Calorie Tracking and Intermittent Fasting - How I made a profound improvement to my diet

I’ve had this goal in mind ever since early 2019, I knew that tracking my diet and regulating my eating schedule was important but I would always say to myself “I don’t have time” or “I’m too busy”, I deluded myself into thinking that it was too hard and not worth the time. Excuses, costly ones too.

In retrospection, not only does tracking my diet only take about an extra 20 minutes every day to do, it is an investment that would elevate literally every major aspect of my life I value most: school, fitness and sleep.

 

Why I started doing this

I’ve always been interested in nutrition and fitness, I’d listen to podcasts or watch a couple of videos regularly on dieting but have never mustered the discipline to meaningfully apply any of the knowledge until now.

I’ve had a decent-ish diet, I’m not really big on junk food, I never drink soft drinks and I stay away from most sugary snacks, so this isn’t a zero-to-hero story. But I’ve always known I could do better. I’ve put in a lot of effort in working out and when I feel like I’m not getting as good of a result as I would like, I’d think: since I’m already putting myself through the pain of working out, why not just go all the way and fix up my diet too? Well, that was the kind of easy-to-say, hard-to-do type of thinking. Food is what often brought me comfort and a “reward” after a long or draining day, so when I would try to eat healthy after a long workout it didn’t go so well. Likewise, whenever I get mentally fatigued or frustrated from studying, I’d go for food. So, it wasn’t until one day when I decided to stop thinking and just do that I actually shifted my thinking.

The Problem

-        I ate too much at night and before bed and it made falling asleep harder

-        My diet can be better overall

The Solution

-        16/8 Intermittent fast (8 hour feeding window), no eating after 8pm

-        Track everything I eat, setting a daily calorie goal

 

How intermittent fasting has helped reduce my caloric intake and recalibrated my sense of hunger

 

There’s a ton of scientific evidence for the anti-aging effects and a host of other benefits in intermittent fasting which I find extremely interesting but is not super relevant at this stage in my life (I’m 19 haha) so I will only talk about the concrete effects that I feel is helpful for me:

At the start of the “no-food after 8pm” rule, it was tough. I’d get strong urges to eat, stomach-churns, not from true hunger but rather just a trained response from habitual late-night eating. I coped by chewing gum (not sure if it made it better) and distracting myself by just chatting with friends or studying.

But not long after, my body learned that “we are not getting food at night” and eventually the urges stopped and now I’m completely comfortable at night not eating. Since I had a habit of overeating at night (probably from an old habit of working out late), I effectively reduced my overall caloric intake. But more curiously, I discovered that my sense of hunger has been reset to a more sensible baseline. I learned to contain those urges for food out of pure boredom and as a way of coping with emotional frustrations.

This, in tandem with a cleaner diet has also resolved the issue of eating out of fatigue too, my energy level is much more stable and I stopped getting those “crashes” (alternative term I find hilarious is “carb comas”) that would lead to even more eating. Another major benefit for me is the feeling of freedom in overcoming the once-desperate grip hunger used to have on me, I now only choose eat when I’m truly hungry, even then it is no longer a burning urge but rather more so a background feeling. This alone has helped me focus better.

 

How tracking has made my diet almost 100% clean

 

By simply recording everything I eat, I became much more aware of exactly how much I was eating and what I was eating. With any bad habit or breakdown in discipline, there is always a window of time between the impulse and the action, often times the rational voice in our heads knows that we shouldn’t and is telling us “don’t do it” but is simply too weak or we just don’t care enough for it to override that impulse.

I find this to be especially true when I’m hungry or fatigued both mentally and/or physically. However, by recording what I eat, I extend that window of time between the thought and decision, forcing myself to stop and consciously reflect on what I am doing. Often, that alone is enough to stop myself from eating something I shouldn’t.

Moreover, by having a record of what I eat is a form of accountability, if someone is keeping a record that can reflect every moment of your weakness, I’m willing to bet you will get your act together a lot more. The same is true for me when I’m the one keeping record too, I hold myself accountable. Without tracking and keeping score, there is no accountability.

My weekly indulgence  has always been a bag of chips on the weekends when my dad goes shopping, I’ve been trying to get him to stop to help me eat healthier (but in my head I’d still justify it by “oh it’s only once a week”) but apparently he finds it funny watching my discipline slowly breakdown with each time I walk past the bag of chips on the kitchen counter. That has been the repeating weekly story for the past few years.

But ever since I started tracking all my intakes, I haven’t touched a single bag of chips despite my dad tempting me on purpose haha, I would still feel slightly tempted every time I see it sitting on the kitchen counter but I’ve been able to overcome that weakness every time. My will hasn’t magically gotten stronger overnight, it is the system I’ve set up around my eating that has helped me stay disciplined.

The chips example is just to illustrate how tracking my diet it has helped me to resist temptations but is trivial in effect compared to the overall shift in my diet.

The most basic principles like:

•         eat less carbs
•         eat more protein,
•         don’t eat convenient but unhealthy frozen foods like pies and dumplings,
•         don’t eat packaged or sugary foods

has really moved from background knowledge to something that I would consciously think about with every meal. That ultimately is what I think has made the most difference for me in terms of my health and energy.

 

 

How to do it

The only two things you need are

1.      A small kitchen scale

-    

2.      A diet tracking app with a food nutrition database

-      I use Easy Diet Diary, its free, has a lot of foods that you can just look up and scan the bar code for.

Every time I eat something, I weigh it and record it in the diet tracker, simple as that. It may take slightly longer at first looking up all the foods you eat but the app has a feature where you can select recent foods you ate so it becomes much easier if you pretty much eat the same stuff every day like me.

 

What if it is homecooked meals?

 

Homemade foods are a bit more tricky to track but it honestly isn’t that much more effort. This has also been one of my biggest excuses for not tracking my diet, but it is just that, an excuse.

Here are some tips:

-        For separate foods like rice or like a capsicum dish, I weigh them individually and just look up “steamed rice” or “capsicum” in the app and put in the weight

 

-        Use a big plate for yourself, grab all the food you want to eat at once, so you don’t have to weight again and again as you get seconds

 

-        If it is an uncommon dish or not in the database of the app, (happens a lot with Asian food trust me), just look up the closest thing

o   E.g for a random dish like with beef slices, 2 different types of vegetables god knows what else, my solution is just: do the best you can, weigh the whole thing, guess the percentages of pork vs vegetables

§  E.g 100g of mixed beef and vegetables I just guess like 30g of pork so I look up “pork” and put in 30g, and look up the main vegetable like “capsicum” and put in 70g

o   E.g for soup noodles I just try to get the noodle first and weight that by itself and ignore the watery weight (not much calories in the soupy part anyways)

o   Sometime the database will actually surprise you, it might have some unexpected stuff like bean-paste filled steamed bun (豆包), so look it up anyways.

 

-        Remember, this isn’t titrations, the idea is to just get an estimate. The effort of spending an extra 3 min being nit-picky isn’t worth the extra 30 calories of precision you gain in return.

 

Other food tips that has made life easier

-        If you’re trying to cut or lose some weight

o   Get those frozen mixed vegetables from woolies: super cheap, easy to cook (just boil), low calories, fulfilling, goes well with chicken

o   Drink tons of water, before during and after a meal

o   Eat less carbs, translation: less rice, noodles, bread, more protein

-        Foods that I like to make or eat, super easy and quick. Suitable for horrible and impatient cooks like me

o   Chicken breast/thigh fillets + leftover rice + boiled mix vege, chuck some seasonings on it (I use Moroccan and mixed herbs), throw it in the pan with oil, easy-peezy

§  Look up how to make chicken breast, my description is terrible haha, just giving you ingredients and ideas

o   Musli + Greek yoghurt + flavoured protein powder + banana = a snack that I eat too much

o   Milk (skim if you want) + oats + microwave = nice for breakfast on cold days

o   Canned Tuna (I like corn/mayo) + avocado + boiled mix frozen vegetables = healthy breakfast

-        Every meal just think: protein, healthy fat, carbs

 

Cheat meals, days-off and consistency

 

I don’t plan cheat meals, or plan to only stay disciplined with tracking only 5 or 6 days of the week. Because Jocko Willink said it best:

“The problem is that the 80/20 becomes 60/40, then 40/60, then 20/80, and then all bets are off.”

That is why I aim for staying disciplined 100% of the time because that can turn into 99/1 which is okay. Do I still sometimes eat high-calorie foods that I’m better off not eating? Of course, we are all human and sometimes circumstances dictate our choices more than we like. So aim high but be kind to yourself, go for something that you can commit long term to not just a “HYPE-IM-GETTING-A-SIX-PACK-IN-A-WEEK-6-CALORIES-PER- DAY” challenge and give up after like 3 days. Results come slowly but surely, stay disciplined and patient!

 

What is next?

 

I want to do more research and collect enough intuition for foods and their calories to eventually plan my daily meals down to the exact calories and composition. That is a quite a bit of work for marginal returns so it remains an aspiration rather than a necessity for now. I’d love to learn more about nutrition and dieting, so if anyone has any tips on how they go about doing this I’d love to talk to you and learn! Hope you all come out of quarantine fitter and healthier!