June 2013 Summary

With July underway I wanted to belatedly post what the first of many monthly updates.  During the actual experiment phase these sorts of updates will allow me to look at large scale changes during a diet phase.  By looking at the month as a whole it is possible to see much longer term trends than what one can see for simple daily or weekly stats, which will also be a bigger part of the experiment.  You can see graphs of the various elements and their discussions below the fold:

Overall, the month went very well.  I had been trying to ramp up my exercise to get to the peak of my base building before beginning marathon training.  I have been having some problems with the longer runs wiping me out, but having recently deciding to take up the Galloway Method a lot of that has been getting easier.  I also was coming off of my allergy medicines as my peak allergy season came to an end.  I had been hoping that a lot of the weight I had put on over the previous few months were because of those.  However I didn’t quite get that rebound.  I’ll blog on that topic at a later time.  I also did an experimental week of eating each of the diets I’ll be trying.

I was pleased to see how easier it was to hit each diet for just one day.  The food plans I was able to find were pretty easy to make, and better still they were also quite tasty.  Still, it was just one day of each type of eating.  I’ll need to go on something a little more aggressive than that to really get the feel for what it will be like.  Even better will be mixing that into a vacation or special weekend, since over a year and a half I’m going to have to encounter those as well.

Looking at these monthly charts I can get an idea of how things went in terms of nutrition and calorie balances.  Based on the fact I began the month at about 180-181 pounds and ended the month in that same range, means that I should have about a net calorie balance between my output and my input.  As can be seen in the graphs, that’s exactly what I have.  Give or take on the average day I ate 30 calories more than I brought in.  Looking at the time history of the month that looked like most days were slightly under in calories with a few days way way over in calories.  That’s how I plan things mostly.  I love eating and drinking richly with friends and family, which is mostly on the weekends.  If I don’t want to get heavier over time I need to build up calorie deficits over longer times.  However if I stay at too low a calorie level for too long then that could cause my body to go into starvation mode, which will just cause my metabolism to slow and start a bad downward cycle.  That’s not a good thing at all.

In terms of composition, it looks like I had about 47% carbs, 31% fat and 17% protein, with the remaining being alcohol.  That’s not necessarily a bad makeup, albeit maybe a bit carb heavy, however I don’t like the fact that my protein intake was as low as it was.  It wasn’t way too low, but considering how much I ate there is no reason it should have been so low.  I know I ate a few too many desserts, had a good amount of beer and wine and not enough healthier foods.  Again, nothing crazy bad, but I can do better.  That said, my micronutrient profiles were pretty solid.  I was just a smidgen under on Calcium, but I also don’t keep track of the Perrier that I regularly drink which has a good amount of calcium in it.  A little extra almonds and the hair under Vitamin E would be above.  I should be able to get those levels up pretty easily.  The only supplementation I had was a Vitamin D pill so the fact that I was able to hit those micronutrient levels is a good sign.