Fueling Your Weight Goals, Part 1

Okay, so the biggest struggle I had in my many years of weight loss attempts was my food consumption.  I have a feeling that this is also a problem for a lot of people trying to control their weight.  With that in mind, I am going to go through what things and, more importantly, thoughts that helped me.  I don't really think that I can relay everything in one single post, so I shall attempt it in a series.

The number one thing to keep in mind is, no matter what plan you choose in terms of eating...calories in MUST be less than calories out if you are trying to lose weight.  There is no way around this, no way to cheat it, and no miracle that can make it not so.  For me, keeping that in the back of mind throughout the day helped me greatly in getting my thinking about food right.

So with a base thought process of calories in less than calories out, I could start to think about which of the thousands of eating plans was the best.  The answer to that question was that there was not a best one, and there never will be a best one.  The truth of the matter is, that there are a lot of good ones that will work for people for a certain period of time.  The human body has learned one skill over thousands of years of being on this earth, and that is to survive.  With that in mind, if a person sticks to one eating plan for a long period of time, it will start to adapt and store calories in a way that is not swim suit friendly.  It will always do this to make sure that it survives.  Given that, the greatest eating plan is one that includes interval change.  Confusing your body and not letting it get set in a certain pattern is the key (you will find that this confusion theory is true for exercise as well, but alas that is another series).

Two working theories down, and still no food plan!  What is going on here?! Its because for me, there was no specific food plan.  I had two different processes that I used, but neither held to any specifics on the exact foods I ate, only the types of food I ate and how often.  The processes in my plan were very dependent on the stage of my weight loss.

• Stage 1 - From 312lbs to 217lbs

• During this stage I did not have a lot of physical activity going on because my weight did not afford me a lot of stamina to carry on a great deal of activity.  And I was okay with this fact because my goal was to make it better, not make it happen instantaneously.
• This stage meant that I needed to incorporate a process where I actually counted my calories throughout the day.  I used a calorie counting app on my phone that had a database of a lot of foods (the app is available for most phones at www.fatsecret.com).  There are a lot of calorie counting phone and web apps out there and I would highly recommend using one that suits you best.
• I stepped up my calorie intake throughout this stage from 500 up to a max of 1500 a day.

• Stage 2 - From 217lbs to 193lbs

• This stage is where I was more physically active each day and actually had the stamina to maintain defined workouts 4 to 5 days a week.
• I do not worry about counting calories during this stage, but instead I worry about food type portion sizes
• I still maintain eating 3 meals and 2 to 3 protein rich snacks a day in this stage so that I never go long spans of time without food.

During any of the two stages I was in, the types of food I ate and continue to eat have never changed, so it has made it very easy to follow and change up every 6-8 weeks (don't forget its still about confusion).

• Meals
• Lean Protein - Includes Chicken, Beef, Fish, Seafood, White Meat Pork, and Low Fat Cottage Cheese
• Carbohydrate - Includes Legumes, Brown Rice, Quinoa, Wheat Pasta, Wheat Bread, Wheat Tortillas.
• Note - During stage 1 I stayed away from a majority of carbohydrates because it is very easy to over-portion these. Dark Rye bread once a day during the lower calorie parts of the stage and Brown Rice and Quinoa during the higher calorie parts.
• Vegetables -  Everything but Corn
• Snacks
• Protein Shakes and Protein Bars
• NOTE - DO NOT CONSUME BARS AND SHAKES THAT HAVE OVER 4grams OF SUGAR PER SERVING

These are the foods I worked with, easy huh?  During stage 1, I just counted the calories of what I decided to prepare and had very little portions of the carbohydrate while adding more vegetables.  During stage 2 I just make sure my portion size is about the size of my fist for each meal group.  That's it!