The Breakdown
Here is the breakdown for each day. I used calories, carbs, protein, fat and sugar to measure and look at my imbalances.
Day One:
Calories-3675 Carbs-620 g Protein-131 g Fat-196 g Sugar-222 g Day Two:
Calories-3281 Carbs-366 g Protein-95 g Fat-150 g Sugar-90 g
Day Three:
Calories-3,574 Carbs-296 g Protein-133 g Fat-206 g Sugar-159 g
Day Four:
Calories: 5,498 Carbs-558 g Protein-147 g Fat-302 g Sugar-227 g
In looking at my four-day food journal I can see imbalances in my nutrition. First of all I notice that my protein is the lowest macro for all three days. If you are beginning and do not understand macros, that is perfectly fine, you do not have to fully. We will be getting into that later. But having your protein intake be less than your SUGAR!!! That is bad news for me. My carbs also overtake my protein and my fats are higher than my protein! One or the other isn’t bad, but both in combination makes your body have fuel in reserve which makes the fat. I had no idea my eating was this imbalanced!! It is no wonder the scale has been slowly rising.
My target caloric input is, at most, 2800 calories per day for my age if I am active. I have been consistently over this caloric limit by 500-700 calories. Plus my pizza night was 1,800 calories over. This is an average of 4000 calories a day. Which would put me at 28,000 calories for the week when I really need 20,160 calories for the week. For a week, this would give me over 7,000 calories in surplus. This could give me 1-2 pounds of fat gain for the week! No wonder the scale has been going up. I exercise very intermittently and sometimes in the morning I scroll between sets more than doing sets!
So what to do now…..don’t feel bad, stupid, or like a failure!! Feel empowered! Feel proud of yourself!! You are not afraid to look at the reality of the situation and start making changes. THIS IS HUGE!! This is the rest of your life….we are playing the long game here, not a crash diet scenario or a get fit quick scheme. Do NOT start to drastically cut calories and starve yourself, it will only have a negative consequence in the long run.
Until I get a solid plan in place I can do some of the following small fixes that can really improve my nutrition:
Cut down on desserts-I eat multiple sweets a day. I will make a goal of desserts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday only.
Too many chips-I will not eat chips, popcorn and Cheez-its multiple times a day. I will limit myself to one carb like this a day.
This is a plan I feel good about because I am doing SOMETHING to start. I also feel good because this is something that I feel confident in succeeding with, I CAN DO THIS!!
Now look at your food journals. What are one or two things you can easily start to change? It would be great to hear from you if you are following along! Drop a line in the contact form or you can always DM me on FB or IG!! Onto macro crash course…….
