The Football Fan’s Diet

By Matt DeReno
On the FFD

PITTSBURGH – Yesterday marked my sixth successful day on the Football Fan’s Diet, the healthy lifestyle that is all the rage for real men that love football. This is clearly the diet you—a football fan—have been waiting for. Becuase you love football right? Football is great. Dieting and loving football can go hand in hand and this diet is proof. This is the diet where we model a dieting plan on an NFL football season (Note to editor: Is this enough freaking key words!).

Hey boys. I did it again yesterday on the Football Fan’s Diet. I was confident I would, but it was still close in the end. I had maxed out my caloric level by noon yesterday. In fact, I even went over it by a part of a subway sandwich. So I was forced to exercise to get those calories—net calories at least—down under my daily game day limit (DGO). I did that with a brisk 110 minute walk at North Park, a county park located in the North Hills area of Pittsburgh.

Unfortunately, my 6-year-old daughter and my poorly trained dog, had to do it with me. My daughter had fun trudging through snow, but by the end of the hike, she was beat. She was a good sport about it the end. She made it though and so did I. Our dog did as well.

Today I am going to use the “Maintenance” rule, whereby I get one day per week to raise my caloric intake to one of maintenance for my goal weight. The trick is that it will be the maintenance level not of my existing fat weight but rather that of my goal weight. In some ways then, this can be a way to slowly indoctrinate myself to the levels of food I will need to maintain my goal body weight of 185 lbs.

So considering that I weighed in at 258lbs today, which is a good deal less than my starting weight of 272 lbs, I will exercise this so-called rest and relaxation day by raising my caloric level to one that would “maintain” my goal weight of 185 lbs. According to the Daily Plate, which is simply a fantastic site to track and log calories and exercise, my maintenance level for 185 lbs is roughly 2,400 calories. So right now this represents a comfortable increase over my somewhat restrictive—yet necessary—caloric level of roughly 1,700 calories.

Now, I am not a nutritionist (“No… Really?”). I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express anytime in the recent past but I think that if I can at least work at maintaining and getting used to the level of calories I should consume to maintain my goal weight, I should still be burning some calories becuase I am nearly 70lbs over that at the moment. In other words, I am not maintaining those unwanted 70lbs on my “maintenance” day off. Is that convoluted logic? I am not sure. But, I do know this? I am off to a great start. Yesterday was walk in the park. Today, it is time to maintain what we did during the week, kneel on the damn ball (since there is really no way my Inner Fat Slob can win this week now) and get mentally prepared for Preseason Week 2.

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