As we approach the first full year of the diet I’m excited to report another great week of getting more healthy!
Even though I only got to play a little basketball and managed to hit the gym only once this week, I did what I think was a great job in the “food intake” department.
This week I weighed in at 186.4 pounds which is a loss of 2 pounds since last week. I’m hoping to reach my goal of 185.0 by the time the full one-year mark rolls around and I’d love to maintain that weight for the foreseeable future.
My trips to the gym have obviously caused me to gain a few pounds in muscle and if I can continue that trend hopefully I’ll stay around the same weight while only gaining weight from muscle and losing fat. I know that to pull this off I’ll have to change the foods that I eat pretty dramatically – which is something that I’d love to do but feel might be one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced on my diet yet.
To gain muscle, and subsequently strength, I have to start eating a lot more protein and just generally healthier foods and leave the junk food and carbohydrates behind. Being that my current food diet is not even close to what it should be in this regard, I think it will be a big thing if I can pull this off. It begins with the food I actually have in the house – so shopping with the mindset that I want to only have good food in the house is probably the first step.
Can any recommend a shopping list for someone in my situation?
Update: I just wanted to thank everyone that sent me suggestions – especially James who wrote a great comment on this post with his suggestions and insight. James is definitely a great resource and friend to have – be sure to check out his site to monitor his progress which has been inspirational for me and my diet thus far.
I hope everyone is doing just as well on their diets as I’ve been able to do lately. Obviously I’ve had my bumps in the road but overall I could not be more happy with the results of deciding to diet. As this first year passes me by I look forward to continuing this new lifestyle for the rest of my life.
[tags]diet, the-diet, weigh-in, basketball, food, muscle, protein[/tags]
I’d say try taking a look at the abs diet books from Men’s Health. They have a list of 12 power foods that you could start with. Then maybe look around bodybuilding.com, great site with a great community. It’s almost been a year. Wow! I rememebr finding this site, dosen’t seem that long ago. Great job and congrats!
Cecil: Thanks for stopping by and offering your tips!
Colin,
You’re doing a great job broseph! I think you’ll reach you’re goal no problem. One thing I’d like to say before I “weigh-in” on the food intake is that gaining weight from packing on muscle is a long process, and unless you’ve been stacking I don’t think you’ll see a noticeable amount of weight gain from muscle mass.
It’s something I hear a lot, and I think it’s important to realize it takes a lot of “hitting the weights” hard to make any real gains in mass and therefore weight.
Although you could be experience weight stabilization which is caused by replacing fat weight with muscle weight, which makes it appear you aren’t losing any weight, when in fact you are, you’re just replacing it with better weight.
Yikes, I digress, sorry for the ramble.
On food.
Ideally, you should replace all the foods in your cupboard/kitchen with Organic or All Natural equivalents, steer clear of any and all foods containing high fructose corn syrup or corn syrup, intake sugar, carbs and fat in moderate amounts, you need all three for rounded nutrition, but you only need to have small amounts daily. You should also drink 10 – 8oz glasses of water daily and 6 smaller meals about 2-3 hours apart during your waking hours, cut out soda all together and take a multi-vitamin twice daily.
Now the above is ideal, but it is also unrealistic for many people, so another more realistic and maintainable way to go would be to get the cook-books “Eating for Life” and “The Biggest Loser Cookbook” and only eat items that appear within the books. This gives you a guideline and eventually you’ll have the knowledge to combine and create your own super nutritious and healthy meals.
I think Arnold said it best; “Why give the body something it doesn’t need?”
I hope this helps and I wish you continued success on your diet.
James: I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to respond to this. Your input is very valuable to me as I can definitely see the success you’re having with your methods. I look forward to beginning this new phase asap.
Thanks again!
Colin, no problem, my pleasure, anything I can do to help my fellow compadres on the Diet, I’m game.
I mistyped “you’re” in the first sentence, my apologies, it should have been your.
Also I forgot to say, be sure to take a free day once weekly, to give yourself a break. Eat whatever you like on this day and don’t exercise. This tells your body it’s not starving so that it burns unnecessary fat. It also helps psychologically.
On my free day I just eat larger portions than normal, this gets the same result but then I don’t feel like crap by days end.