The Diet

Back in August of last year ('08) I started a new job. One of the "perks" of the new job was that they had fitness facilities on-site and encouraged employees to make use of them. Membership costs were insanely affordable, making it a no brainer to take advantage of it. In fact, if you care about yourself in the least little bit your stupid not to take advantage of this.

One of the features of the fitness facilities is free access to the on-site BodPod system. This system gives you amazing insight into your body composition, including estimated metabolic rate information. This information was the basis from which I created my diet.

Now, I love the television show The Biggest Loser. And one thing I've learned from watching that show is that skipping meals and eating ridiculously low levels of calories is extremely counter productive. You have to eat at least what your body burns at complete rest or it will slow down your metabolic rate, reducing your energy levels. I've also learned that in addition to burning fat, your losing lean muscle. This results in additional metabolic losses, making future weight loss even harder to accomplish. So given the estimated metabolic rate from the BodPod I was able to determine I needed to eat a minimum of 1554 calories per day.

The next step was determining what the maximum number of calories I could consume to maintain my weight. Again this is dependent on estimated metabolic rate. To calculate this you take your metabolic rate and multiply it by an activity quotient. To find the appropriate quotient google 'Mifflin equation'. For me it turns out my net maximum calories per day was right around ~2300. I say net because you can actually eat more than this number and so long as you burn the excess off with exercise.

There are 3500 calories in 1 pound of fat, so to loose 1 pound a week (I'm in this for the long term) you need to reduce your caloric intake by 500 calories at day. For me this means I'm allowed a maximum net calories of ~1800 a day. Again keep in mind this is net calories. Some days I go over, other days I'm under. The thing to remember here is its just a guide.

Now I'm a firm believer in weight loss being a simple matter of calories consumed must be less than that expended, regardless of the source of the calories. In other words, I don't give a rip about the number of carbs or the grams of fat I consume so long as my daily caloric intake is less than what I burn. I do not deprive myself of simple comfort food either. That being said, if I eat a double quarter pounder with cheese with a ton of french fries from McD's for lunch, I'm not eating much the rest of the day.

I'll be writing about my workout regimen in a later post, but for this next part you need to know that it involves some fairly vigorous weight lifting 4 days a week. Because of this I do monitor and supplement the amount of protein in my diet. Most days I'm drinking 2 to 3 protein shakes a day in addition to the protein I get in my diet. I try to consume about 160 grams of protein on my really heavy lifting days (M, W, F) and around 110 the rest of the days.

The only other thing dietary item I strictly control is caffeine. I'm a strong believer that caffeine will be my generations nicotine. Don't ask me why, I just am. That being said I'm just as addicted as the rest of the country, but I do limit my intake. In the morning I have no more than 20 ounces of black coffee. After that the only caffeine I get is through what is naturally occurring in what I eat. In other words, if I have a soda its decaffeinated. I've even given up my beloved green tea. For the most part, I just drink a lot of water now.

To keep track of all of this, I use an excellent little program on my iPhone called LoseIt which has replaced my pen and paper approach. I'll be writing about this application in the future as well.

I'm thinking of adding a couple of other elements to my diet but for now this is what I do.

If you've read to this point, I'm guessing your wondering if its working. So is it? You bet. To date I've lost 28.6 pounds and have roughly 5 more to go to reach my goal weight. I've gone from needing to (but not actually) wearing a size 40 jean to a size 36 and I probably could fit in a 34 if I wanted to. Keep in mind though, I've accomplished this with diet AND exercise. I'll be writing about my exercise routine soon.