Tag Archives: nutrition

Day 344: Cheat day

Day 344 - front

Day 344 – front

Weight: 140.8 lbs.
Workout C: 25 minutes, 28 seconds; next: Workout C, Aug. 12
Total inches: 125.3
Protein: 133g (0g over target)
Calories: 2,560

Looking ahead to post-Project Bulk, I’m intrigued by the concept of “cheat day.”

I need to read up on this in “The 4-Hour Body” [Amazon | iTunes aff. links].

My days have been spent keeping on the straight and narrow of rigorous calorie counts and protein intake. Without it, I would’ve failed at gaining any weight.

But it can be tiring to monitor every bite, every meal nonstop.

In some of the weight loss chapters, I know author Tim Ferriss talks about cheat days, where once a week anything goes. I believe it’s to add some variety and fun to the diet, but for me, it could be a break from number crunching.

I have some reading to do on cheat days, as well as finding shortcuts to reducing fat. As I’ve mentioned before, while I’m satisfied with my muscular gain, I want to have a healthier body fat percentage. At last check in April, it was at a very unhealthy 26.7 percent.

While I’ve enjoyed the challenge of going a year straight in tracking my food consumption, I wouldn’t mind having Saturdays off in the near future.

Day 343 - side

Day 343 – side

Day 308: The hiccup

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Day 308 - front

Weight: 140.0 lbs.
Workout C: 29 minutes, 46 seconds; next: Workout C, July 8
Total inches: 125.5
Protein: 133g (0g over target)
Calories: 2,148

I am not prone to mistakes. That’s the upside to being a nutty perfectionist.

So last week, when I passed out from exhaustion, I awoke to a horrifying realization: I skipped my protein shake. Oops.

I have skipped the shake on many days, but always made up for it with extra food. Now, I was in the hole by 83g of protein and some 1,400 calories.

Usually, when I miss my daily targets, it is by minuscule amounts. This was the first time in nearly 300 days that I had come up short.

It took 4 days to make up the deficiency. I just couldn’t let it go until I got it to average out.

I am a slave to the numbers. Keeping a daily record of my diet has been one of the key factors in Project Bulk, the other being regular workouts of increasing intensity.

All mistakes can be fixed. Some simply take longer to correct than others.

Day 308 - side

Day 140: The end of snack time

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Day 140 - front

Weight: 135.8 lbs.
Workout C: 13 minutes, 29 seconds; next: Workout C, Jan. 21
Total inches: 123.4
Protein: 128 g (0 g over target)
Calories: 2,347

My diet has changed in interesting ways since Project Bulk began.

Up until my food crisis in 2007, I ate for convenience. I microwaved a lot and ate fast food. Post-food crisis, I wiped almost all processed food, working to eat better and cook more.

Neither affected my weight, my outlook, my energy or my body, as far as I could tell. I did notice that the few times I eat fast food, it made me a little queasy.

Because I now count calories and protein intake, I tend to stick to the easiest pattern possible. Most days, that’s a protein shake and either oatmeal with raisins or eggs and waffles for breakfast. I usually skip lunch. Dinner is whatever I can eat to hit the daily minimums as closely as possible.

What’s gone is snacking.

For 6 years, I followed a simple directive. Eat when hungry. If my body says eat, I eat. That led to snacking throughout the day: trail mix, peanuts, cereal, cheese, instant oatmeal. I would go through all of these staples quickly, so I kept plenty on hand at home and at the office.

This pattern worked. Instead of two or three big meals, I had six or seven snacks throughout the day. The most important goal was to keep my blood sugar at the right level so I could stay sharp.

Now, with a big breakfast, I’m simply not hungry till late in the day. No hunger, no snacking. Plus, I don’t want to measure out snacks every time to track the numbers. A jar of peanuts lasts and lasts and lasts. It’s protein- and calorie-rich, so I don’t need to screw up dinner later on because I’m too close to the “limit.”

Someday, I may go back to my carefree routine: Eat whenever and never measure. But I’m content with the numbers and their results, even if it means the end of snack time.

Day 140 - side

Day 25: Calorie cavalcade

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Day 25

Weight: 127.4 lbs.
No workout today
Total inches: 118.6
Protein: 127 g (7 g over target)
Calories: 2,824

I have never worked so hard to put things in my mouth. Hmm, that didn’t come out right …

In starting calorie counts 10 days ago, I’ve had to calculate twice as much before when just counting protein. But I have found two ways to make the chore more bearable.

1. Show it. As much as I love numbers, a visual component helps me a lot. With protein, my spreadsheet cell lights up green once I hit the minimum for the day. (Nerd alert!)

The first few days of calorie tracking, I winged it. I knew my basic maintenance requirement for my age and my size was around 1,700 to 2,000 calories a day. My gut (ha!) tells me I probably used to hit the low end of that figure (ha!) when eating normally.

As my weight gain stalled, I looked at the calories and saw they were inconsistent. I made a chart and realized I should shoot for 2,500 to 3,000 a day to put on pounds.

Calories Sept. 25, 2012

Chart: Calories through Sept. 25.
Note the target zone of at least 2,500 a day.

Easy enough: Make sure the blue line hits at least 2,500 by day’s end.

2. Use an online recipe calorie calculator. Calories are an imperfect science. An approximation is what you get, but it’s still better than flying blind.

This wonderful calorie calculator allows me to copy and paste recipe ingredients and generate an official-looking nutrition facts label.

For example, I’m making the Pioneer Woman’s excellent macaroni and cheese this week. But instead of looking up the data for each ingredient, I can do it much more quickly with this tool.

recipe calorie calculator

Paste in the ingredients, tweak them for analysis
and receive your nutrition facts chart.

Tip: Food bloggers, include nutritional info with your recipes. Bonus points if you style it so it looks like the official label but uses text instead of an image, as I did above.

I can spend less time crunching numbers and more time crunching nuts. Still didn’t come out right …

•

Macaroni and Cheese
from the Pioneer Woman

4 cups dried macaroni
1 whole egg beaten
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2-1/2 cups whole milk
2 teaspoons (heaping) dry mustard, more if desired
1 pound cheese, grated
1/2 teaspoon salt, more to taste
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt, more to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
(optional) Cayenne pepper, paprika, thyme

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cook macaroni until very firm. Macaroni should be too firm to eat right out of the pot. Drain.

In a small bowl, beat egg.

In a large pot, melt butter and sprinkle in flour. Whisk together over medium-low heat. Cook mixture for 5 minutes, whisking constantly. Don’t let it burn.

Pour in milk, add mustard, and whisk until smooth. Cook for 5 minutes until very thick. Reduce heat to low.

Take 1/4 cup of the sauce and slowly pour it into beaten egg, whisking constantly to avoid cooking eggs. Whisk together till smooth.

Pour egg mixture into sauce, whisking constantly. Stir until smooth.

Add in cheese and stir to melt.

Add salt and pepper. Taste sauce and add more salt and seasoned salt as needed! Do not under-salt.

Pour in drained, cooked macaroni and stir to combine.

Serve immediately (very creamy) or pour into a buttered baking dish, top with extra cheese, and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until bubbly and golden on top.

Wade’s tip: I like to make this spicy, so I use pepper jack and extra sharp cheddar, along with generous amounts of paprika and cayenne spices. Also, be sure to read The Pioneer Woman’s post and admire her step-by-step photos.

Day 14: Down for the count

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day 14 front

Weight: 122.6 lbs.
No workout today
Total inches: 117.6
Protein: 172 g (54 g over target)

I apparently have a superpower.

Like Peter Parker waking up to stick to walls and shoot webbing, I now know I have a gift. I am immune to calories.

Ta da.

At heart, this isn’t true. While I’ve focused on protein consumption, I’m pretty sure my overall food/caloric intake has been roughly the same. I haven’t stayed at 120 pounds for decades without becoming steady in my habits.

I don’t eat a lot. The few hours of exercise I’ve done these past 14 days haven’t radically increased my appetite.

The next step is to count calories. As much as I love numbers, it’s a minor inconvenience to calculate protein in every bite. And now, I gotta add up the calories, too.

I’ll get used to it. I know this is the standard operating procedure for dieters, so it’s new to me.

In addition to counting those calories, I will continue to eat more. I might burst.

Probably not. But we’re going to find out.

Maybe that can be my superpower.

day 14 siade

Day 2: Learning to stuff my face

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day 2

Weight: 122.6 lbs.
No workout today
Total inches: 112.4
Protein: 119 g (3 g over target)

Having done small fitness routines before, I expect a little soreness the day after. But I was lucky today: no aches, just tired. Luckily, it’s a holiday weekend.

Having changed my eating habits radically 5 years ago, I eat small portions of real food daily. My worst habits are eating “bachelor dinners” (popcorn! cereal!) and drinking diet sodas throughout the day.

My new challenge is counting protein grams, something I’ve never done before. I’ve never dieted, so I haven’t endured the mind-numbing task of looking at labels and recording calories and other nutritional data.

The milkshake makes it easier in some ways: 75 calories for drinking about 4 cups in one sitting (though I could easily save some for later in the day). I had planned on going to a friend’s cookout down the street, and he was serving hot dogs and hamburgers.

I searched on Google for the protein content of each, and then estimated if I ate four hot dogs or one hot dog and two hamburgers, I’d be set. That’s more than I usually eat, especially at a party, but this is my “job” now.

The first hot dog was easy, starving from earlier today. And then I had two bratwursts on buns in a row. The third brat was slower, but manageable. (No danger of winning any extreme eating contests here.)

I know that if I stay on target with workouts, then my only other real task is to eat enough protein to build muscles. I like to eat, so the only dull part is looking up numbers and recording them on my spreadsheet.

It’s bodybuilding for accountants.