Throughout my blog, I will be posting the psychology behind
my journey and getting plenty detailed on how I was able to get to this
point (and beyond). There had to be a complete
overhaul in my thinking process, and I had to understand that my body is
different. I had to stop comparing myself
to what other people were doing and what they ate. I also had to accept that what I thought was fun
and relaxing was actually a temporary insulin spike that made me feel worse
when I came down off my high.
I first used the P90X
nutrition guide as a plan (I am doing the P90X workouts, 2nd round day 140), but 60 days into the program (this was my 5th attempt) I started getting weak and my hunger was starting to feel like my old crash diets. Normally, I would have used this as an excuse to crush a massive cheat meal because my body needed it, right? But, I went a different rout, and decided to customize a meal plan that worked only for me, and get away from using more
general guidelines (i.e Resting Metabolic Rate + Daily Activity Burn + 600).
I searched the internet, and came across three key websites
that helped me determine what I should be eating with my workouts. The first
thing I realized was that I wasn’t eating enough calories, even though in the
early phases, the P90X guide (remembering it is just a guide, and it’s been very
helpful) recommended that I start out at 2400 calories /day. Once I realized what my caloric intake should
be, I found that I really had to pay attention to my macronutrients (macros) to
start getting closer to my fitness goals.
Macros are your daily protein/carb/fat intake, and there are excellent
educational posts on how to calculate your needs on an excel spreadsheet.
See here:
and here:
I then came across a website that did all the calculations
for you, and came pretty close to what I had calculated on a spreadsheet based
on the information provided in the links above.
So, you can save yourself some time and go here:
I always underestimate my workout intensity, so as my
activity level, I selected 3-5 hours/week of moderate exercise….knowing that I
am conservative on my caloric needs.
This gave me assurance that I am not overestimating, and that the ultimate guide was to listen to my body. If I am feeling weak
and having trouble in my workouts, then I would increase my caloric intake. So, when I started at 2400 calories/day, and
was feeling sluggish after 60 days, I recalculated with my new weight, and upped my caloric intake to 2600 calories/day. I also went from the goal "lose weight-10% calorie reduction" to "gain muscle and lose weight". Now, I am switching things up even more…..resistance days, 2800
calories, cardio 2400 calories. I am not
entirely at my fitness goals, that is why I am still running a deficit on my
cardio days. I’m also sticking to the
following macros:
Resistance:
2800 calories/day
50% carbs
30% protein
20% fats
Cardio:
2400 calories/day
35% carbs
45% protein
20% fats
Many of my meal plans are followed from this publication http://www.cleaneatingmag.com/
and prepared by my wonderful wife (she is the best cook and my #1 reason for
being this successful to date).
I also monitor everything that goes in my body through www.fatsecret.com. It’s free, and there is a really slick app
that you can load on your phone to track meals and scan barcodes.
Now, this is the 30,000 foot view, I will dig deeper, and
let you know how I killed cravings by staying away from what are considered “bad
carbs”. Alcohol, birthday cakes,
cookies, pizza hut….all the fun crap that I used to know.
But, I wouldn’t change the way I feel for any binge weekend again. Additionally, there are many people out there
who can get away with eating the bad carbs, I can’t. That is why I stopped comparing myself to
other people. I know my body better than
anyone else, and if you listen to it….amazing things can happen. More to come……
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