Diet in the Works

Hi all!

I have been steadily adjusting my diet and working with perfecting it. The diet I am aiming for is 40% carbs, 25% protein, and 35% fats (mix of whole grains and high fiber foods). As you all know, I am doing this as a vegetarian, so it makes it tricky to use high protein carbs (such as lentils and quinoa, for example) without going over my daily calorie limit. More specifically, I am aiming for 150 grams of protein - making up the 25% (this is 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight) - and the carb and fat percentages are based off of this. For calories, my BMR (basal metabolic rate - the calories I burn merely staying alive - calculated this in my physiology class last year) is 1520, and on a normal day I probably use 2000-2500, or more, depending on how active I am. Jeanette Jenkins, who I am following on twitter @JeanetteJenkins, made a very good point: 500calories per day is 3500 per week, which is equal to one pound of fat. So I am aiming to cut my calorie intake by 500 calories per day - putting me at a limit of as close to 2000 calories as possible, and hopefully burning 1lb of fat per week. This is VERY difficult to do!

So here are the basic diet-making-concepts that are working for me so far:

1. AVOID "BLAH" CARBS - i.e. pasta and bread - do little for you except provide fuel. I have cut pasta out totally (still mourning) and only have one slice of bread per day.

2. AVOID ALL OILS except Udo's DHA oil. Udo's DHA has better absorption than classic Udo's, and provides a healthy omega 3-6-9 ratio (something majority of people do not have - focus on omega 3's)}

•  cook eggs in the microwave, scrambled with a little water - no oil in the pan
• if you make a salad - limit to 1 tbsp udo's per day and get creative for the remainder of your dressing
• 1tbsp udo's in your protein shake before bed - for slower absorption of protein over night

3. POWER CARBS - complex carbs that provide you with killer sources of nutrients and also high protein. Quinoa is the ONLY complete protein found in a carbohydrate. Lentils, beans, nuts, seeds, etc. etc. are all excellent - just watch your fats. When you choose your power carbs, make sure you have an appropriate protein combination so that you get proper absorption for muscle building. Also, eat as little carbs as you can get away with, while still getting your protein and nutrients from them.

4. FLAVOUR - make friends with herbs and spices! Virtually calorie free and packed full of flavour and other health benefits. Also, get to know low-cal sauce options - balsamic vinegar, mustard, lemon juice, garlic, etc.

5. WATCH YOUR SOY - Soy is amazing. All vegetarians and vegans thrive on soy products to an extent. However, too much of any good thing is bad. Variety in a diet is extremely important - so don't focus all your protein in soy.

Last thing I have to say about getting your diet started - is check out FitDay (http://www.fitday.com/). It's a
"Free diet and weight loss journal". They give you opportunities to track foods, activities, mood, journal, body, stats, etc. My favourite part of the website is the size of their information data base. Grueling over a calculator and nutrition labels is something no one wants to do. FitDay has THOUSANDS of stored food items and activites. You can use it daily, or use it to plan your day-to-day diet. Enter all your selected foods, and you can select amounts, so you can adjust the quantities or remove/add foods to try to hit your cal/carb/prot/fat goals, check %DV for nutrients, and view this info by chart/pie graph/bar graph! Saves a headache and is extremely sophisticated.

I will post my diet once I have it perfected! I also plan on posting my "before" photos, measurements, and weight (eeek you lucky ducks).

Anything specific you'd like to learn about? I'm a science student with a passion for nutrition, so I'd be glad to write blogs about nitty-gritty stuff to do with BMR, metabolism, food use, and anything else you guys fire at me!

Have a fabulous day everyone!!

Diet Cheat Day

So, generally speaking, most healthy fitness diets consist of one "cheat day" per week. This is an opportunity to eat outside the usual so your body can replenish the carbs, fats, and any other nutrients it's been depleted of - and put them to good use. One should be sure to still include veggies, carbs, proteins, and fats into a cheat day - but can be anything you'd like with no limits on amounts of each.

For my cheat day, my boyfriend Michael and I went to East Side Marios. What better cheat? Unlimited bread and salad, and a relatively large portion of pasta. So we thought...

I have never felt WORSE after a cheat day. It makes me not want to diet cheat at all - which you'd think would be the opposite. The salad was delicious, as always, but the bread quality has been going down over the years, along with the pasta quality. I hate to inform you that my pasta choice was "Vernazza Peppercorn Alfredo" - was far from what I expected with regard to the description, left me bloated, saline, and exhausted. Mike and I passed out when we got home and didn't recuperate for the remainder of the evening. The worst part was - we got totally ripped off. Over $40 for 2 meals of mediocre quality.

We pinky-swore to never go there again...

Hopefully next Sunday's cheat will be more satisfying to my wallet, belly, body, and senses.

what to put in a blog...

Hi all,

Kind of bizarre - blogs. It's like a journal, but others read it. The difference between a blog and a journal is the mere fact of feeling judged or not - the pages of a diary are certainly not going to pass judgment, and the small 'secure' lock ensures no one else will either.

Anyways - I will try to write this blog as bluntly and honestly as possible. My worst fear is sounding either of timid or arrogant - I do my best to aim for between those two. I have a tendency to sound harsh or condescending in writing - so I hope I am not perceived this way by anyone who decides to read!

I made an account on blogger almost 2 years ago, and never posted anything because there was no actual purpose to the blog. It's one thing to treat a blog like a journal - but if there's no story, why would people read? I wanted to do something like "Julie and Julia" where a woman writes a blog about her venture to cook every recipe in a famous French cook book.

I have always been a bit of a health/fitness fanatic - but in the past year I have been doing more and more research and making more drastic changes in my life. I have grown a fierce passion to get very fit and to dedicate myself completely to healthy eating. When I became a vegetarian, I lost 20lbs. When I moved out to go to school and was doing my own grocery shopping, I got thinner still. Now I am at a comfortable weight - fat in spots but easy to hide! (I'm sure everyone can relate to that one lol) - but I want to maximize my potential. With athletic genes and an existent healthy lifestyle, I figured it wouldn't be too much difficulty to go "all the way" with health and fitness.

I am committing myself to gym and cardio time as well as a healthy diet. For gym I am mostly doing weights mixed in with strength/cardio workouts. I am also doing separate cardio sessions - mostly running and soon jump rope and swimming. My diet is a typical high protein, low carb diet. I will give details for all this in later posts when I have everything down-pat.

I have been doing this for a little over a week now, and as I develop and mold my diet for myself I am realizing just how restrictive it is! And how creative I need to be! For example. Olive oil - something I LOVE - goes on everything, good omega-3/6 ratio, healthiest cooking oil. BUT despite the fact that olive oil may be a good alternative - I can't even fit a table spoon of it into my diet due to the high fat and calorie content. So, for one of my meals I had been doing a quinoa and vegetable salad with seeds and nuts - very high in protein and all good fats. I put 1tbsp of Udo's DHA oil onto it - cut the olive oil - and instead I add a combination of lemon juice, mustard, and balsamic vinegar - all very low calorie fat free options - and it tastes GREAT!

To finish off - I hope that I can be an inspiration to dieters, gymers, vegetarians, fitness fanatics, health fanatics,  and anyone else who finds my content of an interest. It is motivating for ME to be able to post my experiences and knowledge for others to read! I love to help people - so hopefully I can do this through this blog :)

Have a great day everyone!!!
-Cait