Reality check: Counting calories page 64

[Kelda]

I figured out my weeks' averages.

Calories: 1254
Protein: 66 g
Carbs: 69 g
Fat: 71 g

Or: Protein 22 %, Carbs 24 %, Fat 50 %, Alcohol 4%

And the weight/measurement results? No change. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

OK, I'm going to be really mean here and hold up the mirror - you can hate me, I can take it!

Can you honestly say you are eating Primally (beans in the chilli, yesterday's menu, breaded food, french fries ... you didn't even count that up so is it involved in the averages ... it would present a 7th of your weekly figure; that is more than statistically significant)? Primal isn't magic, you do have to follow it in order for it to work! Regular alcohol takes up liver time that could be used helping you burn the fat.

That splits show you are way too low on protein (by quite a lot). That is also a fairly low calorie count too - the body will likely perceive a starvation scenario because protein is too low and overall energy intake is low = burn your own muscle in preference and store your body fat (in case it's requried due to prolonged starvation potential). You don't say if you are active at all but do talk about 1400 calories being the goal if you work the figures we've been talking here.

My suggestion if you are interested ... leave the wine for weekends only, up the protein by adding protein powder (which will help lift the calories too) and/or think about taking 5-10 g of BCAA with the meals you do eat, incorporate some moving about and weights if you aren't already doing that, make sure you eat 1400 - 1500 calories a day and as for the chilli, just leave the beans on your plate, in fact anything that isn't Primal can remain on the plate, it doesn't have to be eaten!

Lecture over :-)

[carres1973]

Kelda - I think your post could be reiterated over and over again! Don't blame Primal or whatever WOE you are following if you aren't following it!

This was a tough lesson I learned. Taking a realistic and HONEST look at what you are eating is not easy but totally necessary IF you want to make progress. Sometimes we might think we are doing 80/20 but in reality it is 60/40 or 50/50.

Carrie

[paradisefound]

Below two very interesting (quite complicated but light-heartedly explained) posts with respect to sleep and appetite. 1200 cals is quite low but if you aren't very active or muscular not massively low. There's a lot more to feeling hungry than whether you have eaten enough as the two posts below begin to highlight, having other hormones out of whack is just one. 5-HTP (100 mgs in the morning) has made a big difference to me personally.


Evolutionary Psychiatry: Appetite Regulation and the Brain
Evolutionary Psychiatry: The Neurobiology of Insomnia - How I Learned to *Start* Worrying and Love Orexin

Also here's some information about why allowing your body to be free of digestion over the night hours might be a good idea

io9. We come from the future.

And, Mark posted on this just recently ... Poor Sleep May Make You (and Your Liver) Fat | Mark's Daily Apple

This may, or may not ring any bells but I knew I'd been making some connections recently on this topic!

Thanks so much for all the links! I will check them out right now. I just ordered some magnesium so will give that a try.

I don't really buy the eating close to bed is good thing... I can definitely tell a difference in the flatness of my stomach the next day if I stop eating around 7:00pm, vs when I eat right before bed. Maybe if you fast all day and then eat, but I am not fasting all day.

[Dragonfly]

Here's a link someone posted in another thread that I thought might be interesting to folks here:
How to Deal With Water Retention: Part One | Intermittent fasting diet for fat loss, muscle gain and health

[winencandy]

OK, I'm going to be really mean here and hold up the mirror - you can hate me, I can take it!

No problem. I'd like to think that I am open to constructive criticism. I won’t hate you. I’ve thought about your post most of the afternoon.

Can you honestly say you are eating Primally (beans in the chilli, yesterday's menu, breaded food, french fries ... you didn't even count that up so is it involved in the averages ... it would present a 7th of your weekly figure; that is more than statistically significant)? Primal isn't magic, you do have to follow it in order for it to work! Regular alcohol takes up liver time that could be used helping you burn the fat.

I admit that this wasn’t my best week. This week my non-primal % slipped fairly far. But I do believe that it was also NOT a typical week for me.

I’m not perfect, however, I can honestly say (unless I'm delusional) that the majority of the time I do eat primal. Not perfectly, but primally. And in February I successfully finished a 30 DONN (basically Whole 30 except that I included butter so I couldn’t call it whole 30). While I was on my 30 DONN I also had no alcohol. I lost nothing, so I don’t think a few glasses of wine are what’s causing my problem or surely I would have seen something happen during that month. And, again, I USUALLY only have a few glasses on the weekend.

That splits show you are way too low on protein (by quite a lot). That is also a fairly low calorie count too - the body will likely perceive a starvation scenario because protein is too low and overall energy intake is low = burn your own muscle in preference and store your body fat (in case it's requried due to prolonged starvation potential). You don't say if you are active at all but do talk about 1400 calories being the goal if you work the figures we've been talking here.

Yes, I do know my protein is low. I guess discovering that is one advantage from all this tracking. And that is while I’ve been concentrating on eating more protein. I can only imagine how low it was before. I am aiming for .7 of my “lean body weight” of 98 lbs. So my “goal” is 70 g not 100 g. If I go over 70g, then it’s a bonus. I struggle with getting even that amount of protein. (I’ve just pulled my protein grams from CRONoMeter since early March: 68, 128, 82, 89, 71, 61, 55, 104, 63, 71, 58, 77, 79, 66, 63, 69, 70, 41, and 73g) This is by constantly thinking about and trying to eat enough protein. If I eat “enough” to get close to the preferred # here (100g), then I am too full to eat any veggies.

I don’t believe I’m “starving” myself. But I also don’t believe I should “stuff” myself. By “some” calorie counting charts, I should be eating only 1000/day. I don’t believe that is a “healthy” number. I’m aiming for almost 1.5 x this much. (Of course, unintentionally, my last few days are really close to 1000 calories. This has brought my average down)

I am somewhat active. Not nearly as active as most people here, but a lot more active than I used to be. I don’t post my activities in this thread, but they are on my journal. I do PFB and I’m attempting to train for a 5K race on April 10. (But I’m not getting in nearly enough miles)

My suggestion if you are interested ... leave the wine for weekends only, up the protein by adding protein powder (which will help lift the calories too) and/or think about taking 5-10 g of BCAA with the meals you do eat, incorporate some moving about and weights if you aren't already doing that, make sure you eat 1400 - 1500 calories a day and as for the chilli, just leave the beans on your plate, in fact anything that isn't Primal can remain on the plate, it doesn't have to be eaten!

I’m always open to suggestions.

As I said, for the past few months, I’ve only been drinking wine on the weekend, (with a few exceptions). It seems to make no difference if I drink wine every day, only on the weekends or not at all.

I may have to try the protein powder, but I was trying to avoid “non-food supplements”. I’ve never had it before. I’ve NO idea what kind/type to get or how much to take. Somehow, part of me feels that if I have to work that hard to eat that much protein, it can’t be the “right” amount for me. What does BCAA DO? Does it provide protein? If not, why would I want to add it?

I do move about and lift heavy things (myself).

I have proven to myself that I can and do eat Primal the majority of the time. I know I “don’t have to eat it.” For example today I didn’t eat: canned soup, tuna melts on bread with cheese, Stove Top Stuffing, potatoes, gravy, garlic bread, our own frozen corn, or the home made berry pie. And now the Lays chips and dip my Farmer just got out…

However, I can also see how easy it is to “slip” and let non-primal things creep back in. I will concentrate on being more mindful of this for the next couple of weeks and see if that makes any difference.

Lecture over :-)

You have given me lots to think about.

[Kelda]

I’m always open to suggestions.

You have given me lots to think about.

And I've continued thinking myself!

BCAA's - they provide the body with amino acids which the liver converts into just as much glucose as the body needs but no more. This keeps the brain happy and aids with sugar cravings. It aids with protein in the sense that what you eat is then used for other processes (as far as I understand it) so would mean I guess in theory at least that you wouldn't need to pack quite so much in? I just know that it's one of Art's (De Vany) recommendations, particularly for women who need to gain lean muscle and have a hard time eating enough protein.

My other thought from some lateral thinking and left field ...

You often refer to being full and not wanting to eat when not hungry just to satisfy protein quotas etc. What occured to me (at four o clock this morning!) is that your measuring system might be awry! Often I look at he foods you consume and find it surprising they have has few calories as you state.

I notice you use the north Amercian 'cup' system. We don't use that in the UK and personally I think it's really inaccurate, especially for certain types of food - how do you know how much to pack it in etc!

So my suggestion for you - weigh things with a scale for the next week to get an accurate quantity. And, make a comparison between the programme you use now and say Fitday to see if there are significant differences.

Given you didn't lose on the 30 day programme I think this could be the issue, you are actually eating more than you think! And, if measurements of protein are quite off that will affect the whole balance and what we seem to have discovered here is that the balance of protein is crucial.

And finally if all the other Primal Laws are in place it could be that you have other underlying physiological reasons for this apparent anomoly which might be worth investigating.

[Eva Lution]

I just got to the end of this thread. Finally. I started reading it when it began, sent Paleobird a private message thanking her for speaking for those of us for whom "throw out the scale" and "eat more fat" was just not working, and then went on my way with my own, very similar plan. I came back a bit later and WOW, had this thing exploded. So I spent the weekend reading every single post (minus the troll posts after a bit) just to get caught up. It is now Monday morning, I have to leave for work in 15 minutes, and I am completely inspired to keep up with my new, revised PB way of eating (which I believe is truly closer to what Mark Sisson intended in the first place).

I just want to add my own n=1 experiment for the record. At about the same time as Paleo started this, I began to wonder if something wasn't wrong with my own WOE. I had lost 12 pounds when I started PB, then gained some of it back, and was stalled with no movement on the scale. I hung in there, but it is frustrating when you are doing everything "right"--no cheat days, no grains, no sugar, etc.--and have nothing to show for it.

Last week I re-read Protein Power, figured out my lean body mass, how much protein I need to eat, and decided to aim for protein first. My daily plan is 77-110 grams of protein per day, 50-100 grams of carbs (I seem to hit about 55 naturally), and make up the rest in fat. Percentages end up about 50-55% fat, 25-30% protein, 20% carbs or thereabouts.

The outcome? For the first time in more than six weeks I am finally losing again. I dropped from 179.8 to 176.6 in less than a week. That is the first time the scales have budged belown 178.6 in over six weeks. It may not seem like much to anyone else, but for me, it's a wonderful sign that I'm doing something right.

I am encouraged that counting calories (staying between 1300-1500 a day) AND keeping an eye on fat seems to hold some promise for me. As always, YMMV.

Thanks for all the great information and stories from everyone along the way, especially Paleobird (of course), Bohdi, Pattyd, and Kelda. As others have said, lots to think about.

[Enamel]

I notice you use the north Amercian 'cup' system. We don't use that in the UK and personally I think it's really inaccurate, especially for certain types of food - how do you know how much to pack it in etc!

Agreed. This isn't a particularly good example since I don't think spinach is something you should worry about measuring meticulously, but there can be a lot more spinach in a cup depending on whether you squash it in or not.

[runnergal]

heh... back in my old calorie counting CW life I started using the scale instead of the cup because i found i could have so much MORE of both ice cream and pasta than I could pack in a cup.

[carres1973]

heh... back in my old calorie counting CW life I started using the scale instead of the cup because i found i could have so much MORE of both ice cream and pasta than I could pack in a cup.

That is SOOO true! I did the same thing when I was on Weight Watchers back in the day!

Carrie