Frustration

To be truthful, I am a bit frustrated with myself. My lifting has been going well- I am upping my cardio; however, my weight had not gone down- It has actually increased a little. I had a physical a couple of weeks and the doctor said I was in great shape expect for my body weight and my blood pressure. When you envision a guy that is 5’7/5’8 that is weighing in at 245ish in street clothes, I am not the average guy. I don’t have a bear belly. (between my wallet, phone, Ipod, knife, flip flops and other crap I carry on a daily basis.. it adds up fast- I am still 235 in workout clothes- I am not cheating you fitocracy!) Point is I need to lose weight for the sake of my heart and my over all health. It ain’t going to be easy I feel.

(Rant: I hate of the rack clothing. After you hit “large,” manufactures do not make the shoulders or arms any bigger. They just make the belly bigger. So every thing I buy to fit my shoulders, make me like I am wearing a smock- not flattering. Same thing with jeans- nothing fits quite as well as I want them too.)

So today, I have spent a couple hours at my local Starbucks researching different diet methods. I have heard a lot about IIFYM- If It Fits Your Macros. So I decided to do some research. It is pretty straight forward- you use your body weight  activity level and lean body mass to figure out how much of each macro nutrient you need to maintain weight (from there you can adjust for bulk or cut) Macro nutrients are Protein, Fat and Carb. It seems that there is a great amount of focus placed on Protein intake and that Carbs are used the fill in the leftover calories.

Most of the information I used was from here: The Spartan Warrior. It was a quick, straight forward read. I was able to figure out my approximate needs in under an hour. I am not going to go in depth here, because it is covered beautifully in the linked article. Point is that I am going to try this for the next few weeks. It will be interesting to try to measure my macro intake.

I am not a dietition, nutritionist, nor a health care professional- all this is personal research that I am sharing with you. Use at risk If you are interested in the excel worksheet that I created for myself that has fillable data, I have attached it to this post, here: Personal IIFYM-. All the spots in red are replaceable with your personal stats. You do need to know your body fat percentage for this to work and it only works with body weight in pounds, sorry.

Now for personal numbers. (36×30 Lucky jeans, relax, large/xlarge button down shirts, athletic fit, 17-18in neck… Wait, wot? Wrong numbers. Sorry.)

So I calculated macro with a body fat estimated at 25% at 106.6kg, leaving me with ~79kg lean body mass (LBM) From there I calculated my maintenance calories and my cutting calories (to cut weight, I shot for 1lb a week, 3500Kcal= 1lb; therefore, 500Kcal a day for a week, 7 days, equals 3500Kcal, which equals 1lb.) I am would consider myself moderately active- I workout 5 hours at a time and walk to my destination, weather and time permitting. I also calculated fat intake for high body fat, which used the the factor of 1-2g of Fat per LBM, for average person it is 1-2g Fat per total body weight (in kg, of course)

When all is said and done, I am slated with 160g Protein, 120g Fat, 232g Carbs. (Note: because I am using High BF% fat calculations my fats are lower than average and my carbs are up.) I am using cutting numbers right now. So if this works- will drop about a pound a week, there about.

Here is the worksheet again: Personal IIFYM-

Bon voyage