Monday, July 23, 2012

Assuming my mind is incorrect and/or science doesn't work the way I think it does... YAY! (Project 190, Day Fourteen)

Here is how my mind, which I've previously talked about, works:

Today I lost two pounds.

Well, not today, but since I last weighed myself last week.  I'm down to 251...


...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...and I know that because after I swam today I realized that tomorrow is running and so I would probably do that outside and so I wouldn't be at the club and wouldn't weigh myself (I always weigh myself on the same scale, because I believe that different scales have different weights, which, as I think of it, is kind of like saying one of two things.  Saying different scales have different weights is the exact same thing as saying:

1.  We can't possibly have any objective measurements because if different scales produce different weights then each is imperfect and we can't possibly know what something, like me, truly weighs, or

2.  Gravity works differently depending on where you stand.

Science!

Anyway, I went swimming, then thought tomorrow, etc., and so I decided to weigh myself today even though it was a day early, and I ran the risk of being disappointed because I might not have lost weight, that being the first thing my mind thought:  "Maybe those last six days you didn't do anything and all the weight loss was going to come between now and tomorrow morning."

But I ignored it and weighed myself anyway and I weighed 251! a loss of two pounds, and my mind said to me:

"Well, sure, but that's probably just water that seeped out through your skin via osmosis, you know that happens when you swim so you probably only dropped two pounds of water weight."

I really did think that.  I'm using SCIENCE! to try to bring myself down, via osmosis, which is a science thing I know about.

So when I got home, I looked it up, and found out that if you work out for an hour, hard, swimming, you will lose about 600 ml of fluids, just via sweat and osmosis (with the water on the pool compressing your body and pushing the fluids into your kidneys).  I worked out for only 15 minutes, so I lost about 150 ml of fluids, tops, which...

... is completely unhelpful in terms of figuring anything out, as I don't know how much a ml weighs.  I'm sitting here trying to remember how big beakers were in science class in 6th grade, but I think that was the year we dissected a frog.

Today's workout: Swimming, 25 laps, 15 minutes.
Latest weight: 251!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Today's song: I can't listen to music while I swim, so here are some classic Jim Gaffigan commercials:




Okay, so the second one doesn't have much to do with working out.)

5 comments:

Andrew Leon said...

1 ml = 1 mg, I believe.
I don't know the conversion on grams to pounds, though, but I'm pretty sure that mg is inconsequential.

Then, again, this is the guy that once said his watch couldn't be used to time something because it was slow.
Seriously, I said that. But not because it wasn't set at the correct time, but because it was actually -slow-, and I had to re-set it every couple of weeks because it would lose a minute or two a week.
No one understood.

Briane said...

I understand.

Time flowed differently around YOU.

Andrew Leon said...

Time always flows differently around me.

anna. said...

wow. you can swim way more than me. i started swimming once because it was such a good workout (since i'm such a poor swimmer) but that didn't last long. i keep my gym membership active because i tell myself i won't be able to practice swimming otherwise...but haven't been back in a super-long time.

...#firstworldproblems.

Liz A. said...

Weighing yourself using the same scale is smart. Scales can be calibrated differently. Sometimes one may be a little off from another.

And gravity does differ depending on where you stand. (This makes more of a difference if you're planning on a massive change in elevation, but...)

And if you really care, I can figure out how much a ml of water weighs. I can even convert it for you. (See, my college degree didn't go to waste.)