Diet Plan

Having already outlined my fitness plan in length, I thought that I’d talk a little bit now about my diet plan. After all, exercise is meaningless if you’re just eating up all the calories that you’re burning, right?

I weighed myself yesterday and I was at 148 pounds. Yay, I’ve lost two pounds! I know that I should be happy with this, but about two months ago, I weight 145. I had a bad week where I ate WAY too much fast food, and I gained 5 pounds. I’ve been trying to lose it since. The lesson I learned from that is that it is a lot harder to LOSE weight than it is to gain it. I mean, at this rate, it’s going to take more than a month to lose the weight I gained just in that one week of bad eating. Tragic, isn’t it?

Moving forward: Let’s discuss my targets. My starting weight, as of March 10/08 was 150 pounds. My target weight is 130 pounds, and my goal is to reach that weight by June 1/08. That deadline, as of today is 77 days away, and I have 18 pounds left to lose. To meet that goal, I’m going to have to lose, on average, 1.64 pounds per week. So far, I’m right on track.

Now, according to my research (I’m a very research-orientated person. I Google EVERYTHING), I have to create a deficit of approximately 3500 calories in order to burn one pound of fat. Ideally, I’d like to lose 2 pounds per week, so that would be a deficit of 7000 calories per week- or 1000 calories per day. Translation: I need to burn 1000 calories per day more than I eat.

Now, given my current age, height and weight, I burn approximately 1495 calories per day just living. That is my ‘basal’ calorie level. Based on my lifestyle (I have a desk job and get a limited amount of exercise from household chores every day), I burn an additional 972 ‘lifestyle’ calories per day. In total, my approximate daily calorie consumption is 2466 calories.

So, theoretically, if I were to cut my calories to 1466 per day, I would lose 2 pounds per week. However, I would also not be getting the tone and energy I’m currently getting from exercising in addition to dieting! So what I’d like to do is cut my daily calorie intake by 700, and burn AT LEAST 300 calories per day through diet and exercise.

That is, if I were to diet every single day.

However, one of the things I’ve learned while dieting is that the more I deprive myself of the unhealthy foods I love, the more I crave them and therefore, the more likely it is that I’ll ‘fall off the wagon’ and binge. After trying the ‘5 factor diet’ for a while last year (I had moderate success, but found it difficult to eat 5 meals a day. When you have a full-time job and only get one break a day to eat, this diet is nearly impossible) I learned that you should work out 5 days a week and have one ‘cheat day’ a week where you eat whatever you want. Well, I like that idea! I’ve decided that for one day a week, I will forget about counting calories and eat whatever I want. I’ve decided my cheat day will be Sunday.

Since I’m going to have a cheat day, it means, I’d better get my calories down even more during the 6 days per week I AM counting. So I need to cut down my calorie intake by 1167 per day. Or, with 300 calories burned through exercise, 867. Have I lost you yet? It’s a good thing I always did well at math in high school…

To sum it up:

Starting Weight: 150
Target Weight: 130

Daily Calories Burnt:
Basal: 1495
Lifestyle: 972
Total: 2466
Target Deficit (Food): 867
Target Deficit (All): 1167
Target Total (Food): 2466-867 = 1599

1599 calories per day, I’m allowed to eat. Now, in the interest of making this easier to remember, let’s round that up to 1600 and set that as my target daily calorie consumption. 1600 calories per day. A reasonable enough goal.

From here on out, I’m going to do my best to start counting calories (I haven’t been, up until this point. I’ve done my best to make good choices, but I haven’t been keeping careful track) and recording them here. If I don’t record them here, I’ll recording them in my FitDay account (http://www.fitday.com).

The next question is, how am I going to do this? To start out, I’ve set the following goals for myself:

1) I will not drink my calories. If I’m thirsty, I will drink water (0 Calories). If I get bored of water, I’ll allow myself to consume Crystal Light or other diet drink singles (5 calories per bottle). I’ll also allow myself one glass of real fruit juice mixed with water per day, or one glass of Silk soymilk with dinner.
2) I will avoid chocolate, sugar, or deep-fried foods during every day (other than my ‘cheat day’, which is Sunday).
3) If I need a snack, I’ll look for fruits, vegetables and whole-grain crackers, or lean meats.
4) I will eat breakfast every day- as this keeps me from getting hungry and then ‘binging’ on something unhealthy later on in the day.
5) I will plan my meals ahead of time, so that I don’t wind up cooking something unhealthy for lack of options

I will add other goals later, as necessary, but these are the ones I’m trying to stick with for right now. I find the more complicated I make things for myself, the less likely I am to stick with it.