Please critique my diet plan - calorie counting for the first time?

[dudsville]

I'm new to this section of mn and see a lot of threads I want to have a read of, but I came here to ask for your advice on my eating plan. I think I need to start calorie counting. Thankfully I don't need a lot of variety from day to day, and I know from past attempts that simply counting the calories of what I eat as I go (i.e. my fitness pal) is too much of a pita. I don't want to have to count every thing all day long, so I want to just get a set menu of items for every day, and I like to pick rather than have set meals, so my plan is to eat the following between getting up and getting home from work. I googled the average calories of each:

red bell pepper sticks 40, tinned tuna 70 and tbsp mayo 94

peanut butter 1 tbsp 94 and sliced apple 95

cottage cheese 98 per 100 g and cherry toms 18 per 100g

mozarella stick 80

hard boiled eggs 2x78

grapefruit 42

= 775 calories

I like all of this. Does it look ok?

Why do you have to eat such a low amount? From experience this will not be sustainable!!

Oh! I can see why you thought that. I meant that to be a pre planned chunk of my eating plan. Dinners would then be more varied and take me up to 1500 in total.

Ps, it worked today. I had eggs and spinach on toast for dinner. Too many eggs for 1 day. Will do salmon tomorrow I think.

In that case, great! Varied and filling(hopefully)

I'm struggling to not diet right now as I'm 7weeks postpartum but I'm consumed with thoughts of it. Reading the diet forums just to prepare as I'm finding it hard to be confident in my new body on top of everything else.

Sigh I wish hypnotherapy worked tbh! Best of luck with your diet!

Thanks Gowgi, and congratulations! My fiery had been something I've avoided for years. I never used to need to diet, I was fortunate and lucky. That's no longer the case and I've dragged my heels. I'm of an age now where it's harder. I've set myself a 30 day challenge as a way to sneak myself into eating better as I'll feel proud I'd I make even close to 30 days and I won't have the guilt if failure if I want to stop after that.

@dudsville

I think your diet probably won't work. You're more on the starvation end of the spectrum as opposed to fasting.

Starvation will lower your metabolism.

Fasting is shown to increase it.

Happy to explain if you're interested.

Thanks sacrebleu, I'm new to this so would appreciate any input!

There's a difference between starvation and fasting.

The ideal for your body is not to starve it but to fast it so you burn fat and don't cause your body to shut down as you do in a starvation mode.

The way I conceive of the two relates to the fuel source you choose. If your body mainly fuels itself off of glucose and you cut calories your body will reduce its metabolic rate to protect itself. You'll be tired and your BMR will drop so that 1500 kcal is no longer a caloric deficit.

On the other hand if you're burning fat - dietary and body - as your main fuel your body will not run out of energy because it will burn body fat. The BMR will not drop.

There are peer reviewed studies I've read which show the body's metabolism slowing down in one case and actually accelerating in the other.

In essence cutting calories is a very crude and ineffective way to lose weight. You will end up eating fewer calories in both cases but more important is food quality so you train your body to burn fat and not glucose.

Fast. Don't starve yourself.

The main enemy is insulin. When you minimise its secretion you will lose weight and become healthy.

If you're still interested I can tell you what to do. It's not hard.

That's really kind sacrebleu, I'm all ears!

The key is to reduce insulin secretion. Your pancreas secretes insulin when you consume carbs and protein. But mainly carbs.

Insulin is the hormone that brings glucose to the muscle cells. If the cells don't need the glucose it is converted and stored as fat. Almost immediately. Worse: insulin is so powerful it blocks glucagon which metabolises fat for energy. So it's a one way street to fat gain. Insulin also blocks the production of other good hormones like HGH testosterone and IGF 1. Insulin also prevents autophagy. Insulin is also found to cause other major disease.

So the first key is to remove carbs almost completely. 20 g per day max. Shoot for more calories - like 1800 - so you're not hungry and target 40% animal protein and 60% fat - your carb intake will be v small (100 or so calories).

Note: protein is not a fuel. You use it for amino acids and cell regeneration so most of those calories won't be consumed for energy. The body does convert some protein to glucose but it's an expensive process.

Also note: dietary fat does not cause insulin secretion.

Re: fats. Opt for saturated and monounsaturated mainly. Polyunsaturated fats tend to be high in Omega 6 so are inflammatory. Saturated fat is the healthiest in the absence of carbs.

The second key is TIMING. because you want to reduce blood insulin levels it's best to eat in a time restricted window. This is so that insulin levels drop and you can fuel off of body fat for longer. Note this is fasting because you're tapping into body fat. You won't be hungry. I fast for days and am not hungry. Fasting has enormous benefits away from fat metabolism. I can describe what fasting does if you're interested. But it's key to be in fat burning mode first. You must adapt.

I would do this after one week of removing carbs. Eat at noon. Then again at 1600. And nothing else in between. Sometimes I eat only one meal a day. And I'm fine energy wise lucidity etc.

The third key is exercise. What do you do do for exercise?

I find it slightly ludicrous that cutting out carbs and "fasting" is being touted here as a more sensible approach to weight loss than simple calorie control.

Calories in, calories out does work and doesn't involve any faddy eating. The NHS does not recommend eliminating entire food groups. What you've suggested in your post looks great, OP. There is a good app called FatSecret (terrible name) which makes calorie tracking pretty easy. 1500 calories a day plus exercise will see you losing 1-2lbs a week which is a sensible aim.

As long as you don't bulk up on carbs (effectively carb load) the day before you can run on an empty stomach in the morning and burn fat. There is no excess insulin in your system to prevent fat burning then. You don't have to go particularly fast, even.

I think cut simple carbs and sugars. Eat mainly fresh food with a small amount of complex carbs. Have a calorie deficit. To me, your diet looks OK op. You can go down quite low in calories eating like this as your body will burn fat as an energy source. Look up Michael Moseley's 'Blood Sugar Diet' and Maffetone training.

I’ve always thought eggs were 80kal each

Op gives eggs as 78, so not much difference, Jaffa ?

You're inadvertently going for low carb with that list. I would look into that more if I was you. There's a good section on here for that. I lost lots of weight relatively easily on that because I genuinely wasn't hungry.

@Daffodil2018

This is physiologically incorrect. Counting calories does not work because calories from carbs, proteins and fats are metabolised differently.

Calories from protein, for example, are not metabolised. They are mainly used for their amino acids.

And you cannot ignore the effect of food on hormones, especially insulin.

Fasting - not starving - is also surprisingly healthy. Humans seem designed to fast in any case.

This is widely established and non controversial, although not at the NHS which has some catching up to do.

But OP can decide to do what she wants. It is her body and her belief system.

Sacre, yes and if you look at what a lot of ultra runners do with regards to fat burning it makes a lot of sense. We store fat to use as an energy source.

I was watching a vlog one had done where he said he preferred using fat as an energy source rather than commercially available gels because the gels upset his stomach. Stored glycogen (from excess carbs) is mainly good for giving short powerful bursts of energy but stored fat gives longer sustained energy for endurance. And fat is a good energy source. It's our body's way of storing thousands of calories! Unfortunately carrying too much can be a bit of a strain on the system.

@Daffodil2018 reducing carbs is a very simple and sensible way to reduce calories since they are so calorific and unnecessary. You save loads of calories by swapping a stack of rice for some extra veg.

Counting calories does not work because calories from carbs, proteins and fats are metabolised differently.

But it can do if your macros are right. I've found a combination of low carb, low calorie and running works best for my own weight loss. I don't do low fat.

@silverystream

Indeed that's true. Aerobic exercise is fuelled mainly through fat metabolism. It can also be fuelled through glycogen metabolism but this is only in limited quantities. About 1800 cal versus hundreds of thousands around the belly

When you exercise for hours on end you run out of glycogen. This means the only other available fuel source is fat.

Where fat as a fuel source is suboptimal is in the context of anaerobic exercise. Here the body can only consume glycogen for fuel. This makes a low carb diet very difficult for certain types of athletes in explosive sports such as boxers MMA fighters or even some weightlifters.

This is why I asked OP what kind of exercise she did. If her main exercises are aerobic in nature she will need to cycle carbs or only do this anaerobic exercise once or twice a week so that fat metabolism can restore glycogen stores

@silverystream

I agree with your last post.

Sacrebleu very interested with weight training x 3 and yoga 3/4 times plus walking 5 k a day to work what wd optimum carb cycling be ? Not sure what it means really 😬

@Parsley1234

weight training is great for women as well as men. highly recommend, esp as you get older and sarcopenia sets in.

a few comments:

• if you're not a competitive athlete, you don't need to cycle carbs. you are not exercising for performance, you are exercising for health.

• if you are exercising for a particular body composition - eg 18% body fat - you may need to cycle carbs in order to sustain intensive workouts, however

• Carb cycling can mean many things. The way I do it is to consume carbs ONLY after intensive exercise and ONLY in a 3 hour window. I do this to maximise glycogen absorption by the muscle cells vs conversion to fat.

• train fasted as much as you can. HGH and testosterone levels are highest when fasted.

• ensure you maintain mobility as well as strength training. yoga is good for this or do a 15 to 20 minute stretch routine every day

• your walking is excellent. aerobic exercise in combination with low carb nutrition does amazing things at cellular level. Listen to Episode 66 of Peter Attia's Drive if you're interested. It's fascinating

Before I was pg I followed the James Smith academy (he's very marmite but has good principles) and stuck to the basics of working out my daily allowance for the losses I wanted, and using MFP to track calories.

Things that helped:
-Pushing back breakfast as far as possible (or not having at all)
-Protein rich foods like eggs, chicken sausages, turkey bacon, mushrooms, tuna, quark and Greek Yoghurt.
-Having small amounts of something sweet like melting a few squares of dark choc in a bowl and dipping in fruit (goes much further) or caramel snackajacks.
-Reducing starchy carbs for evening meal (not eliminating) and upping veg.
The satiety index is a useful guide in which foods are filling - potatoes are very good for this www.healthline.com/nutrition/15-incredibly-filling-foods#section4
-finding low cal versions of foods I enjoy, like walkers French fries instead of crisps, choc covered rice cakes instead of biscuits etc. That made it less likely I would fall off the wagon.

Good luck op, there are many different ways to lose weight, it's just about finding what works for you. I've tried low carb and keto, but calorie counting gave me the best results.

Oh and adding calories across the week rather than daily gives you greater flexibility and means you can easily factor in treats or special events where you can't easily track.

You can always compensate for an indulgent meal by adjusting the following day. Exercise can also give you some bonus calories but be careful as most apps overestimate how much you burn.