Shake shake shake, shake your tushie

Tonight I'm watching the premiere of Dancing with the Stars. The men are on tonight. So far...

Penn Jillette: Cha cha cha. Very big guy, very small partner. I thought he was going to pull her leg off in the first move. Overall, great enthusiasm, lighter on his feet than I thought he would be, but not much content.

Oh, and Teller is in the audience. Haven't seen his lips moving yet.

Jason Taylor: Foxtrot. Very hot big guy. He's fairly graceful, more than you would expect, but a little stiff overall. Definitely counting in his head, though; he needs to let go more. Heh, Len thinks he's hot too. But he agrees with me -- good form, but needs more oomph in his dance. I'm interested to see how he does with the Latin next week. Hmm, scores seem a bit high to me. I would've leaned more towards straight 6s.

They changed the initial round this year, where each gets to dance both a latin and a ballroom dance before the first elimination. I think that'll work well, because it has always seemed that the first couple to be eliminated each season has been the one doing the ballroom dance.

Commercial break. So, Monday weigh-in today. 181 on the nose. Or the ass, depending how you look at it. Makes the total weight lost so far 17.4 lbs. That's 8.77% of my total body weight. Good to know the pizza and wings splurge last week didn't do too much damage. Flo shows next week so I'll probably have a slower time of it then.

Up next -- Cristian de la Fuente. I'm thinking he'll be able to shake it. And he's doing a latin dance, cha cha cha. Ah, they're portraying him as a goof off who can't move his hips. Like I believe that. Or maybe I do. Hmm, too flat footed, needs to be on his toes more. Not very sexy? Maybe he needs to be naked to do this well. 'Cause Ian was looser than this. I'm forseeing 5s and 6s on this one. Comments are with me.... Scores after the break.

Anyhow, I was talking about channeling your inner Goldilocks when it comes to weight loss. Another thing they say is how to determine how many calories you need each day. The majority say that you should determine how many calories you need daily to maintain your current weight, then subtract 500 calories in order to lose a pound a week. I'm sure this works for a lot of people. Not for me, though. For starters, I would think you would have to constantly recalculate your maintenance calories. Then, if you weren't losing weight you might think that you miscalculated your maintenance calories so you'd deduct more. In that event, you might end up eating less than you need, which sends you into starvation mode and you still lose nothing while you're also eating nothing. [wow, Cristian got all 7s] You might have had the cals correct, but not have been losing for another reason -- too much fat in your diet, on your period, whatever.

Adam Carolla. Blech. He's like Gilbert Gottfried (but way more annoying) if you shoved an air hose up his ass and overinflated him. Okay, feet were OK but stiff has a new definition. Apparently they shoved a stick up there along with the air hose. That was bad. I bet he gets decent scores anyway. [nope, 5s all across]

So, the other way to go is to determine the calories for your goal weight. You have to be realistic about your goal weight, first, though. There's a good method to determine your goal weight; of course now I can't find it. It was a magazine quiz that was about ten questions or so. But try http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/iwc for now. The quiz I'm remembering had me at 145. This website calculator has me at 147.

Mario is up next. He's good. Needs to be on his toes more, maybe a smidge more hip action when moving across the floor, but he's really good. He's got my votes so far. And he's got the judges.

Once you calculate your goal weight, then determine the calories you need to maintain that weight. In other words, start eating like you're already there. One advantage to this is that you start out with how you'll be eating from now until forever. You can figure out everything you can eat once you're skinny -- all the treats, everything. It takes a couple of weeks at least to get used to -- you'll definitely be feeling a few hunger pains, but you can outlast them. Like I said, last week I ate pizza and wings three times. Three times. Didn't work out at all since last Sunday the 9th. And still I lost more than two pounds. Granted, I had added four-tenths of a pound the week before, but that was when I ate really great and worked out four times. On average, I've lost two pounds a week using my target weight calories.

Mr. Guttenberg is the last man of the evening. I'm hoping he does well.

Remember too that when determining your calories to make any updates you might need with regard to your activity level. I started out with low activity levels, but now I'm mostly up to moderate activity. If you don't adjust as you up your activity level, you'll be starving all the time and really tempted to cheat and/or binge. Likewise, if you are eating as if you are more active but you're not expending that energy, you won't lose -- and then you'll be depressed and really tempted to cheat and/or binge.

Steve is stiff. Posture not so great, he keeps tipping forward. Nice personality though. Maybe he'll be the George Hamilton of the show. I think Penn already has the Jerry Springer spot nailed. Yes, Carrie found him charming, but with no musicality.

There are lots of online calculators to calculate calories needed. My target has been between 1500 and 1600 calories. I ran a new calculation and it says roughly 2000 calories are needed for my target weight. For my current weight, it says roughly 2340. So from where I am now weight-wise and what I've been eating, I'm running a calorie deficit of about 5180 calories which translates into about a pound and a half of weight loss each week. That's just to basically breathe each day; any physical activity will bump that up. Again, you have to remember to adjust for physical activity. Right now, I've eaten about 1650 calories today, but I feel just a bit more hungry then I can comfortably ignore. So, after Steve's scores [6s across the board, about what I thought] I'm going to treat myself to a 100-calorie cupcake pack, watch the ten o'clock news, and then go to bed.

Sweet dreams!
the CilleyGirl