In my last post I alluded to the fact that I have a dangerous job. Dangerous in the sense that there are times when it is really unsafe for me to get into the water. I had one of those days a couple weeks back. The surge was awful, and my dive partner and I had insane troubles getting ourselves back into shore. But we're perfectly fine.
There are other aspects to my job other than the chance that I could die. But then every job has a chance of death. Some are just higher than others...but that's not what this post is about. What I'm talking about is the incredible physical strain that my job has put on my body. In the last month alone I've lost nearly 8 pounds from all the time that I spend in the water. On a typical day during heavy collection we would make an average of two dives, sometimes we made three, and this was in water that hovered around a constant 54 degrees.
Typically, an hour of diving will cost you about 550 calories. What I don't know is if this estimate is for warm water diving or cold water diving. When you think about how much energy your body spends to keep you warm when it's cold, this must increase how much you burn in cold water diving. I heard once that people who work in Antarctica have to eat mostly fried food to get the thousands of calories it takes just to maintain your weight in that environment.
When I stop to rationalize, it's not wonder I've been dropping weight like crazy. And not to mention the eating. But at the moment the construction workers in camp have nothing on my dive partner and I in terms of what we can put away at meals. Another bonus of all the diving, it's putting me in better shape. I ran a 5k distance today and lowered my time by about five whole minutes. Now that's a nice little bonus of the job.
