allright, i am finally busting out the food log for the first time starting tomorrow. just have a couple of quick questions. 1. do you count fiber as carbs and calories since it doesn’t really get used? 2. approximately how many calories/carbs are in an average sized banana? 3. can you pretty much guess the calories in unlabeled stuff? for example, since banana is basically carbs and there are 4 cal/g in a carb, could i just assume 25g of peeled banana is 100 calories? or if i have some deli sliced turkey that weighs 100g, would that be around 400 calories since it is pretty much all protein?
Go to Food and Nutrition Information Center (FNIC) | National Agricultural Library cgi-bin/nut_search.pl, it will tell you all you need to know.
Here’s some advice that may save you a LOT of work, if you can handle a little monotony. I’ve found it very useful to design my diet in much the same manner that I design my training program. I write my meals in advance, and calculate the macronutrient breakdown of each one. Then I can plan exactly what I’m going to eat a day in advance, or just eat the same thing every day. This is a lot easier than writing everything down as I ingest it and trying to backtrack later, only to find that I missed a macro or calorie goal for the day. Good luck.
Or (or more likely and) www.fitday.com. Look up “banana, raw” and you’ll see options such as small, medium, large (with inches given) and you can say e.g. 1/2 a small banana, or you can enter how many linear inches. etc.
You can also try fitday.com. It will store what you’ve eaten for the day and break it down by macronutrient. I also figure out what I want to achieve for the day, and the night before break it down into six meals using fitday. Then I measure everything out, box it up, and take it to work with me.
I do something similar to what Demo Dick sugests, but i do this weekly. I always buy the same food every week and only write it down if i make any changes to it.
PS: dont forget to delete the spaces in the link i gave you.
Demo Dick, share your weekly plan with all of us!
I KNEW someone was going to ask that. Actually, right now I’m kind of in “diet limbo”, and not on a “specialized” (i.e. cutting or bulking) diet. I’m coming off of a 2 1/2 week vacation where I basically ate everything in sight, and DAMN it was good! But DAMN, did I blow up! LOL. I’m currently easing myself into a cutting cycle, and things are going well. Here is basically what I eat every day, and please remember, someone asked for this. I don’t have the macro/calorie breakdowns figured out, but I will do this (a MUST) when I’m working toward a specific goal:
Breakfast: 1 cup of old fashioned oatmeal, cooked in water, with 1 tsp. sugar free maple syrup for flavor, and 1 scoop protein powder in water (don’t scrimp on a cheap one, either-protein powder is NOT protein powder)
Mid morning snack: Protein shake (2 scoops), 1 1/2 cups of raw veggies or 1 piece of fruit
Lunch: 1/2 pound of the Berardi bros. BB chili, two heaping tbs. of fat free cottage cheese, nuked.
Afternoon snack: 1 can tuna (in water), 4 fish oil caps
Pre-workout shake: carb + protein
Post workout shake” carb + protein + creatine (guess what happens in between pre- and post!)
Dinner: Steak and potato
Late night snack: 1 can tuna (in water), 4 tbs. Metamucil
Admittedly, I’m not eating enough fresh fruits and veggies right now, but I do most of the time. I also make sure to drink at least a gallon of filtered water every day. Obviously, sweets (including soft drinks) and fast food are no-nos (I did plenty of that while I was on vacation). I supplement with a multivitamin, Solaray vitex, vitamin E, and vitamin C. Cutting can be a real pain in the ass because I’m rather gluttonous, but MD6 makes ALL the difference. It completely kills food cravings for me. I’ve also been really pleased with the results I get from Methoxy-7 when dieting down. I have a detailed cutting diet, complete with macronutrient and caloric profiles written out, but after THIS post, I doubt anyone will ask for that. :)