New Diet Goals

Last week was supposed to be start of another heavy training period for me, but after the funeral on Monday I just couldn’t seem to get motivated, and feeling ill on Wednesday didn’t help. I was also unmotivated to eat properly, and spent a lot of time comforting myself with chocolates and toffee. Not to mention using rice pudding as a lunch time staple! So no surprise that this week’s averages are just about as bad as the week before. I averaged over 2300 calories per day, with only 175 calories burned through exercise. The nutrient balance was way off too, with 19% from protein, 49% from carbohydrates, 30% from fat and 2% from alcohol. Keep in mind that I’m shooting for 25% protein! But it seems that whenever I get the urge for treats they are always high sugar, high fat ones.  

I doubt I have lost any weight this month, though my clothes are still fitting well – all of them – so I don’t think I’ve put on any weight either. To be honest, I think that ship has sailed and I’m not really going to lose those last couple of pounds without more effort than it’s worth. I’m heading into the part of my training where I do more speed work and fewer long slow sessions and gym sessions. I was trying to lose body fat by training my body to burn fat for fuel during my runs, hence the rather high percentage of fat in my diet. But that only works if you then do long slow endurance workouts without taking on extra carbohydrates. Now that I am doing shorter but faster workouts I need more carbohydrates, plus my long runs are now well over an hour, so I need carbohydrates there too in order to prevent myself from hitting “the wall” and stopping. This being the case, it’s time to lower the percentage of fat in my diet and up the carbohydrates.

So the challenge this week will be to lower the percentage of fat in my diet from 30% to 25% and raise the carbohydrates to around 50%, while keeping the amount of protein at 25%. As I’m no longer trying to lose weight, calories can creep up to from 1800 to 2000 per day. Not that I’ve been eating 1800 calories per day for a while, but at least now I’ve stopped trying to!

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
2258.58	102.97g	275.83g	71.75g	14.20g	23.96g
	18%	49%	29%	4%
Calories burned through exercise:		Rest Day

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
09:00	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Mattesson's Turkey rashers	3 rashers
	Nature's Path Gluten Free O's	50g
	Alpro Soy milk	120mL
	Sainsbury's pressed apple and cherry juice	200mL
09:30	Black tea with milk and sugar	500mL
10:30	Black tea with milk and sugar	500mL
13:30	Waitrose Broccoli & stilton soup	300g
	Rannoch smokery Scottish pressed game terrine	60g
	Amisa Buckwheat crispbread	38g
	Waitrose Caramelised red onion chutney	17g
	Fresh strawberries	105g
	White wine	75mL
14:00	White wine	75mL
	Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate	10 squares
15:00	Green Tea	250mL
16:30	Raspberry and Echinacea tea	250mL
17:15	Irish Yoghurts Diet Pear and Mango	125g
	Sainsbury's fruit and seed mix	40g
	Twinings Camomile, honey and vanilla tea	250mL
20:00	Baked chicken	80g
	Mrs Crimble's Sage & Onion stuffing mix	80g prepared
	Sainsbury's Sliced green beans	80g
	Bisto Best Chicken Gravy	about 5g
	Essential Waitrose Bramley apple sauce	about 20g
	Waitrose Melange Champagne and Amaretto chocolate mini eggs	53g
21:30	Ellactiva Chocolate Calcium Chew	1 chew
	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.