*I’m not a doctor. I assume certain things to make point so if I say stuff like “there’s enough sugar in that to make you diabetic… I haven’t actually researched, and probably won’t. Just know that not everything I write is actually factual.
I started “day one (1)” of my plan to get “Ripped” ™ in the next 3-4 months.
The problems
- I work 8 hours a day in front of a computer. I have no physical activity whatsoever for at least 8 hours every day of the work week.
- My eating habits are disgusting, and have regularly gotten a little more disgusting.
- I had no regiment for exercise/eating properly
- I’m a fatty (not really compared to most, but I am gaining more weight than I have ever in my life.)
The solution, and plan
It’s always been obvious to me that what you eat controls how you look, not how much you work out. Look at it this way, I usually eat about 2-3 times a day.
- Lunch (12 pm-1pm)
- Dinner (6 pm-7pm)
- Late dinner (10:30pm-11pm)
I don’t snack. I don’t like to get things to “tide me over” before I eat. Just give me a meal. My thought was, if you can spare the energy to “make a snack,” then just make food. Does this only make sense to me?
Anyways. Long story short to finish that point, I wouldn’t eat snacks. The only times I did it eat or “snack”… it wasn’t exactly good to eat. (McDonalds, Wendy’s, Jack in the box, Taco bell, etc.) If it wasn’t fast food, it was just coke. I’d drink a Dr. Pepper or two a day, or a 44oz thirst buster, if it wasn’t a 44oz thirst buster it was a “medium” 32 oz coke from one of the fast food places. Put that together two times a day, sometimes three and you’re looking at a problem. Not only financially, but physically.
It occurred to me that you really don’t have to run your ass off, exercise like a maniac, or do anything too extreme. If you work out once a day, and you eat 2-3 times a day, you already eat three times as much as you exercise. If you drink cokes, cokes have enough sugar and carbohydrates to count as a full meal. I figured for me combining coke, candy bars, fast food, and other random things I shove in my face for the hell of it that I eat about 8 times more than I work out. If we wanted to actually get into numbers and say that every time I work out I burn 300 calories, and every time I eat I consume 1200… You get the point.
Some people even work out twice a day, even then, you eat 4 times more than you work out. I’m probably rounding this number WAY down for the average person. I know I’m rounding it down for me. Let’s look at another point of view — if you sit down 8 hours a day, and work out 1 hour a day, and sit down on average 15-20 minutes of that hour, you’re only standing up 40 minutes. My point is, the amount of physical activity anyone gets when compared to them sitting down/sleeping/eating is so small, it almost doesn’t even exist. The beautiful part of all this is our metabolism keeps working whether we’re sleeping/sitting down, or whatever we’re doing.
I see the entire problem being food. If you could calculate, food is probably 85-90% more responsible for any health disorder than anything else. There are a few things everyone has to do. Eat, sleep, water, air. That’s basically it. Yes, “shower” and “have a place to live” and all that crap, but essentially you can live with just those 4.
Change what you eat, change how you look, feel, everything.
I decided that before I dive in to an insane work out routine full of strength training and cardio that I would get my eating habits down to a tolerable level.
I’m working on a high fiber, low calorie, low fat, low sodium diet. Lean, think lean. I’m doing away with vitamins and I’m going to try my best to get ALL the vitamins I need from natural organic foods I consume. I’m still going to eat meat, and I might use a vitamin here and there if I’m lacking certain things, but I’m not going to take a multivitamin every day. It doesn’t make me feel better, it almost makes me feel worse.
Sunday (Oct. 28th) I went to the grocery and I bought:
- Low fat milk (1%)
- Kashi GOLEAN Crunch Honey Almond Flax
1 bowl (with milk) about 190 calories
3.2g Fat
500mg Omega-3
9g protein
8g fiber
15g of whole grains - Fiber One Oats & Peanut butter (for snacking)
9g of Fiber, 4.5g Fat, Calories 140 - Mini washington apples (for snacking)
About 3g fiber per apple
13g sugar - Benefiber chewables
Carbs. 8g
9g Fiber per 3 tablets (serving)
0g Sugar - Activia Strawberry yogurt
A lot of crap like acidophilous, and fiber, and Bifidus Regularis — latin for “good shits.” - Simply Orange medium pulp + extra calcium, or something like that (orange juice)
- Garden Salsa Sun chips (for snacking)
- 6 Pack Strawberry Slimfast Optima
24 vitamins and minerals
5g Fiber per can
180 calories
Full servings of vitamin E and C an average of 45% DV on all other vitamins. - 15 whole grains 8g fiber per 2 pieces of bread
- Low sodium, fat free smoked turkey breast
- Low sodium, sugar free American cheese
- Low sodium mustard
- South Beach Diet whole what flax wraps
8 Grams of fiber per wrap - Cucumbers
- Tomatoes
- Onions
- Feta cheese
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Low sodium, low sugar vinaigrette
How I eat it all
For breakfast:
I eat a fiber one oats & peanut butter bar (9g fiber)
1/2 Apple(s) (3-5g fiber)
3 tablets of benefiber (9g fiber)
1 Can of Slimfast (5g fiber + my vitamins)
Total fiber for breakfast: 26g fiber
Calories: Estimating about 350-400
For lunch:
Turkey sandwhich w/ bread, cheese, miracle whip, and mustard (about 8g fiber)
Hand full of sun chips (about 4g fiber)
Apple (bout 2.5-3g fiber)
3 tablets of benefiber (9g fiber)
1 Yogurt (says no fiber on label.)
Total fiber: 24g fiber
Calories: About 400
Summary — breakfast and lunch:
Total fiber: 50g fiber
Calories: 800-1000
For dinner:
Apple
Shopska salad (tomatoes, onions, cucumber, feta cheese, salt, pepper, olive oil, vinaigrette.) <– lots of stuff in this little number.
Arizona green tea/water/lipton citrus tea
3 tablets of benefiber (9g fiber)
or. Another sandwich with same ingredients including chips.
or. Bowl of cereal replacing sandwich/shopska
There’s probably about 24g of fiber in whatever I eat for dinner, sometimes more
My goal was to consume 40-50g of fiber a day, and I think I’ve met it. The proof’s in the toilet.
I wanted to eat less than 2,000 calories a day (preferably 500-1000)
Including an average of 2 snacks between my major meals, I eat about 75g of fiber a day I think. I could be calculating wrong.
So I’m going to stick with this plan, find foods I can rotate weekly/daily to substitute others and slowly start running in the mornings, then exercising after work, and running at night after work.
November will basically be the month I start running, and doing all of this. I wanted to spend one week readying my body with all the proper discipline to eat properly so I see results, instead of just maintain a nasty eating habit, and attempting to counteract it with exercise.
Some numbers about me right now
Height: 6′3″
Weight: 220
Target weight: 200
