For the last week I’ve been tracking what I’ve been eating to a degree that I’ve never done before. I usually hate calorie counting but for some reason this week has been fun.
The outcome…
The graph above is normalised so that what I’m aiming for is that 100% line for all the other lines. Basically I’ve been tracking calorie, carbohydrate, protein and fat intake. I’m aiming for 2800 calories per day which is 15% less than maintenance calorie level for someone my size. Then I’m aiming to get 60% of my calories from carbohydrate, I’m aiming for 160g of protein intake a day and then the rest of the calorie, about 17% of my intake, should come from fat.
The increased protein is because I’m doing more weight-training and need the extra protein to help build and maintain muscle.
Over the last week I didn’t eat much differently than I normally would, I just kept track of it. The numbers are as close as I could get based on the information on the packets of food I used and what’s online for all the things that weren’t in a packet.
You can see from the graph above there is a general trend. Calories, carbohydrate and protein are all on the low side while fat is always on the high side. So it looks like I’m going to be changing a bunch of stuff. The fat has to come down and the protein and carb has to go up.
For the fat it means cutting out pretty much everything that is the least bit unhealthy. Cakes, biscuits, any form of treat is out the window. To give you an idea…a tuna and sweetcorn sandwich with a bit of mayo has about 50% of my daily fat allowance. That isn’t a lot.
For carbs it basically means eating more cereals etc and for the protein I ordered some whey protein from www.myprotein.co.uk. I didn’t particularly want to supplement my protein but there’s o other way I can figure out to get the extra 60g of prtein without stuffing my face with aduki beans, chicken or tuna.
Next week I’m going to have a week off tracking but I’ll track food intake again in a couple of weeks to see if I’ve made the necessary adjustment.
The good news is that I’ve lost weight since last week but the bad news is I’m not sure whether it’s fat or muscle. I think the measurements I’m taking this time round are subject to a lot more variation. You can check them out on my google spreadsheet page.
Wish me luck.
Sid.
