How do you do it?

Nutmeg76

So, obviously you at least track your food on occasion. Are you a macro matcher? A calorie tracker? A carb counter? Something else?

I log because it keeps me from eating junk. If I know I have to log something that I don't want to see on my log I am less likely to eat it. I always log after the fact, not before. I know some people log for the entire day in the morning to keep themselves accounable. I just like to see the numbers.

coltrane23

For the past 3 months or so, I've been trying to track macros while keeping an eye on calories. On lift days, I've tried to go over by 300 calories or so, and on rest days I've tried to be at or under the calories for the day. Mostly, I log only during the week because I can't/don't make time to log foods on the weekend.

That WAS my approach. It resulted in weight gain, not all of it muscle. My new approach will be to let my body be my guide. I do try to log everything early in the day so that I can plan accordingly; for instance, I know I'm eating a big dinner tonight and having a PWO shake, so I may ease up at lunch. But I'm no longer attempting to stick to macros or calories. I want to be in the ballpark, but I'm not trying to program out every last nibble. There will be days that I'll undereat protein or carbs, and that's OK because on Fridays I know I'm going way over. I'm not going to be calorie cycling anymore, although I will probably do carb cycling intuitively.

Things I learned from my previous approach:
1) I can't carb load with sweet things, except MAYBE some dates at the end of the night.
2) I may be a poor estimator of how much food I have on my plate, depending on the meal.
3) Rice is awesome, but in the short term I'm going to have to cut back on my portions.
4) Alcohol has carbs, but they aren't the good kind that you want for recovery. And they're a double whammy if you're eating something sweet, since the body will immediately store that sugar as fat in order to process the alcohol first.
5) Creating a weekly caloric deficit makes more sense for me than a daily deficit, given my Friday night beer and pizza. It's worked for me before, it's what I'll be doing again.

Nutmeg76

The only macro I am trying to "fit" is making sure I get over 100 grams of protein, with the goal being 120. Other than that I am just letting things fall where they may.

coltrane23

I think today is going to be a fairly representative day for me for a while. High protein (1g/lb BW), low-ish fat (.5g/lb) and low(er) carbs (~.6g). Carbs generally timed to be post-workout (HIIT at lunch today). Calories are well under for the day, not by design but by circumstance. I don't anticipate being hungry this evening given what I've eaten today, but if I end up getting hungry I'll snack on some clean carbs this evening.

Planned carb refeed on Friday night. I'm not lifting this week because it's my deload week and I'm focusing on experimenting with some HIIT ideas. When I hit the weights again, I may end up hungrier in the evenings and load carbs more.

Nutmeg76

I am focusing on HIIT and getting back to running. I don't prefer to run, but I have no choice. So I am running 15-17 minutes every other day so I can get to a good solid mile and a half. My goal is 14 minutes by January at full body weight.

coltrane23

Improving to just over a 6mph pace in a couple months definitely seems achievable. One method I read about to improve your time for a distance: run faster for shorter intervals. So if you want to improve your time on 1.5 miles, for instance, run some 200m-400m sprints, or work on running 1K as fast as you can. You sort of train your body to run faster than it thinks it can.

It definitely helped me. I haven't run in a while, so I'm sure my pace has fallen off, but I was able to improve my distance speed to the point that I could run 2.3 miles in about 19 minutes this summer.

Nutmeg76

We have this cool thing called an alter-g at the clinic where I work, so I am using that. It is a treadmill with an "air cushion" and it allows you to run without your full body weight impact. What I have been doing is running for 15 minutes and then at the end "sprinting" for one minute. The first day I ran 7 minutes without pain, that was on Oct 31. Now I am doing a full 15-16 minutes, with the last minute at 8.5 mph. I went from 60% of my body weight to 70% for part of it and 65% for the rest.. Today I am going for 70% the entire time. I started the first day at 6 mph and last time did 7.0 mph for most of hte run. I am really encouraged by this device since it has been years since I ran at all.

Hopefully, wight loss will come and by January I will be only a portion of my current body weight...then the run will be even easier.