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The space shuttle orbiter and external tank together carry 1,607,185 lbs. of fuel composed of hydrogen, oxygen, hydrazine, monomethylhydrazine, and nitrogen tetroxide, all of which are extremely explosive and/or flammable. Each of the solid rocket boosters carries another million pounds of solid propellant. The vehicle is assembled from more than 2.5 million separate parts built by the lowest bidder. As you can imagine, all that would be enough to make a person nervous about turning it on. Launching the shuttle is one of the most complex procedures known to humankind, and they start checking everything is ready three full days ahead of the actual ignition.

The good news is, people tend to be a bit less dangerously explosive, but a checklist is still a good idea. There are quite a number of things you need to do in order to lose weight effectively, and while you don’t need to be perfect as I described previously in The 90% Rule, or How to Cheat Your Way to Victory you need to get most of the things right most of the time, for a long period in order to succeed.

To help you on your way, it’s a good idea to make a daily checklist like this one checklist.pdf then each day you go through and score all of your activities. Your total score should be above 90% most days, and the trend line from your spreadsheet should be around 95%, as long as you’re doing that you’re on track and it’ll be pretty hard to fail.

Let’s go through each of the items one by one so you’ll understand how all this works.

Date - This should be pretty obvious, it’s the date you’re recording, usually yesterday. I don’t recommend waiting too long to fill these out or you’ll be guessing not filling in correct information.

1) Was your total calorie intake equal to or less than your target rate? (within 5%) - We discussed setting your target rate earlier in The Elusive Calorie. Generally what I do is write all the food I ate the day before on the back of the page, and use that space to calculate the total number of calories/protein. This keeps everything all in one place and easy to find. As long as your calorie total is within 5% of the goal then you get 100%, if it’s lower divide what you actually got by the target number, if it’s higher divide what you actually got by the target number and multiply by five to figure out how far you missed then subtract that from 100 to get your score. Going over is bad mkay?

2) Did you avoid ingredients like sugar, corn syrup, potatoes, corn, and white flour? - This one is pretty simple, did you eat bad stuff or not? If you had a cheat meal, mark that down in the notes, otherwise if you had something you weren’t supposed to, mark down your score. Remember, you can’t use more than one cheat meal per day, so if you had two cheat meals, or a double cheat, make sure to mark down your score. I generally count it on a per meal basis, so if you had bad things at 2 of six meals, you’d get 66% for the day. (Always round down)

3) Did you eat six meals of the correct size, one every three hours? (1/2x - 2x) - If any of your meals were too small, too large, you missed a meal, or went too long in between meals, make sure to mark down your score.

4) Did you eat at least 1.25g/lb lean body mass of protein? - It’s not always easy to get enough protein, especially on a calorie restricted diet, but it is possible. Keep fussing with your menu and recipes until you get it right, this is important.

5) Did you drink enough water? ( 64 + ( ( weight - ( lbm * 1.1 ) ) * .32 ) ) ounces - The formula may be fancy, but the goal isn’t, remember you want 64 ounces of water plus 8 ounces for every 25 lbs you’re overweight. If you don’t want to do the math, just pick the next higher 8oz number and use that instead. This is one of those little things that really adds up over time, so don’t skip it.

6) Did you consume the correct supplements at the right times? - BCAAs, Post Workout Drink (surge), and Protein Shake are only necessary on workout days, other days you can ignore them (in fact you should NOT be taking them on off days). Supplements aren’t magic, they won’t make you thin without effort, but they will speed your progress, and in something like this, we can use all the help we can get.

7) Did you eat meals with the correct insulin impact at the right times? - Remember, you should only be eating medium insulin impact meals for breakfast, and whatever meal is post workout. High impact meals should only be for cheats, but you can have low impact meals anytime. This doesn’t mean you should try and eat like you’re on the Atkins diet, but we do need to be cautious.

8) Did you perform the set amount of weight lifting exercises, sets, and reps? - Diet is important, but if you’re not working out with weights, you’re not going to do very well over the long run. Even if you’re not interested in building muscle, maintaining the lean body mass you already have is very important.

9) Did you perform the set amount of cardio exercise? - Cardio by itself isn’t enough of a workout, but it definitely helps to create a calorie deficit. You need 2-4 hours a week for optimum health and fat loss. Currently I’m getting 2.3 hours per week and it’s working well.

10) Did you write down all food in your food log, measure your weight and bodyfat then update the spreadsheet? - Like I said, I use the back of the checklist as the food log, though if you want to keep a separate document, that’s ok too. Make sure you’re taking those daily readings but don’t put too much value in them, remember it’s the trend that counts.

So ten things to do every day, it’s really not so hard. Once you get in the habit, most of those will become almost automatic, mere routine. Now that you’re keeping track, it’s pretty hard to forget things, and you’ll see right away if you’re starting to slack off. One final note, don’t try and cheat the system or lie on your checklists just to get a better score. I’m a pretty competitive kind of guy, and I’m sure many of you are too. I know I don’t like it when I have a low score day, but it’s more important that it be as accurate as possible.

Previously we discussed the effects of carbohydrates on your insulin levels in The Carbohydrate Conundrum. I mentioned that certain foods, like high fructose corn syrup should be avoided, and that more complex carbohydrates like oats can often be used effectively because of their slow rate of digestion. When using an engineering approach, you want to avoid generalizations as much as possible and measure instead, numbers often tell a much better story.

You can pick up a blood glucose meter at any local drug store, the brand and model isn’t really that important as long as it works properly. For this series of tests I used the Lifescan OneTouch UltraMini which seems to work well for what I’m using it for. Test strips are kind of pricey if you’re not using your insurance to get them, so only buy as many as you’ll need.

Basically what we’re going to do is create an insulin response graph for foods that we eat so as to be sure that they’re actually the low or medium impact foods that we think they are. Low impact foods can be eaten anytime, medium impact for breakfast or post workout, while high impact foods should only be eaten as cheat meals.

If you’ll take a look at this pdf file I’ve created: Insulin_Graphs.pdf you can see the results for six meals whose recipes should make them low or medium impact. Blood sugar readings were taken just prior to eating, and every fifteen minutes afterwards.

There are two ways to evaluate each graph, the slope and the spike. The slope is the amount the insulin level rises or falls each time period, a slope of 2.5 or less is a low impact food, less than 5.0 would be medium impact. The spike is the difference between the initial reading, and the highest reading, a spike of 15 or less is a low impact food, less than 30 would be medium impact. In order for the food to qualify as low or medium impact, both the slope and the spike must fall within the proper range. (or very close like the spaghetti) Any food that fails both criteria for medium impact would be considered high impact, though I haven’t tested any of those as of yet. (Something to remember for my next cheat meal)

The advantage here is that you can cook a meal that you like, then test the results. Once you’ve created the graph, you’ll know straight away what the impact level is, and when you can schedule it. Recipes with mixed ingredients often change the overall impact of the foods, and some things which seem like they might be high impact can actually end up being medium. When you know for sure what kind of result eating a food will have, it’s much easier to comply with your dietary rules and stay on track.