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!
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