Random diet experimentation update
Lately I’ve been more focussed on my diet and have been experimenting with stuff. I’ve blogged before that I was beginning to experiment with “bulletproof coffee”. I was originally just calling this buttered coffee but it’s only fair that I give the inventor, Dave Asprey his dues and use the name he gave it. Just calling it buttered coffee is misleading as it contains more MCT oil and coconut oil than butter so I’ll go with the “bulletproof” name from now on.
I’m still drinking this stuff every day and I really like it. I feel good, I have been losing weight consistently and so far it seems to be working for me.
Over the last while I’ve also been doing occasional days of intermittent fasting. I got this idea also from Dave Asprey.
Basically in the morning when I get up, I drink my bulletproof coffee and then I don’t eat lunch till 2pm. Then you aim to eat all your food between 2pm and 8pm, though I’m not exactly following this religiously, I’m using it as a guideline to experiment with.
Now, before I started with the bulletproof coffee, I used to not eat breakfast and by 12 I was insanely ravenous and would eat ALL THE FOOD. Now with the morning buttered coffee I can go till 2pm with no food with no problem at all. The idea is basically to push your body into a state of ketosis (fat burning) and, for me anyway, it seems to work. The funny thing about it is that it doesn’t feel difficult and in fact I feel very clear and focussed and good. When I do eat, I don’t eat huge amounts and as I mentioned before, what I am eating is very clean and healthy. Most days for lunch I’m eating a tonne of vegetables and some meat. I’m also trying to eat more (healthy) fats so in addition to the butter and MCT oil in the morning I’m also eating a lot of almonds, cashews and avocado.
Actually, chicken, avocado, almonds and hot sauce is a delicious lunch… you should try it.
Anyway… Due to the fact that I was changing how I ate, I was curious to look into what I was eating and to see what my calorie intake was and how my consumption was balanced in terms of carbs/fat and protein. For a few weeks I used the “my fitness pal” website. I was really just curious as I had literally no idea whatsoever what my calorie consumption was like.. Literally, it could have been 2000 or 4000, I just dunno.
It was interesting to record and monitor this. I found that my calorie intake varied from 1500 calories on a healthy midweek day to around 3500 on a weekend night with wine and junk food. On the whole though, I think my calorie intake relative to my basal metabolic rate and my rate of calorie burn through training is pretty well balanced.
The balance of where these calories came from was also interesting… I was aiming for 50% fat, 25% carbs and 25% protein. Overall I was close enough to these ratios though I concluded that it’s really easy to get lots of calories from fats and carbs, I almost never eat enough protein. I’ve definitely cut down my carb intake though again I’ve been up and down with my intake ranging from around 30g to over 200g in a day.
I only did this for a few weeks and felt that I was done with it. My diet is working fine and on the whole I’ve been feeling really good. I’m not being obsessive about my diet… far from it. I’ve still been drinking wine, munching potato chips and paying the occasional visit to KFC or burger king. Conversely though I am much more aware of what I am eating and how it makes me feel. I’ve been losing weight and in fact just the other day I measured in at a weight that meant that my BMI was back into the “normal” range after being officially “overweight” for a long time. Generally I don’t give a shit about BMI… I’m a big guy and will never have a low BMI but it’s nice to be officially not fat 😉
I’ve realised I don’t get enough protein and I’m addressing this. However its only after reviewing the numbers while writing this that I’ve realised how much the carb intake varied, so I think I will keep the experiment going for another while and pay a little more attention to how varying levels of carbs make me feel.
I know a lot of people that read this blog are very interested in nutrition so feel free to give me a shout if you’ve any questions or just want to yell at me for doing things that you think are unhealthy!