GymZombie's I suck at dieting thread

[GymZombie]

Been trying to cut for a year and a half. Made some good progress, but it's just not working as well as I had hoped. I've been soliciting advice from anyone that would offer it, as well as reading as much material as I can comprehend... And every bit of it conflicts with something just as authoritative.

Going to try a photolog/journal and see if this will help get some ideas out.

Current status:
Down to 200 lbs from high of 241 in July 2009
Doing ECA stack
Just hurt back so workouts are on hold until it gets sorted out. Was lifting 3x/week until last week.
"Total Metabolism Calculator" has me at a maintenance of about 3000 calories
Mayo Clinic has me at a maintenance of 2,600 calories
Last 3 point caliper measurement shows me at 23% bodyfat.

Was eating about 2,000 to 2,200 calories for the last 2 or 3 months with no loss. It was suggested that I may have been counting wrong and/or need to drop some additional to keep losing. This is my attempt to do that and get advice on changes.

[GymZombie]

Daily Summary:


This is my new "standard" breakfast.

1/2 cup dry oats, 1/2 cup skim milk for oatmeal. Squirt of sugar-free maple syrup for flavor.
1 scoop of Optimum Nutrition Whey in skim milk. Don't measure the milk, but it's about half a glass. I estimate 2 cups.
Multivitamin
B Complex
3000 Mg Fish oil
EC



Snack. Don't usually do applesauce, but it's what ended up in my lunchbox.



Lean Cuisine lunch. Don't usually do that either.

Usually would have a noon ECA here but forgot today.



Late afternoon snack.



5:00 - 2 scoop ON Shake in water. ECA.



Dinner - 2 Drumsticks, sm/med sweet potato, 3000mg fish oil



Bedtime - Zinc and Magnesium (poor mans ZMA).

[AlwaysTryin]

Straight off your fats are far too low

You should be aiming at 1-1.5g/lb of protein and 0.4-0.5g/lb of fats (both based on LBM) out of your 1800 calories target.

The remaining calories you can fill with carbs (and or more protein/fats as they are minimum requirements)

[ALLUCANEATRIBS]

lol'd at title, gl sir

subbed for updates

[ian0789]

Are you using a scale to weigh stuff out? And are these foods you are eating really the same macro's as the ones you are picking in your web site?

If you are weight training / cardio 3x times a week and eating that much not losing jack then something must be wrong :/

2x on the fat, that is wayyyyyyyy to low

[cavymeister]

5 star thread, would fap again.

[P90XManiac]

what is the diet program you're using?

I'd like to use something like that.

[AlwaysTryin]

Are you using a scale to weigh stuff out? And are these foods you are eating really the same macro's as the ones you are picking in your web site?

If you are weight training / cardio 3x times a week and eating that much not losing jack then something must be wrong :/

2x on the fat, that is wayyyyyyyy to low

I'm assuming no scales are used based on the milk comment

[ian0789]

I'm assuming no scales are used based on the milk comment

Hmmm well then, :/ I could see why his cut has taken a halt!

If you are not id really recommend going out and buying a cheap digital scale for 30 bucks. It will help you out a ton in trying to figure out your macro's.

[GymZombie]

Good feedback guys, exactly why I started this. Keep it up!

Straight off your fats are far too low

Will keep that in mind. Part of what led me to this was calories too high, so I cut out the fat. Until this week I had 1Tbsp peanut butter with breakfast and a full oz of almonds at first snack.

There's another example of the conflicting advice I mentioned earlier. :-)

Also, this is just the first day. When I get a few minutes I'll put up yesterday's food. And today is a holiday "potluck" at work, so I expect my lunch numbers to be estimates and crap.


ian0789 - No, not using scales, but am using measuring cups, etc when possible. Since the nutrition information usually includes a volume measurement, I have been going under the assumption that there's nothing wrong with a measuring cup. Am I wrong?

I'm not 100% that the foods on fitday are exactly correct... But most of them I've double checked against the nutrition information looking for major differences. Also, I can't seem to find a lot of my foods on fitday, so I make custom foods when possible.

I WAS weight training 3x per week... Now I'm not due to back issues and it sucks. Going to chiro this morning, will see what he says.

P90XManiac - That's fitday.com. I just use the free edition.

[cavymeister]

Good feedback guys, exactly why I started this. Keep it up!





Will keep that in mind. Part of what led me to this was calories too high, so I cut out the fat. Until this week I had 1Tbsp peanut butter with breakfast and a full oz of almonds at first snack.

There's another example of the conflicting advice I mentioned earlier. :-)

Also, this is just the first day. When I get a few minutes I'll put up yesterday's food. And today is a holiday "potluck" at work, so I expect my lunch numbers to be estimates and crap.


ian0789 - No, not using scales, but am using measuring cups, etc when possible. Since the nutrition information usually includes a volume measurement, I have been going under the assumption that there's nothing wrong with a measuring cup. Am I wrong?

I'm not 100% that the foods on fitday are exactly correct... But most of them I've double checked against the nutrition information looking for major differences. Also, I can't seem to find a lot of my foods on fitday, so I make custom foods when possible.

I WAS weight training 3x per week... Now I'm not due to back issues and it sucks. Going to chiro this morning, will see what he says.

P90XManiac - That's fitday.com. I just use the free edition.

I use a scale in leiu of measuring cups when possible. The scale will give you a more accurate idea of calories. For instance, 59 grams of cereal is, say 130 calories. If you put it in a cup measure you might get 70, or 50 grams depending on how the peices lie and if it's level, etc. So you've then got a swing of 110-150 calories. If you get over zealous and pack it in, I'm sure you could put in 200 calories in the measuring cup.

You'll have a hard time of changing the mass of the food, but you can change the density. Plus there's usually no cleaup to the scale if you use a tare (bowl/bag/plate etc).

[GymZombie]

Daily Summary:



Standard Breakfast:

1/2 cup dry oats, 1/2 cup skim milk for oatmeal. Squirt of sugar-free maple syrup for flavor.
1 scoop of Optimum Nutrition Whey in skim milk. Don't measure the milk, but it's about half a glass. I estimate 2 cups.
Multivitamin
B Complex
3000 Mg Fish oil
EC




Snack. 1/2 oz almonds. 2 cups hot tea with splenda.



Lunch - 3 drumsticks and sm/med sweet potato. ECA.




Late afternoon snack.




5:00 - 2 scoop ON Shake in water. ECA.



Dinner - 1C Brown rice, 1C broccoli florets, 1/2C ground turkey. 3,000mg fish oil.





Bedtime - Zinc and Magnesium (poor mans ZMA).

[ian0789]

I dont know about that site but I use livestrong.com All there items that I pick are 100% the same as what I am eating. Dont pick things that semi look like they can be right. To be on the nose with macro's a Scale is the way to go. I for a while was doing everything buy cup measuring and let me tell you thats a good way to fook up your intake by 1) Intake more then you really thing or 2) lowering your macro's by a lot.

If yo measure out a cup of outs I can put money on it you are really eating 2.5 servings when you really think you are eating 2 servings. Not really a lot but that 150 calories tacked onto what ever other foods you miss measure is going to screw with Macro intake. Unless you eat the same thing every day and its working for you.

Even looking at your Brocc, for 1 cup is way off. Unless you are eating some thing that came out of a can but most Brocc are like 25-30 Calories and you are getting 103 and your brown rice.... Most Brown Rices are like 150 cal for 1/2 cup uncooked so still cooked it would be 150 cal at 150 Cal. Maybe for your rice brand it can be different but again it just doesn't look right.

Are you tracking your fish oil as well? If you are taking 3x 1000's then thats 27 Calories of untracked as well as splenda while it almost is calorie free it does have some carb in it that again is a few calories adding up untracked. While it might seem anal to keep track of all this stuff it does help!

[bbavender]

I agree with IAN. The use of measuring cups isnt the most accurate way. I went to measure the 1/2 cup serving of rice and put it on my scale, it was supposed to weigh 43 grams, it came in at 63 grams. Why this isnt a huge increase in cals, if everything turns out this way you will overconsume by about 300-500 cals a day relying on measuring cups.

[ian0789]

Also what type of oats are you using? My stop and shop old fashioned are 5f 54c 10p for one cup/80g 0.o again just seems like your macros could be whats holding up your cut!

Please dont take what I am saying to heart, just trying to help! Other then that I think you have some solid food choices and are eating smart! Just need to get your macros inline

Also WRU Fats! Up that mofo! You are killing jo nuts! Give them some loving to!

[FemmeFatale28]

Just my input in addition to what you have already been told..


I too vote for the scale. Screw a measuring cup/spoon. They lie.

Fitday sucks. Ditch it. Dailyburn.com is what I use and will use forever, even if one day they make me pay

I wonder if your chicken "drumettes" calculate for the skin also? I find boneless skinless alot easier to track and usually I will eat bone in chicken when I am not counting calories.

Also when/if you do start weighing your food... consistency is key. I personally always measure everything UNCOOKED all meat, veggies, rice, oats, ect ect ect. But if you measure cooked then ALWAYS measure cooked and make sure when you are logging it the calories for that item SPECIFY whether it is a dry/uncooked measure or a wet/cooked measure.

happy dieting

P.S. Im a petite chick and I eat more protein than you You may find more satisfaction in eating more yourself

[GymZombie]

Good input ya'll, that's why I'm doing this! I've never seen the stuff you are suggesting in any book/article, so this is a learning exercise for me.

I have a very old fashioned analog scale that I can use until I get one like you are suggesting. Does anyone have a brand/model recommendation?

ian - I have not been recording my fish oil, but that's why I'm taking pictures. I'll begin to include that in my tab.

All - I got fitday from a BB'er recommendation, but so far we have livestrong and dailyburn suggested. Any reason why the preference?

As for measuring uncooked... I don't understand how that is practical. In order to do that, don' t you need to cook each serving of each meal seperately? That's fine for my oatmeal, but making 10 individual batches of 1/2c rice and 8oz chicken breast would take hours.

As for fat/protien intake... This is a "new" adjustment for me. As recently as last week I had additional peanut butter, almonds, and a casien shake. I cut those out because it was suggested that I needed to lower my calories. Do you think that was a bad idea?

Thanks again for the input, I'm taking it all seriously!

[AlwaysTryin]

Yes it was a bad idea

reduce fats until 0.4-0.5g/lb as the MINIMUM requirement, reduce carbs instead

[ian0789]

If you cook in bulk you could do something like this. Get a note book and weigh out one server. Cook that and then weigh it again, Now this might not always work out but it will keep that weight in range every time and will be almost on point.

I do this with veggies, I eat about 6 servings of green beans a day and I just weigh out 74-81g of them for every serving. I might be eating just a tad bit more but as there calories are so low I dont fear it to much.

Its really just the calorie heavy crap I would really make sure you are on point for. It helps a ton when eating starchy carbs, chicken, peanut butter and what not.

I got one from target that I love:
http://www.target.com/Taylor-Digital.../dp/B001GD3EB2

It was $30.00 cant go wrong with it. Works great, no cleaning up at all. Just drop what ever you are going to use to put your food on and hit Tare and start measuring!!

[AlwaysTryin]

Zombie, do you actually like the taste of brown rice? (compared to white)

[GymZombie]

I left my cable at work, so I cant get my pictures off my camera today. I'll have to post them all up tomorrow.

But I had a long chat with cavymeister and will be testing/implementing many of your ideas throughout the day. Getting snowed in, so it looks like it will actually be a good day for it.

Yes, I like brown rice. White is OK, but I tend to want to put something on it.

[GymZombie]

Overview. Inaccurate due to lunch:


Standard Breakfast:

1/2 cup dry oats, 1/2 cup skim milk for oatmeal. Squirt of sugar-free maple syrup for flavor.
1 scoop of Optimum Nutrition Whey in skim milk. Don't measure the milk, but it's about half a glass.
Multivitamin
B Complex
3000 Mg Fish oil
EC



Based on measurement updates, I'm going to lower my estimate for milk. I tested 1.5 cups in my normal glass, and it was higher than normal, so my "normal" is somewhere around 1 1/4 cups. Will be updating fitday with this finding.

10:00 Snack - 1/2 ounces almonds, 2 cups (coffee mug, not actual cup measurement) black tea. Each with 1 packet of splenda.




Lunch - Like I mentioned yesterday, lunch was an office potluck. I feel like I made good choices based on what we had, but unable to take measurements, or really to know what was in a particular food. No way to tell what had hidden sugar/butter, etc.

I started by covering half my plate with salad to keep me from going overboard with anything calorically dense. Then grabbed a few meatballs and a few other things.

First plate. This is a pile of salad, some fruit, with a few meatballs and a pinch of roast beef.

Second plate. Still hungry and lots of food in there, so I went back for a little more. Top left is curry chicken, top right is a vegan mexican pumpkin thing, and bottom is sweet potatoes with cranberry, apple, and pineapple.


I was REALLY proud of myself for staying away from the cookies/cakes/sweets table. The holidays are a particularly tough time for me and cookies, and I just had a cheat day on Saturday.

I did good... Not one cookie or slice of cake. I'm just bummed that I body doesn't know that and give me some extra credit.

Here's the wall of goodies that I walked past without touching:




Snack - Apple and ECA


Ride home - ECA and 2 scoop shake with water

Dinner - I started weighing the food, based on some of the comments in this thread.

6oz Broccoli, 7oz sweet potato, 8 oz chicken breast.



I went ahead and put everything except lunch into fitday. Since I have no idea what lunch is, it'll just have to be an "everything else" kinda day.

If I get a few minutes, I'll test out the other 2 sites mentioned above and compare.

[bbavender]

First off, subbed!.

Congrats on your self control at the potluck. I think its a great idea to start weighing your food because sometimes when we diet we tend to underestimate what we ate and actually consume a lot more than we thought. Ill be following your progress and hope it turns out well.

[GymZombie]

I like the digital scale idea, so will probably do that after the holidays. (Maybe I can get one on sale.)

For now I have an analog one and will experiment with that.

I played with the oatmeal, and certainly found what Ian mentioned... 1/2 cup was about 10g more than the serving weight, so off by 25%. In this case it was only 30 calories, but enough for me to see your point.

So this morning I measured on the scale and had 40g of oatmeal. Also measured and counted the "minimal" calories in the syrup, and determined that I'm using much less than the serving size of that. Added fish oil to fitday. Measured the milk I use for my morning shake and found that I've been over estimating that by a lot... I've been guessing 2 cups, but it's much closer to 1 1/4 cups.

I see several challenges here that didn't expect. Mostly around "family" meals and eating out at non-chain restaurants... Will deal as they arise.

[AlwaysTryin]

keep it up

[GymZombie]

Yesterday was TOUGH. Stayed home because of the snow so I sat in the kitchen all day. The wife was cooking so it smelled good... It was a fricking miracle I wasn't snacking every 20 minutes!

But I did good. Snapshot (Missing dinner details, see below):



Breakfast. (Same as above) Correct milk is 1 1/4 cups.



1oz Almonds (weighed on scale, no picture)

Lunch was chicken breast with sweet potato and green beans. 7.5oz chicken breast, 5oz sweet potato, 4oz green beans. Weighed on scale but forgot picture.

Snack - Granola, shake, ECA.



Dinner - Wife made chili. We try to use as many vegetables as possible. It's mostly tomato sauce, corn, beans, and squash. Meat is ground beef. I made a point to not fill up my bowl as much as I usually do.



The hard part... since I didn't know how many calories, I didn't eat any more than that. Usually I'd go back for a 2nd bowl, but I held out and drank water. Was FREAKING STARVING by 10:00.

Zinc and magnesium at bedtime.

[GymZombie]

Also ran yesterday's food through Livestrong and Dailyburn based on recommendations above.




So far my main complaint with Livestrong is that it takes up too much space, so I can't do one snapshot. Need to do 2 snaps to get it all in. Otherwise, the interface is fine.





Dailyburn was very "pretty". All of the foods had pictures that gave me a warm fuzzy that I had the right food. However, it takes 3 snapshots to fit it all in. Also, everything was measured in servings. I can't have 1/2 cup of milk or 5 oz of something, I need to do math to figure out how many servings it is in dailyburn terms. The others do it natively.

Also, EVERYTHING requires the pro edition... I get popups and warnings for everything that "you can't do that until you send us money". And since the competition is free, I think I'm going to scratch this option.

I'll try Livestrong some more, but so far I'm not really seeing much of a difference. I like the premade "meals" option, but I can't get that to work.

[ian0789]

hmm I love livestrong.com! I use the premade meal crap every now and then. More or less for making no crust pie or french toast. Other then that I just type in my food really fast. Eat the same things for the most part =P Also make sure if you use Myplate to reload the page once you are done with putting in all your eats. I find sometimes the Fat's tend to be a few points higher when its adding it up until its reloaded.

Also make sure no matter what the web site is telling you that you still take the Fatx9, Pro/Carb'sx4 for your grand total. You will find some times the side is lower or higher then what it tells you due to food company's and how they label crap!

[GymZombie]

Technical difficulty is preventing me from putting up all of the pictures this weekend. Either it can wait till Monday, or will just have to do without...

Yesterday was standard breakfast (2c milk, 40g oats, 1 scoop whey) with ECA

Snack was 1oz almonds

Lunch was bowl of Pho (beef, broth, rice noodles) with a rice spring roll (not fried).

No afternoon snack because I couldn't figure out calories for a bowl of pho. Reminded me to take my noon ECA at 3:00.

2 scoop shake. Skipped evening ECA because I took lunch time dose early.

Dinner was steak salad at steakhouse. I skipped the yeast rolls, and the salad was kinda small, but was tossed in like an oil and vinegar dressing. Wasn't real heavy, but was on the whole thing. I picked out most of the croutons.



Zinc and magnesium at bedtime.

[cavymeister]

Technical difficulty is preventing me from putting up all of the pictures this weekend. Either it can wait till Monday, or will just have to do without...

You should call your computer guy to help you with that.