Request for Constructive Criticism!

This is going to be an insane post!  As I said in my previous post asking for your help, I'm going to share ALL the information that I track for myself for the first time, both diet and exercise.  It's going to be information overload so if you can't handle reams of numbers stop reading now or skip to the last section, which is my observations and questions.  I really would love to hear some constructive criticism from a variety of different viewpoints on both diet and exercise.

The objectives I laid out at the start of the two-week period were:
eat ≤ 15 g of sugar per day
eat ≤ 6 servings of carbohydrates in a day (each serving is up to 20 g, ≤ 5 g counts as 0)
eat ≤ 2 servings of carbs and 5 g of sugar in one meal
eat ≥ 25 g of fiber per day
eat between 1200 and 1500 calories per day
drink 4 bottles (28 oz each) of water per day
complete six NRLW workouts (Stage 1 Workouts A2 to B4)
complete three interval cardio workouts

I succeeded in meeting all of these except the daily calorie range, which I exceeded twice.

The suggestions I got after my post two weeks ago were:

• go gluten-free
• long, slow distance running

Please leave your comments below the post.  If you can add some context for your suggestions as well - like your personal experience or your source - that would be very helpful.

The sections below are on what I ate, the workouts I completed, my resulting metrics (weight and body measurements), and my observations and questions.


My Diet

For each meal/snack I'm showing the time, the food type and portion size, and calories, g fat, mg sodium, g carbohydrate, g fiber, g sugar, and g protein.  I also show daily total and some summaries of the food types that I repeatedly ate.



A few notes on the contents of this table:

• I stayed right with my food objectives for this project with two exceptions: 1) on 10/9 my husband and I hosted a party and I went sorta crazy on the food after, eating many hundreds of calories over my limit, and 2) on 10/15 I accidentally went over my calorie limit by a slight miscalculation in my spreadsheet from earlier in the day.
• I think my caloric intake on 10/9 (the day we hosted the party) was actually somewhat lower than what I recorded.  I didn't weigh my food that day and I think I overestimated the amount of cheese I ate (cheddar and mozzarella).  It definitely was way higher than 1500 calories though!
• Everything I ate this week was out of my own home and almost all of it was homemade (exceptions: one can of soup, condiments). 
• The "split pea soup" is actually split pea and ham soup and I made it in our slow-cooker.  The ingredients are split peas (dried), ham, onion, garlic (jarred), and various spices.
• The pork chili was also made in our slow-cooker.  The ingredients are ground pork (from our CSA), black beans (canned), dark red kidney beans (canned), tomato sauce (canned), diced tomatoes (canned), onion, green bell pepper (from our CSA), garlic (jarred), and various spices.
• The "stuffed mushrooms" I ate toward the beginning of the period were stuffed with cream cheese and sausage and the "stuffed mushrooms" I ate in the second half of the period were stuff with cream cheese and various spices.
• The caprese bites from 10/9 were just a bit of mozzarella marinated in balsamic vinaigrette, a grape tomato, and some basil.
• The "caprese salad" I ate on 10/16 was left over from 10/9 and just balsamic vinaigrette-marinated mozzarella with grape tomatoes.
• The almonds were roasted.

These are the daily summary stats in an easier-to read form:



Here are some histograms of the frequency of my food choices, broken out by food group.  (Please note that the "serving sizes" are not always equivalent.)

grains

vegetables

fruit

dairy

meat

composite foods

condiments

My Workouts

These were my workouts for the two weeks - I did six weights workouts (about 30 minutes each) and three interval workouts on the treadmill (15-20 minutes each).  I did all my weekday workouts after work (starting between 4:30 and 8:30 PM) and my weekend workouts in the morning just after waking.



The New Rules of Lifting for Women workouts are all Stage 1 straight out of the book.  There are two different workouts that I alternate, A and B.  (I'll list the exercises in each workout below.)  I completed two sets of each exercise.  The sets of first exercise were done consecutively; the sets of the next two exercises were alternated; the sets of the last two exercises were alternated.  Workouts 1 (prior to this period) and 2 are the highest reps and lowest weights of Stage 1 and the reps decrease and the weight increases through the stage, with each rep number being repeated once (as in, Workouts 3 and 4 are done at the same reps and weights).  I did each workout after a short warmup.



A few notes:

• I use a squat bar on a guided track, not freestanding.
• My first two days of deadlifting here were done with a smaller bar, appropriate for bicep curls.  The third day was using a bar from a bench press, so it was larger and heavier which is why I added less weight.
• It took me a few tries to get the step height and handweights worked out for the step-ups, but I have settled on the "second level" step that I used in the second two workouts and I will just increase the weights I hold in my hands as the workouts continue.
• I think the pushups are supposed to increase in difficulty by moving from doing them at a 60 degree angle (hands above feet) to a 30 degree angle and then to the flat ground.  However, I can do 15 pushups on the ground already (not supergreat form, but I can get through it) so I'm not sure how to increase the difficulty as my reps are supposed to decrease.  I have seen people move to feet-above-hands pushups but I don't think I'm ready for even a few of those.  Maybe I should increase in flat pushup reps rather than decrease since I don't want to change the difficulty?
• The Swiss ball crunches are pretty easy as I'm pretty well-practiced - should I just do more of them?

My Progress

This is what my weight did throughout these two weeks (the last weight is from today, the first day after the end of the period).

weight (lbs) vs. date

Although I am at a slightly lower weight now than when I started, I still consider this to be part of my stall.  I've been bouncing around between 130 and 134 lbs for a couple months now so I won't consider the stall over until I'm 129 lbs or lower.

I have an impedance scale so I also measured my body fat percentage using it.  On 9/21/2011 my weight was 134.0 lbs, my body fat was 27.9%, and my hydration level was 52.5%, which means my lean body mass (LBM) was 96.6 lbs.  On 10/17 my weight was 131.6 lbs, my body fat was 26.6%, and my hydration level was 53.6%, which means my LBM was 96.6 lbs.  Taking those numbers as they are looks pretty good - slight loss in body fat and LBM maintained - but I know from experience that the error bars on that body fat% measurement are larger than the 1% difference between the two dates, so I think it's all in the noise.

I also took my measurements on 10/17 and compared them to my last set of measurements from 9/23.  You can see that they are effectively the same.



The measurements show that I had no change in body fat percentage, so the increase in LBM is from the slight difference in my weight measured on each of those days.

 My Observations and Questions

Diet

Grains: The only grains I ate were the low-carb tortillas, which I had basically every day until we recently ran out.  I did used to eat oatmeal and whole-wheat pasta occasionally but I was trying to lower my carbs even more (and avoid peanut butter!).  So which direction should I go - eliminate the grains or add a few whole ones back in?

Vegetables: WOW I hardly ate any vegetables in this period!!  I have mentioned before that our CSA recently stopped, so I no longer have fresh vegetables showing up in our apartment on a weekly basis and I haven't yet picked up buying them from the store/farmers' market.  Looking at this on a day-by-day basis I don't notice it so much but it's shameful that I haven't bought and eaten more vegetables.  There are some vegetables in some of my composite foods but very little in comparison with the rest of the ingredients.  I swear it's not that I dislike them or anything!  I am a little restricted because of the sugar limit but there are still a lot of choices, like broccoli, spinach, zucchini, etc., and I'm not currently edging up against my daily sugar limit.  I wonder if this factor alone could account for my stall.  What are your suggestions for fall-winter vegetables (not tubers!) that I should add?  What is your favorite super-vegetable that is also low-sugar?

Fruit: Actually, for being on a low-sugar diet, my fruit consumption was rather higher than I expected.  I had tomatoes and avocados around for pretty much the whole period so I ate them quite a bit.  I'm happy with this.

Dairy:  I eat a lot of cheddar!  And apparently I think that dairy=cheese.  Are there any dairy products I can add?  Do you think yogurt is worth the sugar (I seem to have been fine without it)?

Meat: It's pretty apparent that I love bacon!  I also ate a lot of almonds and pulled pork.  In fact, pork in the forms of bacon, ham, pulled pork, and ground pork has been a major theme for our summer.  Is there anything wrong with eating all this bacon?  What's the deal with nitrates/nitrites?  Should I diversify my sources of meat?

Workouts

I'm happy with my NRLW workouts and that I'm following a program.  I plan to keep doing them 2-3 times per week.  Can anyone give me encouragement concerning this program or heavy lifting in general?

I would like to work out 5-6 times per week, so that means 2-3 cardio workouts.  I just recently switched to this interval training pattern, which I also got out of NRLW.  However, I realized I didn't get the full info when I referenced that part of the book after reading through it once.  The interval training program recommended 15-20 minutes of 1:2 intervals, a 5' break, then some steady-state cardio for as long as desired.  The rationale (from p. 26-27) is "First, there's metabolic perturbation, which we just discussed.  Since it's harder to run or ride or swim fast, it's also more inefficient.  That means you shake things up more than you would at a steady pace, which leads to a bigger post-exercise response.  Second, it takes less time...  As with any type of anaerobic exercise, you force your body to use carbohydrates for energy during the high-intensity intervals.  Then you use more fat when you're recovering...  After you stop exercising, your body will immediately flood your bloodstream with triglycerides...  When you start exercising again, you'll have more fat readily available for energy, which means you'll burn more if it than you would if you'd done nothing but steady-pace work."  So I'll switch to this pattern of cardio in the future.  Any input?

Big-Picture

I didn't realize that over 50% of my calories are coming from fat (usually I just focus on grams)!  Do you think this is too much fat (for low-carb)?  I don't really mind cutting down my fat percentage, but how high should I increase protein (or carbs?) to compensate?  What foods can I add that are high-protein and low-fat?

The two go-to remedies for a stall that I've heard repeatedly are to go up or down in calories.  Considering that I was a bit hungry at the end of a few of the days this period and that I haven't increased my calories even though I have been working out harder, I think I should increase.  Do you think I should increase or decrease my average caloric intake/daily calorie limit?

I think I have swung too far toward being concerned with macronutrients instead of with real food.  My focus recent has been on getting about 100 g of protein per day and not eating any more carbs than I need to get my 25 g of fiber and I think that's why it was so easy for me to neglect the vegetables.  Thankfully I still am eating real food in large part and not superprocessed meals.  I guess I'll dose myself with some Michael Pollan to nudge myself back.  Does anyone have suggestions with switching thinking from nutrients to real food?

Everything I've discussed here is making some small changes within the BFC/low-carb/low-sugar structure.  Does anyone have some major overhauls to suggest?