The Little Green Book
If you're like me, you know that you could / should lose some weight either to ride faster or just feel better, and you want some solid common sense guidance to help you get there that works within your busy lifestyle. Well, I am certainly not a nutritionist but I think I stayed in at least one Holiday Inn at some point in my life, and therefore I think I can help...
Let's get down to basics: I'm gonna assume you are 1] fairly intelligent and 2] eat fairly healthy - if you aren't, you should be (on both points). What's "fairly healthy eating"? You're not sucking down Mickie D's for breakfast, lunch and dinner - you know what foods are generally good for you, and while you may drop the occasional splurge on your system, you try to do your best regularly. Sound familiar?
Yet despite all of this and your cycling / whatever exercise program, you're just not seeing the results you want, and you're frustrated - why won't the damn weight come off and stay off?
I believe that for most of us it gets down to simple math: calories in vs. calories out. And if calories OUT is greater than calories IN, you will lose weight over time - and I think we can do some things so that this miracle of modern math works sensibly for you. So here's the formula we'll work with:
Calories In - Calories Required - Calories Expended = Caloric Deficit or Caloric Surplus
*** My disclaimer: I don't recommend undertaking any new exercise or diet program without getting solid medical / professional advice. While what I am going to tell you will probably come under the heading of "Duh - common sense", if you know or even suspect you have unique circumstances, don't do it unless you talk to your doc or trainer, etc. first, OK? That said...
Calories Required - Make no mistake, we need calories. These are the energy units we get from food that fuels our body to do everything from typing away furiously on a computer keyboard to winning the Tour de France. That's the good part - the "bad" part is that our body is smart - when it gets more calories than it requires it doesn't just waste them away (you wish) - it stores them, yep, in fat, for later use (or to fill out your cycling shorts).
So now the dilemma - just how many calories do you really need for your lifestyle? That's really important to know because recall we're doing math here, and we need to know what we can shove in our Pie Hole just to do our normal daily thing - breathing, walking to and from the couch, etc.
For this I'll actually refer to a more creditable resource than moi' - check out this page
http://health.discovery.com/tools/calculators/basal/basal.html to estimate your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). Enter your age, height, and weight info and you'll get a pretty good baseline of what it takes to keep you sucking air day in and day out - for me it's around 1950 calories a day, and you can always ballpark this number by the formula: weight X 10 = BMR.
Calories In - Now here comes "The Little Green Book". I was talking to LA's coach Chris Carmichael about diet one day, and he recommended keeping a journal of everything that I ate. Seeing as I had several pocket sized (and green) notebooks laying around the house, I used them - your color may vary.
But the big thing that was important in the first few days was this: don't change a thing in the way you eat or drink! Starting on Thu morning and through Sunday night (or Sat morning through Tue night), write it all down and live your life just as you would normally. It's kinda important to use these days initially so you'll be able to get a sense of your normal weekday routine - as well as that weekend stuff that kicks your (our) butt, too.
So how do you know what you ate, calorie-wise? With most packaging today, it's as simple as reading the label to figure out what went in, making sure that you understand the
portion size it lists (ex: if you slam two twinkies and it says "portions per pack: 2, calories per portion 500, you just got 1,000 down the throat - got it?) But then there are some times when we're not sure what our calories in was 'cause the apple / pork chop / beer didn't have a label on it - no worries, we're here to help! Download this 203K MS Excel spreadsheet (
http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/35299/calorie-xls.html) and you'll find over 1500 items with their basic caloric values. You can also surf over to something like Amazon.com and get a handy book with even more stuff - one example is "The All in One Calorie Counter", it's got over 10,000 items listed and costs around $5... either way, you'll need a good reference to know what's what.
Now for the moment of truth - compiling the calories item by item, and doing it honestly. You're not hurting me to write down you had three beers Friday night when it was closer to five - and that bowl of ice cream, one serving, or more like three?
First go back and tally up those 4 "free" days and get a feel for your usual Calories In. I'll bet you can immediately see some areas of questionable value, right? Compare this to your BMR caloric level you calculated and take stock of how close you are to it. But in all fairness, we're still missing one part of the equation before we can make an overall assessment.
Calories Out - The other daily entry you need to make in your LGB is any exercise you did. Figuring out calories burned per hour is a bit of a guesstimate - there's a decent calculator HERE, but for the most part I use around 700 per hour for moderate exercise (like light jogging) and 1,000 per hour for more vigorous sessions, like our Tuesday Nighter barn burner local cycling race. If I have to err, I'd rather be conservative than thinking I am doing more than I really am.
Now what? - it's time for math - simple math. Let's use some actual data from my LGB on Thu:
- Breakfast - 530, Lunch - 570 (sub 1100), Dinner - 910 (tot 2010) calories in
(Note the running subtotal so I know where I am throughout the day)
- Cb's BMR: 1950 calories
- Exercise - 60 minutes of moderate cardio (estimate 700 calories expended)
Formula: 2010 (In) - 1950 (BMR) - 700 (Exercise) = 640 calorie deficit
Did I lose weight that day? Technically yes - but was I ready to go out and buy new jeans? No. In reality, some real nutrition folks might tell you I didn't take in enough calories that day, and while they are probably right, I didn't feel hungry and I was able to perform at the level I wanted.
The all important question and even more important answer:
How much does it take to lose 1 pound of fat?
A calorie deficit of 3500.
So doing more (simple) math, if you get an average deficit of 250 calories per day, it will take 14 days to drop one pound (14 X 250=3500). Note I do not recommend severe calorie deficit diets - it's not healthy and you're not going to be able to live this way realistically, right?
But now you have the three weapons at hand to make some sound decisions in your life: you know what your body needs, you know what you took in, and you know what you put out. You can now plan out a sensible program to either maintain the weight you're at, or drop those pounds that are holding you back.
* Just in the way we live our lives, we know we're gonna have highs and lows - the important part is that you are now hopefully more aware of what's going on over the long term, and if you make the effort to eat right and limit your calories to what you need (or in order to lose weight, a little less than what you need!), you'll be further down the the road to that body condition you've always wanted.
) as it's got a lot of fatty junk in it. While others may find it gross, I find it tasty just eating tuna right out of a can (sealed in light water instead of oil). Plus, you can get'em pretty cheap. If you can't stomach it normally, try making a tuna salad sandwich w/ 1 part lite mayo & 2 parts soy sauce on whole wheat. While I normally discourage the mayo, I think using it helps a lot of people gradually wean themselves on the taste of tuna. Another alternative is roasted turkey with broccoli, bell pepper, mushroom-minced rice. You get a tasty blend of protein and simple carbs. And if you want to add a bit of extra flavor, sparingly baste the turkey with a mixture of 1 part soy sauce, 1 part vinegar, and lightly sprinkled w/ garlic powder before roasting. You end up with a tangy sweet & sour flavor. For quick, on-the-go foods, the suggestion of natural peanut butter & whole wheat is good. Another one you can try is sliced deli roasted turkey w/ sharp cheddar made from whole wheat, red onions, & fresh spinach. Mayo can be added but in sparse amounts.
in superglue. I'll try to spit it out and it will like hang on my lip and then go on my arm or some shit. Wierd.
