages I can't keep losing that much or else I'll starve! So either I need to become less active or I need to eat more or a combination.

I'm sure the cold sapped energy and I was pretty physically active when ashore. It will get warmer and I may reduce the shore based activities a tad. Strangely enough, although I recognised that I was eating pretty frugally, I never felt that hungry. Anyway, I'll have to hike up the food intake considerably for stage 2 - to about 4,000 kCal per day and we'll see where I end up weight wise after stage 2.

All this self analysis probably seems absurd to you, but I find it interesting to experiment with this kind of stuff - just another dimension to the whole thing. I'm an analytical animal.