So I’ve posted before for workout advice but now I need nutritional advice. I have never counted calories or intake a day in my life and have quite a bit of reading ahead. Over the last 8 months of powerlifting I have had a transformation happen. My lowest body weight when I was 20 was 190 pounds being 6’1 was pretty light, left me looking like a bobble head.
Currently im around 240 pounds hydrated with a little extra around my stomach, ,my heaviest was when I was unactive and depressed at about 260-270 pounds depending.
Currently doing strictly powerlifting 3 days a week on my days off, and body building type training with cardio 5 days a week when at work.
Looking for advice where to start with my size and body weight and go from there. Got a appointment set up with a nutritionist but through email they’ve already said im over obese and I tend to agree im over weight and need to cut but I don’t think im obese anymore. But what do I know, im asking the internet for help.
Everything is appreciated.
Pics of previous and current body shape ( since round is a shape)
That’s the problem, its super sporadic because I work at a remote camp so my diet is random with whatever they decide is on the menu but I try to keep a few things typical:
6-8 eggs, 2 sausages with toast if I lift heavy for dinner, im on nightshift.
lunch is random whatever we have for left overs from day shift since nights they don’t cook hot lunch. So recently I would have 2 pieces of turkey meatloaf loads of vegetables, cottage cheese and beets sometimes vinegar based coleslaw.
ill have 2 bananas a day at breaks with 2-4 156ml V8 vegetable cocktails
today for breakfast I had a good sized piece of braised beef blade, scallop potatoes and steamed broccoli.
Sometimes ill have soup too, I have an insane appetite and should probably track calories and macros. and recently due to stress (step dad, girl im seeing and one of my bestfriends) all had car accidents ranging from step dad getting hit by a semi truck on the highway in a small car and serious injruies to girl getting t boned in a parking lot, all while away at work. I have been eating sweets but trying to regulate it.
on my days off ill try to clean up my diet and see what kind of base line I need.
But on days off my meals as follow:
6 eggs with traditional breakfast everyday before the gym.
lunch could be anything really im feeling since I don’t cook (I travel a ridiculous amount for work and leasure)
and typical dinner meat and vegetables and carbs probably rice or something (I really like shawarma platters)
I know this all sounds ridiculous, I am honestly trying to stabilize as I got out of a 5 year relationship 8 months ago, being single for the first time at 26 since I was in high school basically I went wild but settling down now.
That was vague to say the least. since you apparently can’t control what you eat you will have to control how much you eat. It boils down to calories in vs calories out at this point. No need to over complicate it right now. Just make better food choices and portion size, and get a grip on the emotional eating. It will “fix” nothing.
Yeah the emotional eating is a poor excuse and I know that, just seems older I get the harder I find discipline but im working on that.
My work is abnormally physical so I credit a lot of that and I have a history of training… did the whole body building thing in my early 20’s and such.
ill control portions better forsure! thank you for the insight and positivity.
First thing I would suggest is brining your own food. It doesn’t need to take much space up in luggage if it only has to last five days. If you have access to a fridge, even better because thar widens the range of what you can bring. Either way, there should be nothing to prevent you from bringing your own food and that means you can control your intake.
You also may be a little hard on yourself in the physique aspect, because neither photo seems obese to me. Soft, sure. Could lose some fat and build muscle, sure. Obese, not so much. If all the nutritionist looked at was BMI you could be classed as obese, but then so could I. So could most competitive bodybuilders and many professional athletes.
It’s going to boil down to figuring out how to control your intake and figuring out what that intake needs to be.
I cannot bring my own food, im away for 14-21 days not including 2 days of travel to and from site, also because of sanitary conditions we do not have access to the kitchen to cook our own food or clean the containers.
im not trying to get shredded here, abs would be cool but at 190 pounds I wasn’t able to obtain the bottom two. I want to be stronger so at first maximizing my calorie intake like I did was working great and I was making progress but now it seems my strength is very limited in increases and im addicted to eating. I get headaches when I try to sustain any kind of fasting. I feel I just need to figure out how to roughly cut & count calories and figure out a protein intake amount. My work is different everyday in physical levels, as I do large tires so everyday has different needs and levels of emergency for tire work. so on a day I should be resting and cut calories I would sky rocket in work output for my job.
Myfitnesspal worked great for me. Pretty sure other people have used it successfully too. You’ll have to guesstimate weights but TBH most meats weigh the same for a given size (within a margin, obviously).
For example, I found that one boneless chicken thigh weighs around 125 grams. So any meat around that size, I calculate as 125 grams. Not accurate at all if you need to be within grams, but it’ll do for estimation. Similar stuff works with potatoes, bread, all that jazz. Like two slices of toast bread are around 80 grams. So I figure most breads that would take up that room weigh 80 grams. You get the picture.
Happy to help. You’ll get a pretty good idea of what’s what after a while. You could even go so far as to get a kitchen scale on your days off and just weigh some common foods in specific portion sizes so you get an idea of what those portions look like.
That’s the plan, the girl im pretty serious about and seeing is a health nut (6 pack and all) so im hoping that kicks my chubby 7/11 frequenting ass into shape. I’ve been lean before, ill add pictures when I get back into civilization but even being lean I cant seem to obtain the bottom two abs.
Meal prepping and serious discipline is coming into play, its now or never and im commited.
I agree about tracking your foods, which works nicely with what I was going to suggest, which is to leave off any sauces or particularly goopy, fatty foods and instead load up on vegetables without butter. Small changes for the win.
For example, I have no issue with six eggs generally speaking, but are you sure you need 6-8 while you’re cutting? Might 4 or 5 do for now? Small changes add up. I eat scrambled eggs most mornings and I like bacon with them. Instead of eating the bacon whole I break a half slice into the eggs as I’m cooking. Saves me a slice and a half, since there’s no way I’d ever eat only one slice. Maybe you could do that with your sausage? My Fitbit tracker tells me one sausage link is around 100 calories, so if you had 4 eggs with one sausage broken into them you’d be eating 380 cal vs 620 for 6 eggs, 2 sausage. Patties are 150 cal, so if that’s what you’re having add another 100 calories. Let’s give the toast the benefit of the doubt and call it 140 cal for two slices…so 1000 calories for 8 eggs with two sausage patties and a couple of pieces of toast. Are you sure you need that to make it through a workout?
Tracking foods is a great way to see what you’re actually up to, so you can start making small adjustments. I suspect weight will fall off you without you having to suffer overmuch!
Now I’ve fainted dead away, lol. The bread my husband likes is 140 cal per slice, so imagining you doing four of those with the 8 eggs and sausage…is 1320 calories assuming links, not patties. I’m primarily a runner, and my understanding is that I burn 100 calories a mile. So 500 calories for a five mile run, which with warm up and cool down is about the amount of time you’re spending lifting, I’d imagine. FIVE HUNDRED, not five thousand.
I’ll let the guys your size and goal-set tell you what you should be aiming for, calorie-wise, but I can tell you you’re going way over.
Small changes. Your appetite will calm down after a couple weeks of desperate fuss (“STARVING! WE’RE STARVING!”).
What do you do for work? And how is it considered cardio?
I had in my mind imagined I’m probably close to 4K calories a day because when I do train most recently I reopen 475 deadlift for a set of 5 pretty easily with no belt which surprised me.
