Five Things To Consider Before Changing Your Diet

Based on my recent experiment with fasting and my current experiment with the primal blueprint, I’ve come up with a few guidelines for myself.  These are things you should consider before changing the way you eat.  I think anyone considering a new diet or eating plan should answer these questions before they make a decision.

Understanding

Do you know what the heck this new eating plan means?  I’m serious here folks.  All too often I hear of people trying out new foods and new ways of eating without really understanding what they’re doing.  I’m not saying that you need to understand all the little details of nutrition.  I’m saying, do you even understand what this diet means?  Do you know what foods fit into the Mediterranean diet?  Do you understand what are good sources of fat?  Do you know what’s a good source of protein if you’re going vegetarian?  When you say vegetarian, do you mean you’ll eat eggs, dairy or fish?  If you’re going on a low carb diet, what meats are you going to eat and what plants are you going to exclude?  You can’t just say “I’m going to follow such and such diet” without understanding what that diet means.

Long Term

Can you sustain this change long term?  If the answer is no, then don’t bother.  Temporary changes lead to temporary results.  If you’re looking for permanent changes then you should find an eating plan that you can maintain for the rest of your life.  Also remember that making small changes is easier than big.  So if you have a brand new eating plan you want to adopt, you may want to make gradual changes, adopting new habits one at a time without trying for the big bang approach.

For example, I’m still struggling with caffeine but I’m making great progress with lowering my intake of processed sugars and carbs.  So while I may want to adhere to the Primal Blueprint 100%, I’m going to focus on lowering sugars first and then wrestle with my caffeine habit.  One things at a time…

Social Circle

Does this eating plan fit in with your social activity?  Interestingly enough, the main stumbling block to most of my eating plan experiments has been my social life.  Friends want to go out and they’d like to get something to eat.  Very frequently that means going to restaurants which do not serve foods which fall into my eating plan.  So my choices are either to not go out or to not eat while those around me do.  Neither choice is sustainable in the long term.

Fasting for me was almost impossible since many of my social activities revolve around eating.

Price

Can you wallet keep up with your new foods?  If you switched to all organics without finding a cheaper market than Whole Foods, you’re in trouble.  The average meal at Whole Foods will cost you three to four times the average meal at a generic supermarket.  So make sure you find a cheap source of food or make other adjustments to compensate.

This was a big problem for me with going organic until I discovered the farmer’s market and cooking at home.

Choices

Does your new cuisine offer enough choices that you won’t get bored?  If the only thing you’re ever going to eat for the rest of your life is eggs, that’s not a very good plan.  Trust me, eating the same thing over and over gets boring really fast.  Make sure that you have enough options before you start your new eating plan, not after.

I had some issues initially with the Primal Blueprint over this problem since I couldn’t figure out interesting things to eat that didn’t involve a lot of processed sugars and carbs.  Eventually, I resolved this, but it would have been easier had I planned better earlier.

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Hope these rules help you out in whatever new eating plan you embark on.

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Week 2 of No Soda or Candy

It’s been a week now since I stopped drinking any soda or eating candy and I got to say, I feel GOOD!  Some of that could be due to the fact that I’ve been getting more sleep lately.  However, I got very little sleep last night and I still felt good this morning.  Usually, even after a night with a decent amount of sleep, I would get to work and feel like taking a nap.  I would keep feeling this way until well into the afternoon or at least until I had my first diet coke.

I had the same experience while at school this weekend.  I used to be unable to make it through a class without at least one diet coke.  This weekend I was able to make it through all of my classes without feeling sleepy even once.  Well, actually, I did feel sleepy once but hey, you try paying attention to a three hour lecture about stock option pricing formulas and we’ll see how awake you are!

Regardless, I think I underestimated how much I had grown dependent on caffeine.  I picked it up again towards the end of last year as a way of treating myself when I felt down or depressed, but I always thought it was just a casual habit.  Turns out I had become a caffeine addict without even noticing it to the point where I was unable to stay awake through many parts of my life without a shot of caffeine.

Which is why I’m incredibly happy now to say that I’m done with caffeine.  I think this is one part of the 30 day promise that I will have no problem maintaining long term.  I feel better without it and I no longer need the artificial pick me up to feel better about my day.

Ahh Candy, My Old Friend!

The candy part, that’s a different story.  I love candy.  Actually, let me correct that, I love sugar, especially processed sugar in all its glory.  Sure, I can enjoy an apple or an orange but there’s something about candy, especially good chocolate, that drives me a little crazy.  It’s an incredible pleasure for me, as you can see in some of my previous posts.

In the past, I was able to control my consumption of chocolate to a reasonable amount.  However, I also recognize that there were time when I binged on sugar in a way that was extremely unhealthy.  So I was looking forward to trying out this 30 day experiment and seeing how I felt.  Unfortunately, temptation has proven a worthy foe.  While I have cut out nearly all processed sugar from my diet last week, I have fallen victim to the occasional brownie at lunch.  I know I shouldn’t eat them, I’ve told myself not to and yet, I still do.

At the same time, I’m not going to beat myself up over this occasional lapse.  I have decreased my processed sugar consumption by an amazing amount last week and I would rather focus on this accomplishment rather than my slightly less than perfect success rate.  The decrease in sugar is not having as big of an impact on my body as the removal of caffeine but I do find myself craving sugar less and less, so perhaps there is something going on here.

So Far So Good

Either way, I am exceedingly happy with how this 30 day experiment is going so far.  It’s had a very positive effect within a week of starting out and I feel like this is going to have a long term impact on my eating habits and health.

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Thank you to Fitbuff for including a recent 60 in 3 article in their latest Total Mind and Body Carnival.

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Another Day of Fasting

Yesterday was another day of partial fasting for me as part of my month long experiment with intermittent fasting. I had a decent breakfast, a small lunch and then nothing else except for a few oranges. Overall, my calorie intake yesterday was probably about 2000, which is low compared to my usual daily intake of about 3500.

Is It Difficult?

Not at all.  Actually, it’s far easier than I expected.  I think the oranges (last week it was apples) helped a lot because I feel like I’m eating without consuming a lot of calories.  When I first started this experiment I thought I would be terribly hungry all evening to the point of having problems sleeping.  However, I’m actually feeling great on these evenings, to the point where I’m thinking of adding another partial fast day to my week.  There’s something about not going to bed with a full stomach that’s making me feel good.

This is a great example of why fruits and vegetables are such an important part of a healthy eating plan.  It’s not just because they’re full of vitamins and minerals that you need.  It’s also because they make you feel full without a lot of calories.  I ate three oranges last night and felt as full as if I had eaten a complete dinner.  The difference in calories though was huge.

Binging?

One of the things I was afraid of was the possibility of over eating the next day as compensation for the lack of food the previous day.  So far though, I see none of that.  This morning I ate a decent sized breakfast and did not feel extra hungry.  I don’t feel weak, famished, light headed or any of the other feelings people describe when they’re really hungry.  I will say that I felt a bit like that on my full fast day last Sunday, but these partial fast days are going really well and don’t seem to have any negative impact the next day.

In fact, I think I am learning to control my eating a lot better through this experiment.  I used to have issues with overeating and binge eating, but this experience with fasting is teaching me that I can avoid eating if I want to and that’s doing good things for my self esteem.

Exercise

No negative side effects so far on my exercise performance.  I did pull a muscle in my leg on Wednesday but I don’t believe this had anything to do with fasting.  Even with that slight pain I was able to complete my full run yesterday and I plan on doing a complete weight routine + elliptical as soon as I’m done with this post.  Overall, I feel strong.  I’m a little worried about the quantity of protein I’m consuming since dinner used to be a primary source of protein for me.  I’m planning to pick up some eggs this weekend at the farmers market and add them to my breakfasts as a way of supplementing my protein intake.

Weight

I’m not losing a lot of weight but I am losing some.  It’s too early to tell if this is going to have any impact on my long term weight goal.  Plus it’s only a 30 day experiment, which means it will have ZERO permanent effect unless I choose to implement some parts of it as a life long routine.  I’ve lost 1lb so far though, which is encouraging to see, especially since I don’t feel food deprived.

Social Implications

This is a problem I did not anticipate.  Our social lives revolve around food.  We go out to dinner, we meet friends for lunch and we go have a couple of drinks after a movie.  Whatever it is, most social plans typically involve some eating.  That’s fine most days, but it does make partial or full fast days difficult.  I have to consciously stop myself from accepting dinner invites on these days.  On the other hand, I’m finding new ways to spend time with people that do not involve eating.

For example, my dad is in town this week, visiting from Israel.  Usually when he’s here we would go out to dinner.  Last night we sat at home and simply talked, an activity that I found to be very enjoyable.  Turns out he’s been trying to avoid big dinners too.

Overall

I’m liking this experiment and I think I’ll include some parts of it in my day to day life.  Specifically, I think I’m going to forego a lot of unnecessary dinners from now on.  Unless I have a really good reason to go out and eat a lot late in the day, I’m going to try and go with a small snack, a piece of fruit or nothing at all.  I’m really liking the way I feel after days in which I didn’t eat much later in the day and I want to keep that feeling going.

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And in the unexpected benefits column there’s also the fact that I need to wash way less dishes lately! 

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Reader Q&A: How To Calculate A Calorie Deficit

As a follow up to my recent post on designing a healthy eating plan a reader sent in a question:

In your post on Jan 9 about a good diet plan, you mention that in order to lose one pound you need to create a 3000 caloried deficit.  Do you have any idea when it stops being a deficit and becomes your rountine?   In other words, when do you need to create another 3000 calorie deficit to continue losing weight?

The first thing you need to do is to figure out how many calories you need right now to maintain your current weight.  For this you will need a calorie calculator.  The one I use can be found HERE. Just select the BMR & RMR calculator.

When I enter in my parameters:

• Weight - 215
• Height - 5′11″
• Age - 35
• Gender - Male

I get the following:

Factor	Category	Definition	BMR	RMR
1.2	Sedentary	Little or no exercise and desk	2,486	2,318
		job
1.375	Lightly Active	Light exercise or sports 1-3	2,849	2,657
		days a week
1.55	Moderately Active	Moderate exercise or sports	3,212	2,995
		3-5 days a week
1.725	Very Active	Hard exercise or sports 6-7	3,574	3,333
		days a week
1.9	Extremely Active	Hard daily exercise or sports	3,937	3,671
		and physical job

So if I want to maintain my current weight, I would need to 3574 calories a day (based on the fact that I fall into the very active category).  If I eat less than that, I have a calorie deficit and I will lose weight.  If I eat more than, I have a surplus and I’ll gain weight.

Now let’s say that I have a calorie deficit and I slowly lose weight.  I get to my target weight of 190lbs and I wonder, do I still have a calorie deficit?  Am I going to keep losing weight?  If I enter in the same parameters but change the weight to 190, I get the following results:

Factor	Category	Definition	BMR	RMR
1.2	Sedentary	Little or no exercise and desk	2,299	2,183
		job
1.375	Lightly Active	Light exercise or sports 1-3	2,635	2,501
		days a week
1.55	Moderately Active	Moderate exercise or sports	2,970	2,819
		3-5 days a week
1.725	Very Active	Hard exercise or sports 6-7	3,305	3,138
		days a week
1.9	Extremely Active	Hard daily exercise or sports	3,640	3,456
		and physical job

So at 190lbs I need 3305 to maintain my weight at my current activity level.  If I’m eating less than that, I’ll continue to lose weight.  By the way, you can reverse engineer your way to a good eating plan by putting in your target weight.  It will tell you how many calories per day you need in order to maintain that weight.  Now you simply adjust your diet to provide you with that number on average and you will eventually hit your target weight.

Remember, this isn’t an exact science.  Your metabolism might be slightly faster or slower plus you’re not going to hit this calorie goal exactly every day.  Just aim for the general vicinity and make adjustments as you go along and see what the results are.

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My apologies for the delayed post by the way, my computer was hit by a virus and had to be wiped clean.  Ooooh, I hate malware!

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A Quick Guide To A Good Diet Plan

After the 10 tips for better eating I posted last time, I thought I would follow up with an outline of a diet plan.  Why an outline instead of details?  Because I don’t believe in these “one size fits all” diet plans that seem to be popular.  The following is intended as a starting point for people trying to fix up their eating habits.  It is not intended as a step by step guide.  I don’t know you, I don’t know your situation and pretending that I do and that I know the perfect solution for you would be a lie.  So take this outline and fill in the gaps yourself according to what you think works best for you.

Next week I’ll do the same for exercise, the other vital part of a healthy lifestyle.

Step 1 - Research

Yes, you need to do your research.  I’m sorry, I know you want to jump right into the mix of things and start making the big changes but do you even know what you need to change?  Do you know what your worst eating habit is?  Spend a month keeping a food journal.  Write down everything you eat, what you felt when you ate it and why you were eating in the first place.  This is your map, it’s your database of information that you will mine for a lot of valuable facts.

Step 2 - Identify the Problems

You have a lot of good information from your eating journal, now we start to analyze it.

• How many meals a day are you eating?
• How many calories a day are you eating?
• Are you getting most of your calories from meals or from snacks?
• Are you eating breakfast?
• Are you eating because you’re stressed?
• Are you eating too much at buffets?
• Are you getting a lot of calories (more than 10% of your daily requirements) from drinks?
• What’s the difference between the amount of calories you’re eating now and the amount you should be eating at your target weight?

Step 3 - Identify Your Goal

What are you trying to accomplish?  Yes, I know, you want to lose weight.  That’s great as an overall goal, but you have detailed facts now so let’s make that goal more realistic.  Do you want to lose 10lbs in 3 months?  do you want to be 190lbs by July?  What’s your goal and is it realistic?  Remember, each lb you lose means 3000 less calories.  If you want to lose 2lbs a week, you better find a way to create a 6000 calorie deficit every week from now until you get to your goal weight.  That’s not easy folks so make sure you keep it in mind.

Step 4 - Plan of Action

Now that you know what specific goal you want to accomplish, how are you going to accomplish it? Your plan needs to be realistic and you need to make sure you can hit your goals with this plan.  Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for failure before you even start.

Let’s take a look at an example.  In step 1 I tracked all my calorie consumption.  In step 2 I identified the fact that I consume 500 calories a day through sodas.  In step 3 I said that I want to lose 10lbs in the next 3 months.  Now in step 4 I’m going to state that I’m going to achieve this goal by cutting out sodas and only drinking water.

Is the plan realistic?  Sure, soda is not a necessary part of life and, with enough will power, you can cut soda out and drink only water.  However, don’t underestimate the caffeine addiction.  It’s going to be a miserable few days when you first start doing this.  Perhaps the first part of your plan should be switching to diet sodas?  Maybe you should cut down gradually instead of going cold turkey.  I’m not sure of the answer, it depends on you, but make sure your plan is realistic.

Also, make sure this plan is something you can maintain for the rest of your life.  Remember, temporary changes produce temporary results.  If you revert back after 3 months, you’ll just gain the weight back.

Finally, does your plan make sense in light of your goal?  Well, let’s see.  You want to lose 10lbs over 3 months.  That’s a 30,000 calorie deficit over 13 weeks or 91 days.  My research from steps 1 and 2 tells me that I consume 500 calories a day from sodas.  So if I cut that 500 calories out for 91 days, I will have a calorie deficit of 45,500.  Sounds like your plan is realistic.  By the way, this assumes that you were not gaining weight before this plan but were instead at a steady weight level.  If you were gaining weight, you had a calorie surplus which we would need to account for.

What if you only consumed 200 calories per day in sodas?  Cutting that out for 90 days would mean a calorie deficit of 18,200 calories.  That’s well short of your 30,000 goal.  Guess what, your plan is unrealistic and is set up for failure before you even start.  This is why it’s important to do the research and set realistic goals.

Step 5 - Implement

This is the easy one.  Put your plan in action.  In this particular case, stop drinking sodas.

Step 6 - Assess and revise

It’s been 3 months, have you lost the weight?  By the way, body weight can fluctuate by 2 or 3 lbs per day.  That’s natural, so keep it in mind when you weight yourself.  If you met your goal, that’s great.  Just remember to maintain your new habit for the rest of your life.  If you want to, go back to step 1 and set up a new goal.

What about if you failed?  What if you didn’t lose the weight?  In that case, try to analyze what happened.  Did you compensate for the missing sodas by eating more chips?  Did you miscalculate your amount of calories required?  I can’t give you a detailed answer because the answer depends on your specific situation, but trust me when I say this, for most people losing weight is simple math.  Somewhere in your plan, you calculated something wrong.  Go back to step 1, keep a food journal and then start over.

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Note, this plan is for people like me who want to know and understand how and why things work.  We LOVE details.  We LOVE tracking numbers.  If that’s not you, no problem.  Just follow the tips for healthier eating that you see in this post.  They work even if you don’t know the exact math behind them.

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The 10 Healthiest Diets

CNN Health just ran an article called The 10 Healthiest Diets In America.  I’m not usually a big fan of CNN Health, they tend to focus a bit too much on celebrity weightloss for me, but I thought this article was really good.  Basically, they got a panel of experts together and rated various diets.  The results are in the article I linked to above.

Notice Anything?

Look at all of these diets and you’ll start seeing some trends:

• Exercise is a vital component - Many diets focus too much on eating and not enough on exercise.  Yes, a healthy diet matters more than exercise when it comes to weightloss, but exercise still helps.  Plus, if your goal is weightloss AND overall health, then exercise is a vital part which cannot be left out.
• Long term - None of these diets is a two week miracle cure.  You’re not going to start these and then see 20lbs lost in the first week.  These are all long term solutions where you gradually change your habits and lose weight.
• Not overly restrictive - Most of these diets aren’t overly restrictive in terms of what you can eat or how much of it.  You’re not forced to consume just cabbage or told to restrict your calorie intake to 500 a day.  These are realistic plan meant to be sustainable for a lifetime.
• Many of these plans have a motivational component - Motivation is key, always!  Without motivation you will never stick to something which you have to maintain the rest of your life.
• Education as well as instructions - Several of these diets try to educate you about food as well as tell you what to eat or not eat.  It’s not enough to just tell someone “eat this” or “don’t eat that”.  It’s also important to tell them why.

Personally, I think anyone can benefit from reading more about these plans.  Most of them are available in book form and I’ve reviewed a few of them on 60 in 3 already.  You may not implement any of these plans 100% but you’ll learn a lot just by reading up on them.

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Mistakes of the Carb Diet

I’m in New York this week as part of my graduate degree program. A big part of this program is getting to know my fellow students, which means I’m eating out more often than usual. It also means some very spirited conversations on a variety of topics, some of them health related. One of the more interesting conversations I’ve had recently is with a few of my fellow students about the advantages and disadvantages of the high carb diet.

What Are Carb Diets?

For those unfamiliar with them, carb diets (also called Atkins style diets after Robert Atkins, the nutritionist who popularized it) emphasize restricted carbohydrate intake along with a very high protein and fat intake.

First, A Disclaimer

I don’t claim that carb diets are either good or bad. I think you can get good results with them if you do them right, but I also think you can get good results without them. So I am neither a strong opponent of proponent of these diets. That said, I do think people make some mistakes when it comes to these diets, something that became quite clear in my conversation last night.

Mistake 1: Carb Diets Allow Me To Eat An Unlimited Calories

Guess what, whether you eat a lot or a little carbs, you are still constrained by basic biology. That biology says if you eat more calories than your body uses, you’re going to store some as fat. It’s that simple. So no, eating a low carb diet does NOT mean you can eat an unlimited number of calories. While there are some studies that show low carb dieters burn more calories, there are also studies that show this is untrue and there are ZERO studies that show low carb dieters burn an unlimited number of calories.

Mistake 2: All Fat Is Good Fat

How many times have you heard someone say “I love my low carb diet, I can eat all the steak and bacon I want to”? Well, if it makes you happy, those people are dead wrong.

Carb diets tell us that protein and fat are good. Carb dieters mistake this to mean, ALL protein and fat is good. That’s simply not true. If you eat an unlimited quantity of lard, I can pretty much guarantee that your health is going to decline. Not all protein is good and not all fat is good. Even if you eat a low carb diet, you still want to make sure that your protein and fat sources are healthy.

Mistake 3: All Plant Matter Is Bad

I love this one and I heard it again last night. “I don’t need salads, I’m on a low carb diet.” Well, guess what, vegetables are still good for you even on the low carb diet. In fact, if people actually take the time to read the Atkins nutritional approach, they’ll see that vegetables have a very important place in it.

So Are Low Carb Diets A Fad Diet?

Low carb diets aren’t bad, but they can be easily misinterpreted. I wouldn’t go as far as calling them a fad diet, but I do think the way some people abused the notion of a low carb diet does go into fad diet territory. The minute someone tells you that you can eat as many calories as you want, eliminate all plants from your diet and still be healthy, you should be suspicious.

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Anyone out there on a low carb diet? I’d be interested in hearing about your experience and results.

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