Here's what I ate today (remember that Tuesday threw me off, so today is now an eating day) in terms of my macros (I keep wanting to type "Marcos"):
The proportions, in percentages, that you see at the bottom under "Totals" are close to where I'm supposed to be on keto. The majority of the diet is supposed to be fat; next is protein, and under 10% of your total calories should be carbs. At 35 g of carbs, I'm also under my 50-gram daily carb threshold. All good, right? But notice the problem: total calories. I've only just gotten through lunch, and my total calories for the day are at 2577.58 (give or take; this isn't a totally exact science). That's way above my 1800-2000-calorie daily threshold.
I'll be walking 70 minutes today, then doing one staircase's worth of stairs, then doing resistance-band training tonight plus a bit of core work. That'll shave off 560 calories, according to MyFitnessPal. Add 560 to 1986 calories, my current basal metabolic rate, and that's a total of 2546 calories burned. 2577.58 calories consumed is a larger number, so I'm gaining weight today: 31.58 calories' worth, or 0.009 pounds. Nothing tragic, and fasting on other days will compensate for this slight gain, but still disturbing. I'm obviously going to have to cut back on lunch.
I tell you frankly that reducing my life to numbers is a pain in the ass. And with different experts shouting, "Always count your calories and macros!" while others shout, "There's no need to count calories!", life is disconcerting at best, hellishly frustrating at worst. There are days when I think I know what's going on, and other days when I feel like there's a confusion of sometimes-contradictory information out there. So I just keep my head, use common sense, and do my best to synthesize my own program based on the whirlwind of facts, figures, and supposedly expert opinions out there. Perhaps by next year, all of this will have coalesced into a coherent training program. As John Mac said in a comment, I am indeed in "learn as you go" mode, and a lot of this is still trial and error as I figure out what works uniquely for me.
That's the rub for anyone out there thinking of crafting a diet/training regimen: you're pretty much on your own. There are gurus you can follow (for God's sakes, don't follow my advice), but the one-size-fits-all approach will ultimately fail. Do the work to work on yourself; figure out what's best for you and go with it. Think long-term and don't obsess over temporary fluctuations; instead, look at months-long trends. I'm talking to myself as much as to you, Dear Reader, because I just came off a diet that many experts recommend not doing: pretty much everyone I've seen on YouTube is unanimous that crash dieting with severe caloric restriction is unsustainable for a number of reasons. I did the Newcastle diet, though, because the theory behind it sounded reasonable: shock the body out of diabetes through radical weight loss in a short period of time. Anyway, whether Newcastle is for you is up to you to decide. My strategy, which I settled on months ago, was and is to crash-diet first, then go gentle for a year and see what happens. I thought I'd figured out a way to go gentle, but as I've quickly discovered over the past week or so, that way isn't working for me, so I'm now searching for something different as I continue to learn the strictures of my changing body.
If you're on your own fitness journey, good luck. Feel free to write in with how you're doing, and I'll keep you up-to-date with my progress here.
I don't envy you maintaining all those counts. That's something I could never do. I tracked my spending last month using a phone app and I thought it was a real pain in the ass. You're on a whole other level with the food/exercise monitoring.
ReplyDeleteGood luck to you in finding and settling into your comfort zone. You'll get there.
Good luck, man. I do not envy you, either. I try to be aware of what I eat, but with my intermittent fasting and daily exercise, I don't feel the need to do exact tallies of everything. Of course, I am in a different situation. My weight pretty much stays the same, so it's just a matter of making sure that most of that weight is muscle.
ReplyDeleteI could never do keto, though. All that fat would kill me.
Still, it's pretty inspiring to see your dedication and willpower. I know that as soon as you read that sentence your mind is going to jump to all those times you think you failed, but those are just bumps in the road to where you are going.