Help me improve my diet

distortedvision78

Today is a good day in dietary terms. No snack bars and intake is 2242cals.

Strudders67

I understand keeping things simple. My breakfast is usually one of two things. I have salad for lunch pretty much every day (the protein added to it varies and so do some of the components, but essentially it's salad). I then have a selection of go-to meals and eat them in rotation so that I don't get bored. I also have a selection of snacks available - some (either lentil curls or popcorn) I have every day, others I have if I need to bump up my calories or my protein.

You can eat all the snacks you like if it's within your calorie goal. You may not feel particularly satiated, but you can do it. Many people find that if they deprive themselves of foods that they like, they'll fail in their weight loss quest quite rapidly.

I'm going to repeat a point I made previously: Did you enter your details in to the MFP Guided Set up? I don't think it'll allow you to select 2kg a week but at 1kg (which is 2.2lb) a week, how many calories did it give you? I assume you are aware that that's how many calories you should eat before deliberate exercise, so you should also be fueling your workouts on top of that. You'd log your exercise separately (either via a synched fitness tracker or by manually entering to the Exercise tab) and eat those calories too.

It's not clear how many calories you SHOULD be eating. Nor does it look like you're tracking / eating your exercise calories. If you're eating 2200 calories but burning 1000 with your aggressive exercise, you're eating a net of 1200 calories a day - which is considerably less than the minimum calories recommended for a short, sedentary male. That's actually the minimum for a sedentary, 5' tall female. You're not either. Doing that for a period of time runs the risk of major health issues, including heart failure. That may not do your professional career much good.

Take a step back, go through the Guided Set-up, see how many calories you should be eating to lose 2lb a week (which at your current rate is not unreasonable) and then play around with different food stuffs to see what you come up with. You can enter different things into your diary in advance to see how they impact your day.

It's far far better to do this slowly and sustainably than to try to be too aggressive and either fail and find yourself back where you started (or heavier) or fail by making yourself very ill. If you go the the 'General' tab and read the posts at the top of the forum, there's loads of good advice and information that may be useful.

distortedvision78

I actually felt much more satitated today and I had less calorific intake. The change in my diet has worked.
Yes people always comment about me not eating my calories back but I've always disliked this method. I like routine and I like to eat the same calorific intake a day. If I was eating back the exercise calories reported by my Polar V800 HR monitor - I think I would be eating far too much.

I did the Guided Setup:

'Lightly active' - 2,380 Calories / Day
'Active' - 2880 Calories / Day

I think realistically I am Lightly Active. I work in finance and spend most of my day sat down at a desk.

I am tracking my exercise calories with Polar:

https://flow.polar.com/training/analysis/5080880656





I'm building back up to the 2.5 hours exercise programme I described above. When I did this previously I aimed to lose 4kg per month. It was an achievable target and most months I achieved that weight loss. I think 2kg a week was not realistic. I feel fine and will continue with my current strategy unless I experience health problems.

Strudders67

I'd agree with the Lightly Active or even Sedentary setting for a desk job (that's what mine is set to, for the same reason) - but MFP is designed for you to add your exercise on top of that and eat those calories. Assuming you selected to lose at a rate of 1kg a week, those 2,380 cals have the required deficit built in for you to lose at that rate. If you're exercising and not eating any exercise calories back, you're undereating.

Do a search for 'Polar' in these forums. Others who know about such things have posted, previously, about the accuracy of various fitness trackers so it may be prudent to eat 50% or 75% instead of 100%. Regardless, you're not burning zero, therefore you need to be eating more than zero additional calories. However, for consistency, if you do the same exercise on a regular basis, calculate what your weekly calorie burn is and just divide that by 7. Manually adjust your calorie requirement in MFP to add that figure on. Eat that many calories a day.

Do this for 6 weeks - and then compare your weight now to your weight then, and see if you're losing at the required rate. You can then adjust your calories up / down accordingly. Weight loss isn't linear and, if you've just resumed exercise, you'll also have water retention masking fat loss initially. However, with every 10lbs lost, you should also go back to the Guided Set-up and re-Save the settings - as you get lighter, your calorie need will reduce. Similarly, the amount you'll burn with your exercise will also reduce as you get lighter, so you'll need to keep recalculating.

With cardio, I always entered my stats in to the machine at the start of the exercise and then noted the number of cals burned at the end. Back at home, I played with the number of 'minutes' of exercise I needed to enter to MFP to get that number of cals. It may not be 100% accurate, but at least the machine knows the intensity that I set and the speed I went at. It's fine on most cross-trainers and running machines, but not so good if you're rowing. Strength / resistance training doesn't actually burn that many calories, but the exercise is good for muscles. You could try looking at both sources to see if you can get a more realistic idea of calories burned. Either way, you're not burning zero calories and really need to eat some back to ensure you don't make yourself miserable / crash and burn as that's guaranteed to have you giving up. Fuel your workout and you should find it far easier to lose weight. Good Luck.

distortedvision78

Thanks Strudders67. Excellent advice.

AnnPT77

Strudders67 wrote: »

I'd agree with the Lightly Active or even Sedentary setting for a desk job (that's what mine is set to, for the same reason) - but MFP is designed for you to add your exercise on top of that and eat those calories. Assuming you selected to lose at a rate of 1kg a week, those 2,380 cals have the required deficit built in for you to lose at that rate. If you're exercising and not eating any exercise calories back, you're undereating.

Do a search for 'Polar' in these forums. Others who know about such things have posted, previously, about the accuracy of various fitness trackers so it may be prudent to eat 50% or 75% instead of 100%. Regardless, you're not burning zero, therefore you need to be eating more than zero additional calories. However, for consistency, if you do the same exercise on a regular basis, calculate what your weekly calorie burn is and just divide that by 7. Manually adjust your calorie requirement in MFP to add that figure on. Eat that many calories a day.

Do this for 6 weeks - and then compare your weight now to your weight then, and see if you're losing at the required rate. You can then adjust your calories up / down accordingly. Weight loss isn't linear and, if you've just resumed exercise, you'll also have water retention masking fat loss initially. However, with every 10lbs lost, you should also go back to the Guided Set-up and re-Save the settings - as you get lighter, your calorie need will reduce. Similarly, the amount you'll burn with your exercise will also reduce as you get lighter, so you'll need to keep recalculating.

With cardio, I always entered my stats in to the machine at the start of the exercise and then noted the number of cals burned at the end. Back at home, I played with the number of 'minutes' of exercise I needed to enter to MFP to get that number of cals. It may not be 100% accurate, but at least the machine knows the intensity that I set and the speed I went at. It's fine on most cross-trainers and running machines, but not so good if you're rowing. Strength / resistance training doesn't actually burn that many calories, but the exercise is good for muscles. You could try looking at both sources to see if you can get a more realistic idea of calories burned. Either way, you're not burning zero calories and really need to eat some back to ensure you don't make yourself miserable / crash and burn as that's guaranteed to have you giving up. Fuel your workout and you should find it far easier to lose weight. Good Luck.

I won't speak for other brands, but Concept 2 rowing machines are actually one of the more accurate calorie estimators, assuming technique is good (that's a big assumption). Its power metering is well respected. What one needs to know is that the number from the machine needs to be weight adjusted, via an online calculator here: https://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/training/calculators/calorie-calculator

The machine assumes a 175-pound rower. The further you are from that, the more important it is to weight adjust.

At the gym, after your workout, find the calories *per hour* in the memory. Note that, and the total number of workout minutes/seconds from the memory display. Then use those, plus your bodyweight, in the calculator linked above.

A word about rowing technique and calorie accuracy: I can't prove it with outside evidence, but as a long term rower (even coaching certified at one point), my very firm belief is that someone with sub-par technique will get a calorie estimate from the machine that is too *low*, i.e., an *underestimate*. Why? Because the machine measures the energy that goes into the flywheel. People with poor technique waste energy, i.e., they do movements (sometimes frantic, very energetic ones) that don't result in accelerating or sustaining speed of the flywheel. The machine won't include that wasted energy in the calorie estimate. (As further explanation: I've looked at the post-workout monitor stats for people with poor technique. From watching, I can see that they're wearing themselves out, moving vigorously, but the pace as measured by the machine is low. That directly translates into lower watts measured by the machine, and a lower calorie estimate.)

A power-metered bike (measures watts) should also be fairly accurate at estimating calories. If you can get an average watts reading, you can check against standard formulas, rather than simply believing the machine's conversion algorithm. The technique-related efficiency differences on a bike are fairly minor, in contrast to the rower.