Nutrition Progress
Here's how my nutrition program has progressed:
Spent a month tracking body weight.
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Just used the online tool to track things. Not very useful overall. I was all over the map. I would have six to seven pound swings from one day to the next.
Got FitDay software. Spent two weeks tracking what I ate but not changing what I ate.
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The goal was to not affect my diet, just to track it as a baseline. The main thing I learned is that my daily caloric intake was all over the map. Sometimes 4500 calories. Sometimes 1800. I did a good job tracking everything though.
Limited caloric intake.
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My next step was to regulate my daily caloric intake. I set it at 2500 calories. I've learned a ton about the caloric densities of foods by sticking to this calorie budget. The first week was easy, the second rough, the third got easier. I learned to plan the say out instead of simply eating. I learned to check the FitDay software before eating things. And, as if by magic, my weight stabilized. Instead of six to seven pound swings in weight every day I was seeing two to three pound swings.
Focused on protein.
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Once I had the calories limited and I had a sense that I could control my intake, I started to analyze what I was eating. The first thing I found was that I wasn't getting enough protein. I was down around 8% of my diet. I should be at 16% to 20%. So I started forcing meats into my diet. Egg Beaters in the morning. Nuts as snack. Meat for dinner. It worked and after a while I was able to comfortably get enough protein.
Reduced caloric intake to affect body weight.
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So I next analyzed my caloric needs and figured out what I should be at to lose some weight. The first time I chose 2500 calories as a starting point... just a number to see if I could control the calories. Now it was time to reduce that number and lose some weight while maintaining the balance between fat, protein and carbohydrate. I chose 2000 calories, which is about a 350 calorie deficit. And I started to lose weight. Magical? Nope... it's in the numbers. Weight loss happens because you eat less calories. Atkins and South Beach are psychological shortcuts that attempt to give you a ruleset that limits calories so that you don't have to do the hard work of tracking every single thing you eat. In the end, it's simple math and physics.
What Next
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I'll continue to refine the fat, protein, carb mix for a while. I need to better integrate my eating into my training needs... i.e. long ride needs vs. short sprint workouts.
Some questions
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1) How do I lose weight and keep the muscle? Maybe it seems simple, but I'm not sure I've gotten a clear answer from any book or article. Do I simply maintain the same balance of fat, protein, carbohydrate? Or do I need to eat more protein while working out? Or should my daily diet, while I'm losing weight include a higher percentage of protein? Or should I do more weight lifting while losing weight?
2) How do I know when I'm losing muscle? Is there a benchmark strength test (like a leg extension) that I can use? I'm assuming that measuring my legs, arms, etc won't work because I'm also losing fat. There's a point where my weight loss will have a detrimental affect on my performance. I'm still in the middle of the BMI chart, but what about when I'm closer to the lean side? Are there any indicators that I've lost too much?