Food Issues

[Bluefever]

I am not sure how I should approach the whole nutrition side of things.

If I track every single calorie, I become fanatacal about it. All I think about all day is what and when to eat next. I can't get food off my mind.Yet at the end of the day I am under eating.

If I wing it, and just eat when I am hungry I end up craving carbs, binging and eating everything in site by 8pm at night.

I don't really have a set schedual to meal plan around and I am a stay at home mom, so I have a lot of down time when I am always scrounging the cupbaords looking for stuff to snack on.

I am not sure what a happy medium should be.
Any thoughts?

[Fitwit]

Excellent question, Blue Fever! This describes me! If I am not tracking, I rationalize and tell myself I really haven't eaten that much. If I am tracking I become obsessive and am unable to put anything in my mouth without checking to see how it affects my Fitday totals! I just can't seem to lose weight without being obsessive about it, though!

[Cynthia]

I have learned that the times when my nutrition is best "on" are when I plan my meals. I almost always have the same morning and afternoon snacks, so this helps rule those two meals out for me.

Can you dedicate a few minutes each day toward planning your meals for the following day? Sometimes just having a plan makes it easier to stick to.

I try to plan a dinner menu for us a week at a time. This helps with our food budget a lot because I am not out buying things at the last minute every night, I try to plan around what's on sale in the flyers. So that would be the next logical step if you can get the daily menu down.

[ToniL]

Totally empathize with ya here. What helped me stop focusing on 'when and what am I eating next' is to plan my meals in fitday ahead of time. I also plan on having 3 sit down meals (protein, veggie, starch) and 2 -3 snacks that I also have to 'sit down' for. Nitpicky as it sounds, I try to chew each mouthful 30 times and take at least 30 minutes to eat each meal. And you already know to drink at least 64 oz of water a day (between meals not with them). That way, no matter what your caloric intake is, you aren't leaving it up to 'chance'.
hth-- Toni

[ToniL]

Another helpful hint I learned was to eat 3-4 walnuts 15" before a meal, it helps release leptin which tells us when we are full. Most of us don't get that 'full' feeling until we have overeaten. That way when we do sit down to eat, we aren't 'starvin marvin'.

[mel]

I am exactly the same way. I am sure I have ocd tendencies, and it really comes out with food. I have to plan everything in the morning and then just stick with it. That has made my life so much easier. One thing that really helped me was to take my total number of cals for the day and divide it by 6. Then, I just plan out six eating opportunities (I don't really have meals or snacks...each is about the same size) that fit within those cals. As I put each item into fitday, I just watch the macros and adjust the food choices as I go to hit my macro percents. I've been doing it for a while, but it only takes 5-10 mins, and then the whole day is planned. It has taken the obsession out of it because I just follow my plan, comfortable in knowing that I'm doing it right.

The other part of what I do it keep a mental clock in my head. I eat about every 2-1/2 to 3 hours. I also do some tricks to keep my mind from telling me to eat too much, because I always want to eat, even when I'm full. Some of my tricks are fiber chews, tea, and eating things with pieces one piece at a a time. I also reward myself with a hershey's mini or hershey's kiss or two when I've planned so well that there's wiggle room in my schedule.


Good luck Blue! I know that the food side of things can be so frustrating...for me it is a thousand times a tougher battle than the lifting.

mel

[Lisa~]

These are all great ideas, and while there are many opinions on how to go about it, what the successful people have in common is that they plan ahead. There has to be some form of planning ahead or you will fail. "Failing to plan is planning to fail." Right?

Here's an article from John Berardi that I think is truly helpful:

It's Not About The Food Part 1, Day to Day Nutritional Strategies

You might also find some success with the life-friendly diet that Adam Campbell created for JP. This diet, which we called Adam's Diet for a very long time, was part of the development of Adam's TNT book. But you can still look at the guiding principles in the Adam's Diet thread in the Nutrition forum here at JP's:

http://forums.jpfitness.com/diet-nut...plication.html

Remember too that how fast you make progress toward your body composition goals will be directly related to how specific you choose to be with your food tracking. You can choose a life-friendly nutrition program and make slow steady progress. You can also choose a very specifically calculated, detailed, and measured nutrition program and your progress will be faster. It all depends on what you want to prioritize in your life at this time.

[Littlemermaidklb]

I am the same way. For the most part I eat healthy. I can track cals for the most part but I do not want to be fanaticl about it. Also, I have a hard time figureing out howmany calories are in things with no label... aka the healthy stuff like egss, fruit, veggies, etc. I hear a lot about this "fitday" website... how exactly does it work?

[LisaS]

Fitday - free online lets you log your intake
Nutritondata - lets you lookup almost anything and also sort of log your intake
USDA site - lets you lookup almost anything
Daily Plate - lets you lookup & also log
Calorie King lets you lookup & also log


there are also books you can buy and there is PC software (generally not free) to do the same.

[kfisherx]

I started out just like you too and learned to plan my day ahead as well. It is the best 15 min I spend every night before I go to bed. I also pack my meals during that time so that in the morning I grab my box o' meals and go. I really could not even begin to do it any other way.

In this case I don't think it is a bad thing to be totally obsessive. I think it is required until we are educated enough to do it on the fly.

[Lost Dog]

Counting calories can be a blessing and a curse. I was also obsessed with it for quite some time. It became something like Linus's security blanket, but without as much thumb sucking. It was comforting. Unfortunately, it caused a lot of stress when I got out of my element.

Lisa~'s got some good ideas in TNT or Adam's Diet, and there might be something to using a few strategies from those along with Cass's diet in NROL4W.

I'd like to hear what Cassandra has to say about it, in light of the importance of her dietary strategy in the book.

I do think it's good to have recognized these tendencies in yourself. A diet can't succeed if you can't live within it's rules and guidelines. So, it's important to find something that works, is healthy, and that you are comfortable with.

At the basic level, with any diet plan, is planning ahead. To what degree it's necessary, you'll have to decide for yourself.

• I plan my week to some degree and cook most of my meals on Sunday.
• I don't precook breakfast or dinners
• I try to anticipate any lunches that I'll be eating out.
• I plan snacks and premeasure them.
• I decide how many meals and/or snacks I'll be having and set a schedule so I don't end up eating 6 times when I meant to eat 5.

As to counting. One strategy is to figure it all out in advance, then precook and dole it out into containers. Yes, you did analyze it all when you made and scheduled it, but now you just eat the meals that you made. The only worries are dinners, breakfasts, and ad hoc events. At home, figure them out before you cook or eat. Out of the house, do your best, write them down, plug them into fitday later and see how close you were.

Some people get good at knowing portion sizes and can learn to adjust, mentally. You can record your food and periodically plug it into fitday, just to see how you are doing. Of course, if you're seeing the results you like in your body composition, even those checks may not be necessary. But, if you hit a snag, you'll be ready to investigate.

[Lisa~]

Good stuff LD.

Ladies, if you haven't already noticed, LD has a whole lot of excellent nutrition and cooking advice. Some is in his log, some in the Livin' Large forum, and a whole lot in the Nutrition forum. He walks the walk, and when he talks about nutrition I always listen.

[Lost Dog]

Thanks!

[Dolly Dagger]

Thanks for raising this question, Bluefever.

Over the years I've done it both ways, preplanning/tracking and not. I've always had success when I've tracked and planned but never stuck with it for a long enough period of time to get to my goal. I think after a while I just get tired of doing it or life intervenes and I don't have time to do it and there you go.

Right now I'm kind of torn about the whole thing. I know I should track if I want to be successful faster (as Lisa mentioned) but I really want to get to the point where I can just live my life without it once I meet my goal. I've been so obsessive/compulsive about my food ever since I was a teenager that at this point in my life I just don't want to deal with it anymore.

So for now I keep a written log and calculate my calories at the end of the day. I usually hit the correct calorie level because I have a general idea how many calories I should eat at each meal for a nonworkout vs. workout day. (I'm following Cassandra food plan from the book.) If I'm off I look at what I need to do to tweak things. I figure that way I'll learn to eat more intuitively based on the feedback I get from my body. If that means I lose more slowly, then so be it.

Of course, I could change my mind tomorrow.

[Bluefever]

Good ideas, thank you all.

I think i just have to get my head around pre planning. It is just hard, with a husband that works shift work, a kid that refuses to be schedualed and my oh so hot socail life. But I guess what it boils down to is: how bad do I really want this and am I willing to put the work into it?

[Aoife]

Originally Posted by Bluefever

Good ideas, thank you all.

I think i just have to get my head around pre planning. It is just hard, with a husband that works shift work, a kid that refuses to be schedualed and my oh so hot socail life. But I guess what it boils down to is: how bad do I really want this and am I willing to put the work into it?

Yup.

I have a hard time planning, because I'm a twit. I like to think I don't like the structure and non-spontaneity of planning the week out, but then I eat the same 4 things all the time anyway.

What we've done in the past is simply create meals that are all the same number of calories... in Otto's case, 500, in mine, 300. Then cook it all and grab whatever you want when it's time to eat, it's all the same. Chili, stirfry, meat & veggies, cold meals, stews, soups, snacky meals, etc.

We know what we usually feel like, and if we really really really want something different there's nothing stopping us from making it. Often, we just don't really want something different. We just want a choice. So we give ourselves a choice of limited options that were already pre-approved, pre-measured, pre-prepared, and just live on happily.

We need to get back to that. I'm such a lazy twit.

[AnnetteW]

Wow, this is something I really have problems with too, and I've written about it in my log.

Tracking literally makes me angry and frustrated, to me it's just not living a normal life. And yes, maybe it means I just don't want it bad enough....because I don't. I don't want a life focused on my food.

I too am a stay at home mom, with older kids, 2 youngest in HS now. But it's also a newly blended family, I only do some of the evening cooking, and I do have to compromise on food that's eaten. And no, I don't like saying I won't eat that and will eat only a piece of chicken and some salad, when something else nice has been prepared. I want to eat the nice dinner.

So, that means I have to keep working on the meals I do have control over, and I'm doing well on that. I am trying to increase my protein and eating well. I have a protein shake after my workouts religiously now. I usually have a stirfry with meat and veggies for lunch, eggs or oatmeal for breakfast (sometimes something else.)

I still drink too much and eat too much chocolate.

I'm currently reading "Mindless Eating" and I do need to work on the mental aspects of eating.

And I detest eating every 2-3 hours when I'm not hungry. I want to learn to follow my body cues. I'm trying to make eating into better habits, and it's not going to happen over night.

The moment I diet is the moment I've gone off plan.

Sorry....I know none of that makes any sense....hence my issues.