Not to brag, but I am pretty good at dieting. When I am on, I am on. For a little while. Then I fall off the wagon and, in the past, have rebounded spectacularly and suddenly I'm wondering how all these fast food receipts got into my purse in only 48 hours. What these incidents all have in common is they occur when I focus on my weight rather than on my performance. Trying to lose a lot of weight as quickly as possible is a mistake and your psyche is more likely to rebel.
In this last, and most successful, attempt at getting my weight stable and under control, I basically took it into three phases.
Phase 1: May-June 2017. I was at a high weight of 185 and decided I needed to drop as many pounds as possible before my first Spartan race (Lambeau Stadium, end of June). In 5 weeks I got down to 174 through very diligent calorie-counting and restriction to approximately 1700 calories a day. This is low for my size (5'11") but not so low as to be unsustainable for about a month.
Phase 2: July - October 2017. In this phase I was in no real hurry since I didn't have any more OCRs on my calendar and therefore wouldn't need to haul my body weight around. I took my calories up to about 1900 a day and worked on my walking fitness, while at the same time slowly building an OCR base of calisthenics, grip strength, and muscular endurance. During this phase I got down to about 164 lb very gradually.
Phase 3: November 2017 - present. I am still losing weight at a rate of approximately 1 lb a month, while eating around 2200-2300 calories a day. My goal is to maintain and build muscle mass while very slowly burning fat. With this diet I never feel deprived and no foods are "off limits," in fact I eat whatever I want to and can still lose weight thanks to the discipline I built in phases 1 and 2.
Everyone is different and no diet is perfect for every single body, but there are some basic principles one must follow to successfully lose weight over the long-term. I recommend these particular strategies for everyone.
1) Log your calories in and out. I use the app Lose It, but others use My Fitness Pal or other apps. There are ways to look up or scan your individual foods, but I personally tend to fall into disordered patterns when I do that, so I use approximately 15 years of calorie-counting experience to accurately estimate and total up my meals and snacks and just log the calories.
2) Get a food scale. This is critical for the aforementioned accuracy of one's calorie estimates. It is quite easy for me to measure out, for example, 100 grams of Frosted Mini Wheats (which I know is 350 calories) or to weigh a piece of fruit and just Google however many calories are in it. If there are foods that I don't know the counts, or I don't know exactly how big a portion I'm having, weighing it helps.
3) Avoid caloric beverages. I drink a lot of water, probably 100 oz a day. If I'm not drinking water, I'm having coffee with a bit of sugar-free creamer, or Diet Coke, or occasionally a glass of chocolate milk. Getting most of your fluid from regular soda, juice, frappuccinos, or god forbid, BOOZE is a massive mistake for weight management.
So those are my tips for everybody, and here are my basic eating principles that help support my training and general health.
A) I eat a lot of fiber. I really focus on it. I eat at least 35 grams of fiber every single day. When you work to eat at least two high-fiber (10+ grams) meals or snacks every day, your digestive health will thank you and you will feel more satiated. High fiber foods also tend to be fairly healthy with micronutrients.
B) Increase protein. I buy a dozen eggs and boil them on Sunday so I'll have an easy high-protein snack in the fridge all week. This is fantastic for muscle recovery. Any high-protein food will do.
C) If I'm craving it, eat it, in sensible portions. Sometimes I want some McDonalds. Instead of a value meal, I'll get a McChicken with no mayo and a small fries for 550 calories, which is a totally delicious lunch. If I want a cupcake from the bakery, I'll eat it, especially if I've worked out twice today. If you're at a big deficit for the week and you want dinner at Olive Garden, go! "Unhealthy" foods can fit just fine into a healthy lifestyle, since it's not like you eat massive quantities of crap all the time and don't exercise. This is how to maintain sanity. Do not ban any particular foods from your life unless you are allergic or they are a major trigger food for you (some folks can't eat just one or a few of something. This is why I no longer buy Fruit Rollups).
D) Don't proselytize, don't self-punish, don't talk endlessly about what you can and cannot eat. (That is boring shit. This blog post is basically it for me, y'all.) At the end of the day, one's diet is only one component of their training, and it's not the most vital part of performance. If you have a shitty day, don't beat yourself up and don't whine about it. Do better next time. It's a series of choices that you make every day. Choose to support your training with (mostly) healthy ones.
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