Today's weight: Still off the scale

Ah, the beginning of the year. This is the time of year when just about everyone says "I'm going to go on a diet." Next week is officially the week where most people then say "Wow, I'm sick of this diet." Of course, diet is only one component of losing weight: the other major component is the dreaded "E" word: exercise. Yeah, I hate exercise as much as you do, but I do have to admit I lose weight better when I'm walking.

Now, everone says walking is a great way for exercise, but when you look at the numbers things start to look bleak. Most sources say that walking only burns about 70 calories for every mile that you walk, and theoretically it takes 3600 calories burned to burn a pound of fat, so that's over 50 miles of additional walking (at a 3 mile an hour pace, mind you, which is faster than you think) to burn a single pound... presuming that all that walking doesn't make you hungrier and eat more.

However, this is one place where those of us who are particularly large get an advantage. Yes, it's pretty much the only advantage large men have (large women also get the pretty curves), but I'll take what I can get. The advantage is that it takes a lot more energy to haul our bigger bodies around, so at my weight that 70 calories per mile starts to look more like 200 calories per mile. Well now! This is sounding better: Now I'm only 18 miles away from losing that pound, not 50, so if I can do a 3 mile walk 6 days a week, without increasing my food intake, I'll lose a pound every week. That's without any dieting at all! And since water has no calories, this doesn't count potential water loss as well.

Now this is all just theory, of course, and I'm sure there are a hundred other factors to weigh in here, so to speak. But I think I'm going to take a look at putting my fat to use here, because I know that dieting alone is pretty much a losing solution for me. Is there a big hole in my theory here?

I know that most of the "calories burned" charts assume people at relatively normal weights, so I used the calculators at http://www.caloriesperhour.com/.

Happy New Year, everyone!