[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
^ I’ve been averaging 1,400 kcals on the Rapid Fat Loss Diet. :)[/quote]
How the hell can you do that??? (mind you it is a cutting diet, but still :P)
By scaling weight training back to two days per week and having extreme discipline. Check my RFL thread for details. 
Thanks so much for your help – I appreciate it.
It doesn’t feel bad, actually, except late at night when I’m hungry as hell; and my grades have been fine. But come to think of it, I think I’ve been sleepier lately, so maybe I really haven’t been eating enough. Good point. I’ll start switching to more food and see what happens.
Edit: maybe I’ll get a tape measure.
Edit 2: protein + Greek yogurt + fruit juice is pretty delicious. This I can actually stomach.
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
By scaling weight training back to two days per week and having extreme discipline. Check my RFL thread for details. :)[/quote]
No doubt! I suppose then when calories are that low, food choices and macros become extremely important if you don’t want to disintegrate then?
I am in awe of you guys who are carrying all that muscle and can cut your calories like that.
But now I wonder if I should be giving calorie advice when clearly I am a glutton 
Tried eating more today – 1750 calories. But now I just feel sick and miserable. (Probably doesn’t help that a.) it wasn’t totally clean food and b.) I have a lot of work this week and I’m worried about finishing it all.)
God. Either fitday is underestimating (I have to eyeball volumes, but I try to be honest!) or this is just more than I can handle. Are you guys sure about this?
Well, from now on I can at least cool it with the chocolate muffins – “I’m blue, I deserve it” is only going to make me feel worse physically.
But I can’t imagine eating an equivalent quantity of clean food. That would be an embarrassing number of eggs.
So I saw a brief rundown of Berardi’s principles (I come from a long line of cheapskates, and I’m not shelling out for the book yet) and I think I can do this.
- Eat every 2-3 hours
- Eat fruits/veggies every time you eat.
- Eat protein every time you eat.
- No crap, ever.
If it sounds like I’m obsessing it’s just that I’m trying to figure this out. A year and a half ago I had bad eating habits and bad study habits, I was fifteen pounds heavier, I was sleeping all the time, and I was profoundly miserable. If I’d been the type to go to a shrink, they might have called it depression. I couldn’t have imagined then that I might be seriously aiming for top grad schools today; aspirations of any kind were beyond me back then. So I want to keep from letting myself slide physically because I really don’t want the rest of my life to go back there. In the end it’s sanity more than vanity.
So…
today was a “no-crap” day, unless you count cornbread as crap.
1670 calories, 45.8 g fat, 188.4 g carbs, 130 g protein.
I’ll try to keep this up, possibly with lower carbs. Meanwhile I’m going to try to be more intense with the workouts – not longer, just run faster when I’m running and lift harder when I’m lifting. I want to live up to some of the people on this forum!
You said you hurt your hip? You might want to take a few days off, or lighter. Don’t want to make the injury worse. You sound like you might be overtraining a little.
Isn’t overtraining largely impossible except for elite athletes? Yeah, my hip is messed up, but it’s not bad – I’ll just do what I can.
[quote]AlisaV wrote:
Tried eating more today – 1750 calories. But now I just feel sick and miserable. (Probably doesn’t help that a.) it wasn’t totally clean food and b.) I have a lot of work this week and I’m worried about finishing it all.)
God. Either fitday is underestimating (I have to eyeball volumes, but I try to be honest!) or this is just more than I can handle. Are you guys sure about this?
Well, from now on I can at least cool it with the chocolate muffins – “I’m blue, I deserve it” is only going to make me feel worse physically.
But I can’t imagine eating an equivalent quantity of clean food. That would be an embarrassing number of eggs.[/quote]
I personally prefer to keep a tiny little notepad and pen on me and jot down what I’m eating when I eat it. Normally I can look up the nutrition facts on the back of the package and jot that down while I’m eating too. If there are no nutrition facts handy, I google the food item when I get home and write them out that way.
I really have not liked fitday.com or some of the other online food journals. It’s probably because I have the attention span of a knat in heat, but all the time spent estimating and scrolling through lists to find food items turns me off.
One thing that I have found (and I don’t know if I’m just weird or what) is that eating a mixed-leaf salad with olive oil and vinaigratte for dressing makes me feel noticeably happier and more energetic. Maybe try that instead of the chocolate muffin next time? Can’t hurt.
It works for me because it does the calculation for me (and running averages, trends, etc. I like numbers. I spent October constantly refreshing fivethirtyeight.)
And, yeah, I’ll cut out the junk. What does your diet look like, if you don’t mind me asking? (You & Debra & the other women regulars are pretty awesome role models.)
I’m very glad to hear someone battled depression by making a firm commitment to change her life. I haven’t been clinically depressed in 3 years. But before that, I had my fair share of bouts of clinical depression; it’s a very debilatating condition; many people don’t understand that.
You’re not obsessing.
I’d watch it with the fruits though; I think 2 to 3 servings per day is good; not one at every meal.
I really think you should check The Baseline Diet over at Lyle McDonald’s website. I don’t see the need for more education on the subject in the first few years of training and following a bodybuilding diet. Anyone with half a brain can interpret the advice espoused in that article.
FYI - Berardi recommends eating a vegtable:fruit serving ratio of around 4:1. So it’s really vegtables at every meal, and 2-3 servings of fruit (like Brick said above), which I think are best to have around training.
[quote]AlisaV wrote:
I’m as much looking for advice on what direction to go, as nutrition specifics.
20yo woman, 5’6’', 132 lbs
Longtime distance runner, started lifting almost five months ago; lift 3 days a week, run 6-8 miles 3 days a week.
I’m looking to lose fat and gain muscle, but I’m not sure how much weight I ought to want to lose; the lightest I’ve been (since I stopped growing) is 127, but that was with zero muscle in my upper body. I think I look all right now, but when you look all right you want to look better, right?
I’ve been tracking what I eat on fitday.com and I’ve been limiting my calories for about a month and a half.
Averages:
calories 1350
carbs 160 grams
protein 66 grams
fat 52 grams
Today’s food (fairly typical, though I eat fairly different things from day to day)
Early morning: half scoop of whey protein
Breakfast: PB&J on whole wheat bread, hardboiled egg
Lunch: Lettuce, canned mandarin oranges, hardboiled egg, and apple
Afternoon: scoop of whey protein
Dinner: piece of pizza, hardboiled egg, lettuce, and glass of milk
Total: 1355 calories
(note: today was a 6-mile run.)
So, am I eating too much, and am I eating the wrong things? Should I go on a capital-d Diet or just make some tweaks?
Personally I find it a lot easier to eat smaller portions but have my food be “tasty” (where tasty means carbs) than to eat large quantities of “clean” food. But is that going to bite me in the butt?[/quote]
STOP ME if I’m full of shit, but if you’re trying to preserve muscle and lose fat, you’ll wanna look into HIIT running.
Bricknyce: thank you for the encouragement – it means a lot – and the tip. That’s all I really wanted: a “baseline” diet, no fancy stuff. And yes, more veggies, less fruit, will do.
spyoptic: yeah, I’ve heard about that. I like long runs independently and don’t want to give that up, but I will make myself do some speedwork since I have some 5k races coming up.
[quote]AlisaV wrote:
So…
today was a “no-crap” day, unless you count cornbread as crap.
1670 calories, 45.8 g fat, 188.4 g carbs, 130 g protein.
I’ll try to keep this up, possibly with lower carbs.[/quote]
I would really consider going lower on those carbs and stop taking those long runs (which are eating up muscle) go with the HITT or crossfit style cardio (i.e. burpees, suicides, boxjumps, mountain climbers, JUMP ROPE, etc.) you will increase your calorie burn with half the time believe me you’ll be toast!
oh and the corn bread is crap…lol
Alisa, I like running also, but just like lifting, you need to mix it up so your body doesn’t adapt. You’d make better progress by using different running routines rather than the same 6-8 miles 3 times a week.
What works for me is lifting heavy every other day (3 times a week), running every other day (3 times a week), and taking 1 day off each week.
My running routine consists of one speed day (sprints, HIIT), one day of hill work, and one day of a “fun run” that’s 6-8 miles.
Have you tried Metabolic Drive to help increase your protein intake? And I also have to recommend Surge … definitely helps me recover for the next day’s workout or run. I couldn’t keep up my training schedule without it.
Hope that helps.
Thank you, Laurie! I just did sprints today, and I think I’m going to do that at least one day a week; your schedule looks perfect for me. Speed is what I’m bad at, but I’m hoping it will improve with practice; should help with my (currently unimpressive) race times as well as physique stuff.
I clearly suck at this diet thing, though. I lost my willpower and had a big cookie, then felt bad and skipped dinner.
902 calories, 19.1 g fat, 97.6 g cabs, 86.9 g protein
I don’t think I’ve had one totally clean day in a while. Yes, I intend to drop carbs, but I know I haven’t really ever managed it, except by intermittently eating not much at all. I have no excuse to be weak; I have my health, I can choose what to eat pretty easily, I don’t have a lot of troubles in my life. So, goddamn it, I am going to fix this.
Why not plan a couple cheat meals just for the weekend to treat yourself? Then you’ll be more likely to eat clean 90% of the time during the week knowing you got some scrumplicious food you can have come weekend:D.
Another reason to eat lots of protein is it will diffuse hunger rather quick so after eating a good amount of protein that cookie won’t look so appealing and you might just eat a lot smaller portion yet still satisfying your sweet tooth.
Atleast you’re acknowledging that fact you ate some junk, you’re doing a lot more then most people by realizing that. Yet always get your meals in. (especially breakfast and dinner). Make up for it the next day and eat all clean.
my 2 cents. Yet I can eat whatever the hell I want but barely gain fat so what do I know.
[quote]AlisaV wrote:
It works for me because it does the calculation for me (and running averages, trends, etc. I like numbers. I spent October constantly refreshing fivethirtyeight.)
And, yeah, I’ll cut out the junk. What does your diet look like, if you don’t mind me asking? (You & Debra & the other women regulars are pretty awesome role models.)[/quote]
My diet has a lot of variance, but I eat a protein source and some sort of carbs every time I eat. I normally get in 4 meals per day.
If I was you the main thing I would change is STOP WITH THE FREAKING GUILT TRIPPING OVER COOKIES and never miss another meal because you are going to go over the calories. DON’T SKIP MEALS. I don’t care if you clean out a Baskin Robins, 2-3 hours later eat another healthy meal.
Otherwise your fluctuating insuline and hormone levels will do more damage than the cookie itself.