So I don’t have time for cardio just now. I get home from work, cram my dinner down then help with the baby until he goes to sleep, by which time I’m exhausted and need to go to bed myself.
Problem is, this routine has made me put on some excess fat.
I reckon I can sort this out with some gentle dieting, I’m on my feet all day moving around and carrying heavy loads, swinging hammers, running up and down ladders etc, so I think I can get away with not doing cardio.
Current (average) days food looks like this;
7am - glass of water
10am - 100g of granola w/milk, piece of fruit, coffee
1pm - handful of spinach, tin of mackerel in olive oil, piece of fruit, water (that is my usual lunch, sometimes i forget to make it and have to buy a sandwich)
5pm - Dinner, whatever my wife makes, usually quite carby
6pm - coffee
9pm - toast w/honey (a bad habit, i know)
How can I change this average day to achieve a calorie deficit? I need to be able to maintain it.
I was thinking of carb-cycling, it worked for me before very well but I was training pretty hard so not sure it would work the same.
Seems simple enough. Your food choices dont look great, but it looks like you already know that. Time to bite the bullet and make them better. You dont need to drop everything at once and start eating kale salads for every meal, but make small improvements over time that stick.
Slowly convert breakfast away from that and transition to something a little more… substantial. I like the eggs/breakfast meat approach. Even a slice or two of some nice, hearty toast would do fine if you are very active like you say. Your basically having carbs with a side of carbs right now. As Rampant said, oatmeal and greek yogurt would be a good idea here too.
Lunch seems fine enough depending on the amounts.
Dinner: Maybe tell the wife your goals and have her incorporate a little something better suited to them? Dont have her change the entire menu if that would frustrate her, but maybe just include a little something for you. I’m not sure what “usually quite carby” means but that to me says you are trying to tell us it could be “better.”
9pm snack… that is Basically candy, as you said you know its bad. Figure out a way to make it better. Maybe cottage cheese with peanut butter/fruit? Maybe a few pieces of string cheese? Or just skip it all together if you can muster the willpower.
Good luck with the parenting, I just had my own and know what you are going through.
Thanks for the replies guys, to answer some questions…
I’m actually not training just now, because reasons… that’s why I want to really clean up my diet.
My maintenance calories are between 1600-1800, ridiculously low I know but anything higher than that and I start putting on fat quickly, even while training.
Yoghurt and oats sounds like a good switch, although the granola I have is homemade and amazing! Made from scratch with basically oats, mixed nuts, seeds and some dried fruit and honey so I imagined it to be quite balanced?
I will cut out the 9pm toast but I will need to have something like cottage cheese because I’m always very hungry by that time. Any other late meal suggestions?
