Eat Big Get Big

My last post made me realize that I could do a little bit more with my diet, be more critical about what I was eating and what I needed to eat.  So as a first step, I watched a video on how to plan my diet.  Namely, this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWpzxsVntuA

I think I just typed "Alan Thrall nutrition" to get this one.  I've always turned to Alan Thrall for info like this.  I'm not too sure why, but probably because he likes to keep things simple.  Especially with a topic like nutrition where I felt like I could get overwhelmed quickly, this was a good start. 

(To put some context to that point above, I was hearing a loooot of different things on the web about nutrition.  OmarIsuf said a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight, which is pretty standard.  But Greg Nuckols' website, Stronger by Science, had this article where apparently 120g of protein is enough for all people, regardless of bodyweight?  I read the article and it kind of made sense.  In case you want to check it out, it's here.  Also found this article here, which kept it fairly simple.  But yeah, all in all I wanted to say there were a lot of opinions out there.)

So anyways, back to the video.  So it's this guy called Jordan Feigenbaum from Barbell Medicine who was giving the advice.  I think his thing is the "3 day meal diary", where you keep track of what you're eating for just 3 days to get a general sense of how much you're eating.  And the reasoning makes sense; everyone is different, so establishing nutrition intake rules based on just one person's weight, age, gender, height, would probably not suffice.  What matters is basing changes on a person's current nutrition. 

And that's what I did, I filled out my 3 day meal diary for the past three days.  It was an interesting experience; it helped that I'm not too adventurous with my diet, so logging repeating foods made my job easier.  But at the same time, since I eat out for lunch it was really hard to guess what the nutrition breakdown was for those meals.  That being said, I think I made the best guesses I could and filled out my journal. 

Here are my averages:

201g Carbs (804kcal)
121g Fat (1089kcal)
250g Protein (1000kcal)

A few things stood out for me:

• My protein intake was way higher than I thought.  And maybe I'm overestimating.  But it makes sense to me, because I try to fit in a lot of supplements.  I've been taking about a daily amount of about 100g of protein from supplements (protein shakes, protein bars) alone.  And I try to eat a lot of meat for lunch and dinner.  But yeah, did not expect to be blowing the 1 gram per lb of bodyweight ratio this much.  (I weight about 180lbs)
• My carb intake was surprisingly high.  I used to eat a lot more rice before, but I cut down because the first advice I seemed to get was to cut out carbs, because it'll turn into fat quickly.  So I'm guessing my carb intake could have been something like 250-300g before this month, maybe even more.  But the protein drinks and bars have as many grams of carbs as they do protein, so this makes sense to me.  

But other than that, it was just nice to finally have all these numbers laid out in front of me.  There's no more crazy guesswork anymore in my diet, I have some basic numbers to go off of.  So I'm really happy about that.  

As for what's next, here are some plans:

• I need to start weighing myself consistently.  I know I want to gain weight, but I need to know if I'm losing or gaining right now.  I can definitely say I'm not gaining weight to a noticeable degree, nor do I really want to gain weight so quickly.  
• Honestly, I don't really have much I want to change.  I feel like I'm losing fat, the relatively low carbs hasn't affected my energy throughout the day, and I'm eating enough protein to get stronger every week.  So I might just try to stick with this intake.  

All right, this was my write-up for the little food experiment I did this week.  Can't wait to eat and get stronger.