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Decided to perfect my diet

gtbmed

Greg
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I usually go back and forth between tracking and not tracking my diet. I don't often write things down.

Now lately I've decided that I really want to lean out and improve my overall athletic performance. I've decided that I'm going to start tracking my diet a lot more closely.

It's not that I eat poorly when I don't track and it's not that I'm getting fat. I'm still lean and have been for a few years now. I just never really cared that much about the specifics of my own diet. Now I've decided that a great, controlled diet can make a ton of difference in terms of leanness, energy, and athletic performance.

What motivated or motivates you all to track?
 
I don't trust myself to eye food amounts and the such, thus tracking is pretty much my only option. I want to lose a bit of weight now, and that's all the more reason to track more thoroughly.
 
I continue to track what I eat bc its a habbit I got into and find its part of my daily life now. Is used to weigh everything even lettuce. I find that if I don't track then I become slightly obsessive about whether I did or didn't reach my macros. Eating dissorder possibly?
 
Tracking diet is surprisingly easy once you get used to it. However, for it to be easy you have to be:

(1.) Dedicated to reaching your physical goals. Therefore, you must view food as utilitarian. There's room for pleasure eating, yes, but generally the food should be seen as part of a strict formula.

(2.) Willing to eat the same food every day, or at least the equivalent calories and nutrients.

(3.) Willing to buy certain plain foods in bulk, cook in bulk, weigh and portion.

I probably just made this sound like torture, but once you've done it a few weeks it becomes so easy, and very worth it.

The nice part is you only have to track your diet once. Calculate your calories and macros for your different days of the week. For instance, I use different macros/calories on training days than I do rest days. Some people eat the same all week, but I find varying the calories by activity helps keep the fat gain minimal when bulking, or muscle loss minimal when cutting.

Once you have your base diet calculated, assess which meals can be substituted for variety -- if you like. I eat the same thing most days, but if I change anything for variety it will only be my last meal. If I feel like eating something different I have alternate meals which provide me the same calories and nutrients. Otherwise, my meals are the same day in and day out. This consistency makes it very easy to assess the effectiveness of your diet and make changes when necessary, and see how those changes play out. Consistency is everything. It also gives you more leeway for cheat meals.

If you eat the same thing every day this also makes it easier to prepare your food. I cook meat and potatoes in bulk. Potatoes I don't freeze, but I can at least prepare several days' worth in advance. Meat I'll cook up to 10 lbs at once, weigh on my digital scale, and portion in the freezer for convenience. If for some reason I'm out of a particular meat on a given day, I have emergency canned fish or the occassional packaged meat for the same amount of calories, fat, protein, etc.

Over time, you slowly refine your diet to fit your needs. I've been refining mine for months now, and it gets better and better. By eating the same meals every day I can also assess my costs, and find ways to save money by maybe dropping a certain portion in half, and getting the lost nutrients from other, cheaper sources. For instance, I recently decided to cut from 60g avocado daily to 30g, which will save me $15/month. I only lost about 60 calories, 6g fat, which doesn't harm my diet as my fat was a little over what I needed. Even if I wanted to replace that, I could simply consume an extra half-tablespoon of olive oil a day, which by weight/volume is cheaper than avocado. I was also calculating my protein on the high end of the 1-1.5g formula, which I realized on a bulk isn't as important as when cutting. So, I decided until I cut in November-ish I'll drop to mid-way in that calculation. One thing I dropped was my third meat portion of each day from 8 oz chicken to 6 oz. Not a significant change, but it adds up considerably in the long run, as chicken is anywhere from $8/kg - $20/kg.

How easy diet is depends on how far you're willing to go. You can eat "healthy" and get good results. Or, you can neglect personal taste and just go with what your body needs. This doesn't mean everything you'll eat is tasteless, dry, and boring, but it won't be the most stimulating diet. Even awesome foods like eggs I'm now pretty tired of. I eat four a day, but it works. Same with potatoes. I eat 600g potatoes on training days, plus a large bagel, plus 1 cup oats, plus an extra starch source of 300 calories, 60g carbs. It gets tedious, but my performance has shot through the roof.
 
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I usually use fitday when I want to keep track of my diet.
 
I use myfitnesspal.com. They have an app for the Android phones so it's easy to log food in as I eat throughout the day :ohyeah:
 
Have you entered into fitday?

Yeah, I've been on fitday for a while, but I use it intermittently. Now, though, I'm going to try to make the effort to use it every day.
 
I continue to track what I eat bc its a habbit I got into and find its part of my daily life now. Is used to weigh everything even lettuce. I find that if I don't track then I become slightly obsessive about whether I did or didn't reach my macros. Eating dissorder possibly?

I don't track anymore..... because of this.

Food became obsessive and I was going mental over it.

I know what to eat, I know when I am hungry.
 
I don't track anymore..... because of this.

Food became obsessive and I was going mental over it.

I know what to eat, I know when I am hungry.


My wife would 100% agree with you. I have on occasions gone a tiny bit schizo on her for not weighing my food, thats why I normally cook dinner. If let her cook to often I would be back up around 250pounds!
 
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Yeah, I've been on fitday for a while, but I use it intermittently. Now, though, I'm going to try to make the effort to use it every day.

I don't track anymore..... because of this.

Food became obsessive and I was going mental over it.

I know what to eat, I know when I am hungry.

But, you don't have to track all the time. Set up a base diet once and go by that. If you stick to it exactly then all the power to you -- you're getting exactly what to need. If you move a few things around, substitute certain sources for variety but aim for the same calories/nutrients then it's basically all the same.

It's not like I keep a food diary. I have my base diet, and I usually follow it exactly, but if I miss something or change something I just find ways to substitute/replace the nutrients.

gtbmed -- are you still using the egg-heavy diet you posted a while back?
 
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