Hi, I'm new and have diet questions

amyrobynne

Hi, I'm Amy.

I'd never done any weight lifting in my life before I joined the Y on December 1st. My neighbor asked me to join a 7 week weight loss challenge with her and it gave me the incentive I needed to stop sitting on my butt. Both the challenge trainer and the trainer at the Y really promoted strength training as the means to lose weight faster and have better fitness as the pounds came off. Competition and deadlines are what I need for motivation so I went to the Y at least 5 times a week over the past 6 weeks, have had at least 75 g protein daily, and have attended BodyPump (group weight lifting with lots of reps) 2-3x/week. It took me a couple weeks to stop feeling clueless about the weights. After the first session I dropped weight even further than the little I started with until I could get the form right and do all the reps without skipping some. In the last couple weeks I've been able to add weight. I've also lost 12 lbs. At the weight loss challenge, we weigh ourselves on scales that tell our body fat percentage, lean muscle mass, visceral fat, and other stuff. My muscle mass has pretty much stayed steady so it seems like my 12 lbs lost has just been fat. I'm also losing inches.

Anyway, it looks like I'm going to win the challenge next week (whoo-hoo!) and if things continue, I'll soon be at my pre-pregnancy weight. I started Dec 12 at 155, I'm at 143 now, with an initial goal of my 138 pre-preg weight. Any weight loss beyond that would just be bonus to me -- I'd love to see my body fat percentage drop into the low 20's instead of the high 20's where it is now. I've been thinking a lot about what to do after I hit that pre-preg weight and the logical thing seems to be switching gears to muscle building or a combination of fat loss/muscle building. I'm not particularly interested in making my life around gaining muscle. I just want to be able to do real pushups and feel like less of a weakling while making my poochy belly shrink.

I've been having a protein shake instead of lunch or breakfast and generally trying to up my protein and scale back my carbs. I've requested NROL4W from the library, but it's going to be a couple weeks before I make my way to the top of the request list. In the meantime, I've been reading a lot of the discussions here and tried to figure out what NROL4W asks diet-wise. Am I going to have to stop eating bread? Is the diet pretty much gluten-free? I've cut out my beloved ice cream for the 7 weeks of the challenge (and I exercised a ton over Christmas week so I could eat Christmas cookies). But I can't see myself limiting bread and noodles to only once or twice a week indefinitely. I make most of our food from scratch and use whole grains and don't eat much processed crap and no fast food. Is that going to be good enough?

ruststar

It's not a specific kind of diet, I mean not low-carb, gluten-free, or anything like that. The focus is on getting far more protein than most of us are used to - the author recommends 30% of our calories come from protein. The main purpose of the food guidelines is to explain why you may need to eat more than you probably are right now. I haven't lost any weight on this plan and there are a couple of things I wish I had done differently at the outset. I wish I had trusted the calorie guidelines so I could see where the "maintenance" rate got me. The numbers you'll get from the book's recommendations are meant to be maintenance level, not a deficit, but for me I was eating more than that and losing before I started, so I stuck with that. I've definitely gained muscle, but I set out to lose weight (fat). Since it sounds like you're close to your goal weight, sticking with maintenance calories is probably appropriate for the body recompositioning you were looking to achieve.

amyrobynne

Thanks, that's really helpful. I looked back over the last two weeks and my protein percent has been between 15-30%, usually between 20-25%. So, it's higher than MFP's general recommendation but not as high as NROL4W suggests. I wasn't sure what people meant exactly when they referred to "eating clean" but so long as that doesn't mean gluten-free, I think I could find a way to make it work.

I could see myself going a bit under the suggested maintenance calories so I keep losing fat for awhile but I understand that it would be more calories than I consume now (usually 1500-2000 depending on exercise). The fact that I can't get my hands on the book right away seems like it might give me just enough time to be pretty close to my maintenance weight, so that would work out.

Thanks again for the clarification!

kelseyhere

When people talk about "eating clean" I understand that to mean mostly fruit, veggies, lean meats and minimally processed grains. So 100% whole grain bread is more "clean" than white bread, and steel cut oats are more "clean" than instant oatmeal. Basically, how "clean" a food can vary by type, but I think it's pretty much common sense. Lots of ingredients on label is usually an indication that something is not very clean.

idauria

MFP sets protein goals very very low. I try to eat 100 grams or more a day. I also do low carb but that's because I just do better eliminating starches and grains.