Experimenting with a new eating plan
Since I’ve concluded that the Johnson UpDayDownDay Diet isn’t going to be compatible with the amount of cycling I want to do, I’ve been looking at alternatives. My current criteria for any new diet is that it:
- Doesn’t add management requirements beyond what I’m already doing (logging my food)
- Allows me to eat things I really like (remember that sweet tooth?) in moderation
- Doesn’t require me to eliminate any food groups; reduction is fine, elimination, not so much (I’m so picky that it’s hard enough to find things I like and I don’t want to make it any harder)
- Is fast and easy (meaning I won’t be spending my whole day cooking, slicing, or otherwise preparing food)
Now, really, that list is pretty straightforward and, I’d guess, universal. Half the diets out there probably would qualify. So in the interest of simplicity, I’m doing my own version, pulling information and inspiration primarily from these sources:
The Lose Weight Diet is your basic information about “calories in vs. calories out.” Nothing terribly innovative, but good information presented in an easy-to-read format. Based on this info, I’m planning on eating around 1300 calories daily and shooting for 2300 calories burned. If I can swing it, that should result in a two-pound-per-week loss.
The Hacker’s Diet is basically the same thing, except that it embraces the nerd factor and provides tools and techniques to analyze the important aspects of dieting. I’m already kind of using this because I regularly use PhysicsDiet (see my profile there), which is built on the “weighted moving average” philosophy from the Hacker’s Diet (I’m planing to cover this in depth in a future post). This very much appeals to my “optimizer” tendencies and love of experimentation.
The referenced PhysicsDiet blog post describes a simple system that worked well for the author, Matt, and I believe would work well for me. Basically, Matt established two sort of “anchor meals”: oatmeal for the morning, and a serving of ice cream in the evening. He was shooting for 1600 calories, so he divided up the remaining calories between three other meals and mostly ate frozen meals for those three.
If I take that specific approach, my bowl of oatmeal plus a little brown sugar is about 180 calories, and the ice cream currently in my freezer is 150 calories for a 1/2 cup serving. That would leave me 970 calories for the other three meals, or roughly 320 calories per meal. It’s easy as anything to find frozen meals in that range. In all likelihood, I’d probably eat frozen meals for two meals a day, and have dinner with the family. On days when I bike, I’ll probably consume a bit more with the various sports nutrition, but that should be offset by the exercise (but I’ll watch it to make sure!).
Finally, Tim Ferriss advocates a pretty strict diet that’s high in protein and low in refined carbs. Obviously, that endangers the ice cream, so my application of it will be just the simple act of trying to make a higher percentage of my diet based on “good” carbs and proteins. The other thing that Tim suggests is a “free day”once a week, and potentially a down day, too. I am thinking that Saturday will be my free day, and I’m going to try to find a non-riding day to use as a regular down day. Realistically, that will probably vary by week.
So that’s my basic plan. I expect it will undergo some modifications over time (and no doubt I’ll want to experiment with other plans, too), but I anticipate good results from this kind of back-to-basics approach during biking season.
I used to do a long distance bicycle commute and got used to an increased caloric intake. Most of it was reasonably healthy, except for my love of beer. :p I haven’t really biked in months (new job, MUCH shorter commute) but didn’t really curb anything… so I’ve recently sort of had to have a self-intervention. I started the bicycling.com personal trainer over the weekend and it seems to be reasonable– the diet aims for 1200-1300 calories per day, 3 larger meals with 2 small snacks, with an almost Zone-like breakdown: 34% protein, 36% carbs, and 30% [healthy] fat. I enjoy cooking at home (but yeah, not spending all day at it), so after a few months of cooking all kinds of crazy stuff, the recipes feel almost too basic. But they’re quick n’ easy, which is nice.
The workout I’m doing is 30 minutes of cycling every day (I have a trainer set up in front of the TV), and ~20 minutes of weights 4 times a week. I chose their Lean goal over Strength when I set everything up.
My manthing swears by the Hacker’s Diet, but he’s tall/thin, and doesn’t diet anyway, so…
But hey, the ideas are sound.
I’m looking to lose 1.25 lbs per week for the next 5 months or so… I don’t know how muscle growth is going to work into that, but I’m going to try!
Hi, Josie–good to virtually meet you. Congrats on the self-intervention.
Regarding muscle growth, I’m handling that by having two target numbers: my goal weight and my goal body fat percentage.
I’ll call it good whichever one I hit first. If I hit the weight first, I’ll probably have built a fair amount of muscle in the process of exercising the fat off; on the other hand, I may never hit that weight if I gain a lot of muscle, but I’ll get to the body fat target, so I’m good either way.
I was managing my opensource subs, and saw this again. How has your progress been going? Mine’s been… okay. Since the end of May, I’ve lost about 10 lbs and 5% bodyfat. I did what you did and created 2 goals. But 3 months of fairly fierce effort didn’t seem to do as much as I’d expected, and the bodyfat % goal was getting farther away even though I kept my muscle mass loss to a minimum. For the last month and a half or so, I’d switched over to eating ~260 calories 5x/day with as close to Zone-ish proportions (40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fat) as I could manage. Energy levels have been good. About a week ago, I finally broke down and signed up with a decent gym. One of the trainers there has me on full body 2-3x/week lifting, and extra cardio (spinning classes) 3-4x/week. (Without changes to diet.) If the next 3 months don’t show dramatically better progress, I don’t know what will. :/
That sounds like it ought to do it! I’m starting to get a little worried… I always put on weight in the winter because I’m not nearly as active as during the summer. I go snowboarding once or twice a week, but the ski hill has these killer french fries…
I’ve still got a couple of good bike rides before I officially close my season… we’re doing the local MS150 this weekend, so two 75-mile days, and we’re going to ride two more back-to-back 75-mile days with some friends mid-October before heading out to Colorado for an in-law visit.
The current plan is to start hitting the strength-training hard when we return at the end of October. My husband and I are both going to do Tim Ferriss’s “geek to freak” plan for at least a month, so we’re already strategizing on the “slow-carb” diet part (we eat so many refined carbs it’s scary!). We’ll see how it goes.
I’ll be curious to hear how you’re doing with all the new exercise!
Your diet plan sounds troublesome to me. If you’re eating 1300 calories daily and burning about 2300 calories that’s a net of -1000 calories!
If you want to eat 1300 a day and lose weight (a low, but still safe number), you can eat 1300 calories and do virtually no exercise. You will lose weight this way, it’s just slow and can be tough to stay to at just 1300 a day.
But then, if you exercise, you’ve netted less calories than 1300 because you’ve burned off calories while exercising. As far as your body is concerned, you’ve eaten 1300 and then subtracted 2300. So if you burn 2300, you haven’t even consumed enough caloric fuel to power your body’s daily essential functions.
Negative calories is not enough fuel for your body to live on to safely lose weight. Initially, a very low caloric intake like this can result in a quick and dramatic weight loss. But over the course of a few weeks, your body will adjust to the super-low calorie number by slowing it’s metabolism down. Then you not only won’t be able to lose any more weight, unless you further starve yourself, you will IMMEDIATELY gain weight whenever you increase your calories per day because your body’s engine is starving and will hold on to whatever you put in it.
Obviously you know your body better than I do, and since you’re very active you’re probably used to burning tons of calories already, but your plan just seems a bit overboard to me.
Good luck!
-Amelia
Thanks for the feedback, Amelia; you’ve shared some good advice.
One thing I realized wasn’t clear from the original post is that I use the bodybugg to track my calories burned, and it reports the total calories burned, not just calories burned during exercise. So when I said I wanted to burn 2300 calories a day, I meant roughly 500 calories in exercise on top of my BMR of 1800/day.
I don’t have time to do 2300 calories of exercise every day.
But then on days where I do more exercise (biking days, etc.) I up the calories consumed to stay at around 1000 total deficit.
Of course, at this point, it’s all theoretical because I’ve been slacking on my diet.
Well, I got going again this week, but you know.
Oh good! I’m so glad to hear that, sorry I missunderstood. I almost asked what your secret was to burning 2300 calories a day. I’d surely like to know that one!
Sounds like you’ve got a great plan worked out. I typically run on a 750 calorie deficit as a daily average, losing 1.5 lbs a week. I find that I lose more weight if I vary my calorie intake, having high days and low days but sticking to a strict weekly average. It seems to keep my body on it’s toes.
Good luck, I’m glad I found your blog, I love it!
Heh, I wish I knew a secret to 2300 calories a day!
Well… come to think of it, I think I burned about that when I was first learning to snowboard. And I have a slightly-overweight friend who burned more than that in around two hours on a bike ride (he was killing himself, though).
My highest calorie-burning exercise is actually Dance Dance Revolution. I need to remember to play that more often! I keep saying, “When I finish this work project, I’ll have more time to exercise.” Riiiiiight.
Here’s more information on the slow carb diet if needed: http://stronglifts.com/how-to-lose-20lbs-fat-in-30-days/
Feel free to contact me if you need more info. Good luck with your goals.