nesf's journal

nesf

Numbers:

Age 25
Height 6'
Weight 92kg/202lb


Ok, I've been watching what I've been eating for a short while and I've decided to start "counting" from today. Except that didn't work so well, I ended up under-eating (I'm in no way hungry or anything, it's more that I ate this much and my body is happy). I've no goal weight or fitness goal. I'm just going to take results as they come and just focus on eating cleaner from today on.


Diet:

http://www.fitday.com/WebFit/PublicJournals.html?Owner=nesf

As you can see, I really should be hungry right now but I'm not. At the moment I'm trying to cut down on carbs and eat more protein but it's hard to plan when I'm still not sure how much I'll eat in a day (yesterday I ate a lot (2950), the day before that 2200). At the moment I'm more trying to eat cleaner than get my percentages right so my diet is a bit all over the place at the moment. I've a long way to go.

Note: While playing around with the site and getting used to the idea of watching everything I ate I cheated both days this weekend. As I've said, I'm counting from today.

Activity:

I got an hour's walk in today. Nothing streneous pace wise just quickly around town on the flat.


Weight:

I've dropped a pound since last Monday.

nesf

Today went a bit better in that I ate more and a bit worse in that I left myself get too hungry and ended up eating Chicken Fajitas late and eating a fair amount of carbs (mainly down to the wraps).

In good news while a trawl of the local health shops managed to turn up no "good" peanut butter, I found Kelkin stuff in Tescos that's 97% peanuts and no trans fats which is close enough. I really like chunky peanut butter but with my fat/carb/protein ratios atm being 33%/33%/33% I'm unsure if I should introduce much into my diet. I imagine loading up with fat (even if it's good fat) is not the best thing. I'm slowly managing to bring my carbs down though which is something good anyway.

Activity wise I didn't do very much outside of a few walks to the shops which don't really count. I really need to set aside time in advance for walking etc.

nesf

Today was pretty annoying, the whole thing hinged on the baked salmon working but a combination of me not really liking fish at the best of times and the salmon being quite poor meant that it made me feel a bit ill and I ate only half of what I had prepared. Which left me at around 2000 calories at 7pm and starving hungry which wasn’t very good. On top of that I missed a dose of meds at 6 and had to double up at 9 which left me not so good mentally so my plan to actually get some work done didn’t happen and I’ve left myself with a bunch of stuff to get done tomorrow. I ended up having to head out and buy food and ended up eating chicken and peanut butter on ryvita. That much carbs that late isn’t good and I know it but starving myself was pointless and being disorientated (i.e. the missed meds) didn’t help.


My body seems to be happy enough at around 2,500 to 2,600 calories per day so I’ve a bit of a better idea of what to aim for. My percentages today were again a bit messed up: Protein 31%, Carbohydrates 26% and Fat 44%. Now only 9% in total came from saturated fats which is “good” but 44% is still high from my limited knowledge of these things. I take it this isn’t a good ratio?


This is what I’m thinking at the moment and I’m open to correction/debate on this:

I’m going to try and maintain around 25% carbohydrates for a while to see how I feel at this level before trying to cut to 20%. I’m not sure if this evening was down to the lack of carbohydrates during the day or the missed medication. I also need to try and get more of those carbohydrates in earlier and not later.

I’m going to try and lower my fat intake a bit and up my protein intake. I haven’t really figured out how I’m going to approach this yet but I think I might add a second 0.1% fat yoghurt mixed with whey powder in the late afternoon or cut back slightly on the amount of walnuts I eat in one sitting and have some of that peanut butter which has a better fat/protein ratio.

I also need to eat more in the middle of the day. I'm letting myself get too hungry late in the day and that ****s with my willpower and focus on this stuff.

The final thing that I need to work out is how to deal with Friday nights. (This will make sense to Cork people) On Fridays we spend the evening with simu’s parents. It happens to be the night they have a Lennox’s take-out. I will be out there and I will have trouble saying no (if it’s in front of me I’ll eat it). Should I be worried about knowingly eating badly one night a week?

tribulus

44% fat coupled with high, 30%+ protein should be okay, just make sure you're getting loads of unsaturated fats in, as you were.

I'd say a 40/25/35 of F/C/P Should workout fine, though making sure the meals are balanced in this ratio (maybe less carbs in the evening) and that you're eating often is quite important.

Oh and Lennox's is sooo good:)

nesf

tribulus wrote:

44% fat coupled with high, 30%+ protein should be okay, just make sure you're getting loads of unsaturated fats in, as you were.

I'd say a 40/25/35 of F/C/P Should workout fine, though making sure the meals are balanced in this ratio (maybe less carbs in the evening) and that you're eating often is quite important.

Cheers that's very helpful.

tribulus wrote:

Oh and Lennox's is sooo good:)

I know, it truly is the dark side. Especially when it's free and sitting in front of you..

brianthebard

If you have the fast food every week with the family, I'd keep it in and leave it as your cheat meal. It means you could only have one in the week cause it sounds pretty bad for you, but its something to look forward to. Also try and figure out what would fit your goals the closest, I mean a chip bagette isn't going to be a good idea for keeping carbs down, even if its a cheat meal.

nesf

Yeah, I'll need to give quite a bit of thought to it. It's more the fat I'm worried about rather than the carbohydrates to be honest, that and I'll be sitting down to a meal of about 1000 calories.

I'm either going to be at my "in-laws" or out drinking with my friends on a Friday night, so either way I'm cheating I reckon.

ali.c

hi,

I am only new to all this too, but prehaps sharing might be an option? So rather that getting a full portion, share it with someone or get a kiddie's portion? Anyways just a thought! Oh and your doing great!

Ali

nesf

ali.c wrote:

hi,

I am only new to all this too, but prehaps sharing might be an option? So rather that getting a full portion, share it with someone or get a kiddie's portion? Anyways just a thought! Oh and your doing great!

Ali

Lennox's don't do kiddie's portions, they've this weird system where a small chip portion works out bigger than a large chip portion. We normally have broccoli and/or cauliflower with it so it's not entirely bad, so I can take a smaller portion alright. I won't be hungry enough for a big portion anyway if I eat properly in the day leading up to it I think.

nesf

Today went fairly well. I ended up eating 2,327 calories which is a bit less than I had planned but I’m not hungry so I won’t complain. My percentages were Protein: 32%, Carbohydrates: 25% and Fat 43% and again 9% came from saturated fats. I weighed in at 201lbs this morning but I’m not really taking much notice of it. At my present weight one pound is less than half a percent of my overall weight and I figure I could easily fluctuate by a few pounds based purely on my hydration levels. Fat loss will be interesting to look at over a month or three not over shorter time spans where there will be a lot of fluctuations. I also found today that Ryvita and peanut butter is an excellent second meal. Plenty of complex carbohydrates, fats and protein and I shifted the relatively carbohydrate neutral walnuts to the last meal in the evening (i.e. roughly speaking, all the carbohydrates in walnuts are fibre).

All in all a decent day and I think I’m beginning to pin down an eating habit.

nesf

Yesterday didn't go so good and the fast food meal messed badly with my percentages. Ah well. Weight wise I was back up to 202 this morning but I'm not overly bothered about that.

nesf

Today didn't go so good. As you can see by the time of this post I'm up kind of late and it's been a stressful enough day. Diet wise, I didn't really feel hungry at any point today and more forced myself to eat since I know that I should be hungry but I still only managed 2100 calories and 500 of that came from chocolate of all things. It's difficult to eat large amounts when you just don't have an appetite (it took me 35 minutes to work my way though my bowl of porridge this morning ffs) so I turned to chocolate as a concentrated form of food for lack of a better reason. Not the healthiest choice in the world but I was more concerned with making sure I ate a decent amount of calories today than over the nutritional side of things tbh. Percentages are all well and good when you're eating somewhere close to what you need but if it's nearly 10pm at night and you're still under the thousand mark then just making sure you manage to eat enough calories takes precedence in my opinion. (there are medical reasons why some days I just have zero appetite unfortunately so I need to figure a way to deal with it and eat better since I have to live with it pretty much)


Anyway, enough whining. Tomorrow should be better I hope and if my appetite returns then I can go back to actually eating decently. Though, apart from the chocolate today my diet was as per normal just a fair bit less than I'd normally eat in a day, so it's not like I slid back into my old eating and drinking habits which is a positive sign on a stressful day I reckon.

BossArky

Are you keeping this log merely for a record of what you eat or is there going to be some exercise in here too? Having a glance through it seems that you are eating badly, not getting enough exercise and not sleeping properly.

nesf

BossArky wrote:

Are you keeping this log merely for a record of what you eat or is there going to be some exercise in here too? Having a glance through it seems that you are eating badly, not getting enough exercise and not sleeping properly.

I need to run exercise stuff past my doctor first and I've exams for the next month and I will be up the walls with it and I honestly can't see myself making a proper effort at a regular exercise thing until the exams are over. Hopefully in a month they'll have stopped changing my medication around and I can get an all clear for doing exercise.

This log is purely for diet at the moment, I'm not really keeping track of my activity level on fitday tbh. How do you mean eating badly out of interest? I was told to try and limit my intake of carbohydrates and up my intake of protein. The percentage of fat in my diet at the moment is too high I think but at least most of it is not saturated. I'm completely open to advice and criticism on this stuff, this is why I'm keeping a public log of it.


My plan is to try and clean up my diet first and keep it up till June and then to start exercising. If I can't get my diet sorted I won't get anywhere so I'm trying to focus on it as a higher priority than exercise.

BossArky

Ok, alarm bells rang when I saw take aways and chocolate in there, minus exercise. Good luck with it once the exams finish. Keep at it.

nesf

BossArky wrote:

Ok, alarm bells rang when I saw take aways and chocolate in there, minus exercise. Good luck with it once the exams finish. Keep at it.

Yeah, I didn't do so well at it this weekend. I'm getting better at the whole junk food thing, I'll only eat it if it's in the house and I'm not buying stuff when I'm shops which is good.

The take away thing is awkward. I need to figure out a way around it. I can't just stop visiting simu's parents on a Friday.


Exercise wise I'm getting about 4 or 5 hours of fast to moderate walking in a week. It's not much and I'm not sure exactly what pace I consider "fast" is in mph which makes estimating calories burned tricky. I don't have a decent map of Cork that I could estimate distances walked off. I also spend a lot of time playing with my son. Constantly picking up and lifting a 20lb child from waking to sleeping must count for something..