Today I weighed in at 263. Good progress.
My feet still hurt and the doctor still says I can't exercise. I am afraid I am not going to be able to loose weight on my other diets if I can't exercise. It's really frustrating.
Today I had 3 eggs with cheese (400 calories). For lunch I had a tossed salad with lettuce and Caesar dressing (140 calories) and turkey luncheon meat (100 calories). I had 4 cheese sticks (330 calories) and an Atkins bar (240 calories). For dinner I had pork tenderloin (500 calories). Overall my consumption was about 1800 calories. Based on my weight and size my recommended calorie intake is about 2400, so I am still at a deficit today.
I'd like to get into the proteins involved in beta oxidation more thoroughly since I just touched on it briefly on previous posts. As I said previously, fat is broken down into fatty acids. These fatty acids have long carbon chains and can be of variable length, over 20 carbons with many of them. The chains get broken down sequentially by 2 carbons at a time yielding 1 acetyl coA each cycle (the acetyl is 2 carbons that gets taken from the fatty acid each cycle). The fatty acids start the cylce by having a double bond added to the 2 carbons next to the carbonyl of the Coa-S moiety by means of the enzyme acyl-CoA dehydrogenase. Next the double bond is hydrolyzed (to make an OH group) by enoyl CoA hydratase. Next the OH group is turned into a carbonyl group by beta-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase. Next the acetyl-CoA is broken from the rest of the fatty acid by means of thiolysis. The fatty acid is then attached to another CoA ready for another cylce and the acetyl CoA is ready to enter the TCA cycle to make energy. That simple.
Transforming biochemistry knowledge into weight loss:
This page was begun as an experiment. An experiment I was conducting on myself. An experiment to test which conditions would allow me to loose weight. Now that I have been at it for a while I realize this page serves as more. It serves as a means for me to research. It is a way for me to pick health topics of interest, research them from a biochemistry stand point, and then share them with the world. Sharing them with you gives me an official feeling and keeps me motivated. However, as described below, I am still experimenting on myself.
How did this happen? I don't know exactly although I am almost sure it boils down to diet and exercise. I hope to find the answers as I explore my journey through weight loss on this blog. I was not always fat. Therefore, I know that I can be unfat again.
I am a biochemist. I should have known better. Of all people, I should have known how to avoid this predicament I am in now. I now wish to harness my scientific knowledge to experiment on myself as well as explore the chemical basis for weight loss methods.
Methods:
I will try new diets. I will experiment on myself. The diets will be chosen from among the most popular in our society. I will chronicle the results and my general experience in my blog here. I will also explore the biochemical basis for these diets as well as evaluate their effectiveness and truthfulness. I will also exercise as regularly as possible, 3-5 times per week, to avoid biasing the results. I will try to keep everything constant in my life except the diet. My method is not perfect. I don't necessarily want to lose raw pounds, but rather gain an understanding of what methods work best for me to permanently regain my health.
Hypothesis:
1. No diet will be clearly better than the others. Conversely, each diet will offer some truth, some piece of knowledge or methodology that I can take away with me to help myself. I think that in the end, I will be able to formulate my own diet based on a synthesis of all the things I have learned from all of these diets.
2. I have been on diets before, lost weight, and then regained it. I wasn't born fat. Given that, I think that my main problem will be shown to be psychological. I think that I may have compulsive eating problems- compulsive eating problems associated with very unhealthy foods.
3. I will lose quite a bit of weight. My blog will help keep my motivation levels high.
4. There will be a lack of clear scientific basis to many of the diets.
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