new meal plan outline/thoughts

Beginning this past Monday I have begun a new experiment as I have stated in a few previous blogs, but now I want to talk a little bit more about my goals as far as what I’m shooting for and what I want to accomplish over the coming months with regard to my weight, my body composition, and how I feel. I weighed in after the weekend at right around 261.5, gaining 5-6 lbs over the weekend which is about what I expected for what I ate and what I drank. For the record I ate out twice, once for a breakfast having a sausage and egg biscuit from McDonald’s with a small coke and then again I had HyVee’s Chinese Buffet, having 2.5 plates of rice, chicken, egg rolls, and a few crab rangoons.

I have devised a meal plan which is much looser in composition, allowing me more freedom to enjoy cooking the things I enjoy to cook and allowing for the possibility of fast food or a soda from time to time. The goal is to keep my daily intake in a certain interval for the nutritional facts of calories, fat, carbs, and protein. In doing this I will keep a spreadsheet of what I’m eating daily and it will help me reevaluate where I’m at and if I’m losing/maintaining/gaining weight should help me find a place to tweak my diet to something I would better prefer. Here are some intervals of values I’ve settled on:

• Calories: 2150-2500
• Fat: 50g-80g
• Carbs: 250g-350g
• Protein: 120g-160g

The reason I want my calories around this is because I was playing around with a maintenance calculator which suggests an amount of calories you should have to maintain weight based on your current weight, your body fat, and how active you are. I’m not exactly pinpoint accurate with what my body fat is but I had an idea, and juggling a few different kinds of active (I thought I was in the middle of lightly active and moderately active) I came up that I needed around 2550-2900ish calories to maintain my weight. Since I’d still like to drop weight they suggest your cutting calories be 500 less or so. Now, I’m not going to go nuts if I don’t hit this 500 less mark right away this week because the calculator could still be different than my body make up so either way if I hit certain numbers it will take a bit to see how I do with my weight and then I’ll have to readjust accordingly. If I find I’m not dropping weight like I want I can increase activity and/or I can cut a few more calories.

I am still fairly active, playing basketball a few times a week and refereeing once a week, but the city basketball league is almost to an end (and we’re finishing strong). After this I’ll have to make a more conscious effort to get into my college’s rec center to play some pick up games there and/or get into the gym to run more (damn it’s cold outside to be running there as of now).

A few side notes, I’ve read in a forum that if you’re counting calories not to count a majority of the fruits/vegetables because they have too many positive effects on your diet and on top of this are largely composed of water. I plan to be eating quite a bit of fruits and vegetables incorporated with my meals I fix on a daily basis (salads, stir frys, pizzas, etc), but take for instance yesterday where I had around 2/3 of a small bag of carrots, this would’ve equaled approximately 110-130 calories. Again, a few people on forums suggested this because as people do weight/fat loss diets they tend to still not get enough nutrients from fruits/vegetables, and especially people for some reason are worried about the amount of sugar in fruits. They encourage you to not count these to supplement the idea that these things are by far and above more healthy than they are ever harmful (and are rarely counterproductive to your goals) and that we should all be eating more of them.

Here is my spreadsheet of the first two days I’ve counted calories:

STEVEmcfly: thoughts on personal motivation

Today I’m going to write a bit about the keys to this diet that I very much want to maintain in the following months to track weight loss and things of that nature. I’ve read a handful of various “how-to”s so to speak on the internet for ideas on how to encourage yourself to lose weight and continue losing weight, all of which I believe have put ideas in my mind that I’ve used or used in some fashion to create my own form of motivation.

First, let me speak in terms of personal motivation. This seems to be the hardest thing for all people trying to lose weight, or accomplish anything such as writing papers, doing a project, working out, etc, to get started and maintain. I have tried watching what I eat before, I’ve tried cutting sodas (I don’t think people realize the magnitude of a soda drinker I was before this experiment), and I’ve tried other crazy ideas on top of all this.

My first experience where I was really happy with how I followed through with a personal experiment or a target of my personal motivation was a few summers ago when a few buddies and I started a blog to chronicle our experiences with polyphasic sleep. We did this fairly successfully (a few lapses, but the experiment I still suggest was a vast success) for around 45-50 days before I had to stop for external reasons (I was in a local band who had an 8-10 day road trip/gigs where I couldn’t continue the pattern), but I learned a lot from that experience in the fact that because we started a website to blog about our experiences, I felt like that helped structure the experiment which ultimately led to our success. What I’m getting at is the structure was the key to the success of the first experience and what I would say the key is to the success of what I’m doing right now.

When you structure an event in your life it gives you a better chance to latch on to it. Think about this, when you’re trying to climb a tree, sure, some successfully climb that tree by crawling up the branches, but most people can’t climb trees and merely by allowing some kind of structure to help can only increase your chances. If you use a stepladder, you’re going to be that much closer. If you were to grab a standard painting ladder, you can probably get anywhere you want to go on that tree. I would suggest this is the same with structuring events in your life as far as being motivated. I want to keep a balance of spontaneity with some forms of structure, finding that wonderfully successful middle ground. I would suggest the reason I’ve done so well with this particular meal plan is allowing myself be on the middle ground. The meal plan has plenty of structure, I know what I’m going to eat for the most part, but like in the middle of the experiment I allowed for a slight deviation of spontaneity to have a nice meal with a good relative of mine.

Next month I intend to continue in this fashion with slightly more spontaneity in the sense that I still want to structure (for the most part) the meals I’m going to eat, and plan on them, and continue to calculate the things I’m putting into my body. The keys to some simple weight loss right away is merely watching what you eat. You don’t have to go off the deep end in some crazy miracle diet. It appears to me that simply if you watch what you’re eating and set goals of approximate numbers you should be around, and if you can keep track of the numbers (even loosely), then you should be able to drop weight. I merely set a goal for my calories from (guesstimate) over 3000 calories a day to around 2000. I’ll end up being slightly under this even because of some waste and leftovers.

There are plenty of ways to keep motivated and on track with your goals. How about what we did? We started a blog. You can start a blog too! Think about this for instance, if you feel like other people are watching and double checking you at work you’re going to be more cautious about the quality of the work you do. It’s the same with the blogging experience. There are plenty of sites in which you can start a blog simple and easy and by blogging about it you feel a sense of responsibility to follow through.

On top of this, as far as watching your food, buy a palm sized notepad to carry around and write down what you’ve eaten throughout the day. If you start keeping track of things on a daily basis you’ll see what you’ve eaten and you’ll think twice about eating that extra roll, or even about eating your first piece of candy.

A thing I’d like to keep doing to keep my weight down throughout my life is sticking to the multiple meals throughout the day. It’s so simple to do. Even without cutting many calories, this could even cause weight loss. Merely by making portions smaller and eating every so often you will keep your metabolism working throughout the day, burning more weight throughout the day.

The last thing I’d like to mention that I’ve been forced to do by way of this $2 a day meal plan is portion sizing. We’re a nation that will eat whatever is in front of us. We totally disregard what our body says about how “hungry” we are and we eat whatever is on that plate or on that tray. By eating meals on smaller plates, or merely by not loading the plate up (and not going back for more) you can cut some calories effectively. I was forced to do this in fear of having to go over my allotted amount of money for the month, which has taught me this very important lesson.

We’re all in this together, there are a myriad of people trying to do the same thing you and I are. Find friends, engage yourself in a community, and help each other.