Day 15

Walk the Dog.

About a year and a half ago we got a yellow lab. She’s an intelligent, gentle creature who now weighs 85 pounds and, as a large breed hunting dog, needs lots of exercise. I’m an early riser anyway, but if I dare to sleep past 6 am she comes into my room and wakes me with an expression of “What the hell?” We go for a long morning walk, and then a mid-day walk, and a home after work walk, an evening walk, and finally, a last walk of the day at around 10 pm. All told I probably spend an hour and twenty minutes each day walking the dog.

While this might seem annoying especially when it’s February in Minnesota and minus 14 degrees out, this is over an hour of modest exercise that I do every day, regardless of what else is on the schedule. The more calories you burn with exercise, the more weight you lose.

To lose a pound of fat you have to be in a deficit of about 3500 calories. So to lose a pound of fat in a week you have to be down by 500 calories a day (7 X 500 = 3500). Walking the dog adds to the calorie deficit.

You could do the walking without the dog, but then you’d have no one to talk to on the way.