In which I’ve been tracking what I eat.
According to the BMR Calculator, to maintain my weight I should be eating 1,920 calories per day. To lose a pound a week, it should be 1,420.
Out of curiosity, without doing any kind of dieting except avoiding white bread, I tracked what I ate this week. (The “Goal” column show the tracking site’s defaults; I’m ignoring them because the fat and carb recommendations can go fuck themselves. I can’t even imagine how you’d meet the fiber recommendation; I eat basically nothing but beans and veggies and it’s still not “enough” fiber.)
On my sedentary days, I tend to eat less, apparently. On the super-fucking-busy days at work, where I end up walking multiple miles, and rather rapidly at that, I eat about two thousand calories. Monday I closed, and didn’t bother with dinner. Wednesday, I worked 8 – 2 and didn’t have any lunch. But I probably would have eaten about two thousand calories on those days, too, if I’d had my druthers. (Sometimes, after busting ass at the store all day, it’s so much easier to sit on the couch than it is to cook something.)
I’m about as fat as I can stand to be, so I’ll probably start restricting carbs pretty heavily for awhile. I was just curious about what I actually eat “in the wild,” so to speak, since we usually only ever track our eating when we’re on a diet of some kind.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
The Jawbone UP band’s older versions are going for super-cheap at Best Buy (like in the $50 range). Or if you have a recent model iDevice and/or Android, they have step counters built in. That way, you can see how many calories you’re purportedly expending on those heavy working/caloric days, and you’d be able to see just how sedentary the “down” days are as well.
Which, of course, will lead to the conclusion that the amount that you’re eating – the amount you’re “burning” just living your life still comes up way less than your target of ~1400 calories to lose a pound of week. And your confusion would be both appropriate and profound. And then you’ll accept that the caloric model is just bullshit: malnutrition is not a diet.
Oh, I’ve read my Taubes, I know the calorie model is bullshit. (If it were true, weight would fluctuate wildly and constantly.) This is just my little confirmation.
According to the caloric model, I should be losing weight because I don’t eat ‘enough’ calories to maintain my weight as I’ve literally never been more active in my entire adult life; yet I have, in fact, steadily been gaining weight since I started my very active job, which would be impossible at 1,500 calories per day if the model were true.
*NODS SAGELY*
The extent to which you are stressing your body with your occasional bouts of running like mad for several hours has probably triggered a cortisol spike, taking all those loverly little carbs & sugars and packing them away because HOLY SHIT WE’RE RUNNING AGAIN FOR HOURS AT A TIME I BETTER HANG ON TO EVERYTHING I CAN GET…
It’s so confusing how little we really, truly know about these processes. Yup, I get that the “ancestral health” model is largely bullshit, but it speaks to a deeper concern about the quality of the calories we’re getting today. And now you know why I’ve turned to hunting…
It’s funny… my body responds to caloric intake as if the CICO cabal were actually on to something.
Yeah, hauling ass for 35 hours a week while eating baguette and candy. #lolimfat
I found this book to be a pretty interesting take down of the theory that to lose weight you simply need to reduce your caloric intake. TL;DR: reduce your total carb intake to about 50g/day, and don’t worry about anything else.
http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Bacon-Dont-Jog-Bullshit/dp/0761180540
I totally need to lose some weight. I’ll try cutting back on carbs…as soon as I finish the bag of potato chips waiting for me tomorrow at my desk. If I go to Chipotle, I know to leave out the rice, but what about the corn salsa? Is that a carb you would avoid?
I think corn salsa’s okay, as long as you don’t pig out on it. If you’re doing strict Atkins induction or whatever they wouldn’t allow it, but I’m not into strict dieting for anything other than the occasional sprint.