I decided at the beginning of 2017 to become a regular runner, and lose the beer belly in the process. Today is the 75th day of the year, and my progress has been even better than I had hoped. I still have a bit of work to do, but I’m over halfway to my weight loss goal, and I have the running habit locked in. Feels great to run, and I look forward to my run each day.

I’ve been using a few apps on my phone to measure and gather data:

• LoseIt. I track all food and meals here.
• Nike+ Run Club. My phone is always in my pocket, and I’m tracking every run live.
• Apple Health. Mostly as a step counter, but it also provides good integration between the Nike+ app and LoseIt, so LoseIt can give me calorie credit for my workouts.

Some stats:

• I’ve run 53 times for a total of 204 miles (328 km) since January 6th. That’s 3.85 miles on average each time. Minimum 3 miles, longest 6.2 miles.
• I’m eating an average of 1824 calories per day.
• I’ve lost 25.0 pounds (11.3 kg).
• My comfortable 4-mile running pace has dropped from 10:00/mile to 8:34/mile.
• I’m earning an average of 649 calories per day with exercise. Which brings my net daily calories to 1175.
• I’m averaging 11634 steps per day, including my running steps.

I try to be super-accurate with all my data entry in LoseIt. But even assuming I’m underreporting by, say 20%, I know I’m still way below what I used to eat on a daily basis. LoseIt is great. I know there are many apps like this, but this is the one I use, and it works well for me.

It’s winter here, so I’m running outdoors on roads and trails when the weather doesn’t completely suck and indoors on a treadmill when it does. About 60% of my runs have been indoors. Can’t wait for spring! I’ve played soccer a handful of times this year, but pretty much all my exercise is from running. I had an international business trip in February which limited my running for a week, but I was able to get lots of steps in on most of those days. I’ve been fortunate to avoid any injuries, although a mildly strained calf muscle slowed my running pace down a bit for a few runs. I’m not focused on running terribly long distances. Maybe later.

Going into this I was most concerned about my ability to keep the calories down. This has been surprisingly easy to do. I eliminated most calorie-rich carbs (potatoes, fries, chips, rice, etc.), got in to the habit of weighing foods to understand how much I was really eating, and just generally ate less. But I’m still eating three meals, having a small snack at some point during the day, and having a drink or two at night. Usually whiskey, but some beers like Guinness are pretty low in calories, so I mix those in too. IPAs have pretty much disappeared from my diet.

In the end, none of this is complicated. Eat less, and exercise. I hope to report even more progress soon.