It is easier to change a man's religion than to change his diet.
- Margaret Mead
I think I am addressing all of you with this post's title. Every person has opinions on food and nearly everyone has opinions on weight loss and fitness. I've hit a big stall with my weight loss in the past few weeks and I'm not sure how to get back to (slowly) losing. I am confident that I have more weight to lose so I'm not willing to languish here.
This is what I would like to do: I will stay strictly on my plan for two weeks. At the end of the two weeks I will post all the stats I've collected about everything - basically show you what I keep track of myself. (I hope the scale reading will decrease during those two weeks, but if not all the more reason to shop around for new ideas.) Those of you interested can look through all the data and the choices I've made and come up with some suggestions. I realize that it's very difficult to take criticism on diet. I will do my very best to not become defensive.
I will say upfront that it is unlikely that I will seriously consider diet suggestions that involved eating much more sugar than I am now or not restricting carbohydrates. If you want to make those suggestions that's fine but please know that I am most stubborn about this area based on my reading and the experiences that I have documented here. However, I am definitely willing to rethink my definition of "low-sugar" and "low/moderate-carb."
I am particularly looking for suggestions of specific foods to add to or cut/reduce from my diet. I feel like I'm in a bit of a rut right now with my choices. I have also been cheating a lot with peanut butter recently so I think setting "reset" right now and being accountable for this short-term goal of two weeks will help me resist the peanut butter (which is also not in our home at the moment).
This is my plan for the next two weeks (starting October 3, which was my first day post-my most recent peanut butter cheat):
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 (I'd like to see opinions on this - I generally eat 1400-1500 cals/day and I'm not sure whether to go up or down to break my stall)
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 - any extra interval or steady-state cardio is bonus
Here is what I will report for every food/meal:
time eaten
food name
volume/weight/servings
calories
g fat
mg sodium
g carbohydrate
g fiber
g sugar
g protein
For my workouts I will give a brief description of what they were (time, sets, reps, weight, intervals, speed) but I will not try to estimate calorie expenditure.
I hope that some of you are willing to look through what I post and give me your opinions. I will try to be open-minded! Thank you!
