But Weight, There's More

Oh, to be in England, now that April's there

After a couple of negative months to start the year, March turned things around more than enough to make the first quarter a positive one. A negative quarter is a rare event with just five in the 45 since 2010, the most recent being the pandemic driven flash crash of Q1 2020, but while this one will go down in the books in green, the gains were driven by a few stocks rather than the broader market. I have six figure holdings in two companies, one is my employer, the other being Tesla, and both are now positive on the year after early struggles. A stock split is being discussed for Tesla which may in part explain the recent climb in price. 

Berkshire Hathaway also had a huge Q1 up 18% so far this year and while my property equity is also up, with valuations not always particularly accurate and the asset highly illiquid, I only use a percentage in my numbers. It also helps that I get my annual bonus in the first quarter which reduces the chances of a red in this quarter and all-time March was the 4th best in actual money and the 15th best (since 2010) in percentage terms. 

My sports betting was rather quiet this month. I was travelling for business early in the month, and the EPL Draw System is never good in March anyway as I wrote in January. The ROI on "Close" games in March prior to this year was -15.4%, a number that has declined still further after seven straight losses to -19.7%. 

Fortunately, results typically improve in April and as so often happens with these things, the calendar turns over to a new page and we immediately have a provisional winner with the Leeds United v Southampton game finishing 1:1. I need to wait for Football Data's 'official' Pinnacle closing prices before including this one. I was also on the Draw in the Wolverhampton Wanderers v Aston Villa game, but this game finished 2:1. 

Here is the breakdown by month as of March 31st as we enter the final few weeks of the season:

Backing the Away teams in the UEFA club competitions was again profitable, but the NBA Overs System had a poor month with a 65-72-2 losing record, but still a 53.5% winning record since I mentioned this in late January. There are only 10 days remaining of the regular season so this should be another profitable season.

Regular readers will not be surprised to know that along with keeping a record of my financial standing, updated pretty much every day, I also track my diet and exercise numbers.

A little over 18 months ago I purchased an Ōura ring, which tracks your sleep and measures the calories you burn as you go about your daily business. I'm never too sure how accurate these things are, but it seems to be producing some pretty reliable data. I believe Apple's Fitbit does a similar thing to the ring, but I've not used it. 

When I exercise, I usually track it using a Runkeeper app or similar, but these invariably overestimate the calories burned, which somewhat balances out the lack of calorie counting for the rest of the day but on some days I'm lazy or the weather is inclement and don't exercise at all. 

Anyway, with the Ōura ring estimating my calories burned (Kcal Ex) and my diligently tracking calories ingested - not always perfect, but reasonably close - I've been able to see how closely correlated my net calorie intake is with my weight changes each month.

The table below is sorted by Net Cals (daily) with a clear pattern emerging. 1500 or fewer net calories a day and my weight goes down; 1900 or greater, and it goes up. Ignoring the calorie burn, simply ingesting fewer than 2200 calories will see a drop in weight, but the correlation with weight lost is closer when using the Net Calories.

The bottom line appears to be that while exercise helps, weight loss or weight management is mostly about how many calories you consume. Perhaps no big surprise, although the minimal impact of exercise is maybe slightly unexpected. 

While I wouldn't call myself a vegetarian, I do consume very little red meat these days and I also do almost everything I can to avoid sugar.  

The "AUs" column is Alcohol Units and unfortunately (from a health perspective) I quite enjoy the social side of drinking. While I never drink at home - my wife isn't a drinker - I do tend to cram my drinking sessions into one or two days a week rather than spread it out over the week and yes, March just gone wasn't great due in large part to a significant birthday. No judging me please! 

Going 'dry' for the month and there's always a double digit weight loss (weight is in pounds by the way), but those months are usually ones where I'm fastidious about exercising too, unless I'm laid up in bed with a broken leg as was the case for the whole of February 2021.

Regarding exercise, I have a goal this year to covering 1,200 miles on foot. Last year I managed 1,050 with ten weeks lost because of the broken leg, and the usual target of 1,000 miles seemed too low. With 525 miles completed in the first quarter this year, 2,000 miles looks a little soft for a goal. 

The blue months are those from October to March and appear to be better than the 'summer' months, in part due to my habit of sometimes doing 'Dry January' and 'Sober October', although apparently not in October 2020.

Anyway, a little off topic with this and I promise not to update this too often, but I did find the correlation between weight, calories and exercise to be interesting.