It’s been almost a month since I started my new diet/food plan. I’m not the kind of person to disparage diets, to say you have to make a “lifestyle change” because diets come and go. I say if it works, it works. With that in mind, so far, mine is working. It’s not dramatic results but it does feel sustainable and I’m not left feeling hungry at the end of the day and my weight is trending down.
7 Day Withings Graph 
30 Day graph from MyFitnessPal 
1 Year Withings Graph
Granted, that doesn’t look like much, approximately 8lbs in 3 weeks. But when I tell you what I’ve been eating… It’s impressive to me.
The “rules” for my diet are very simple and very straight-forward. I eat 1500 calories a day with a high emphasis on protein. That means meat, eggs, cheese, etc. The more protein I spend those 1500 calories on the better. As long as I’m getting most of my calories from protein instead of fat or carbs and I come in under my calorie goal, that’s an A+ day. As long as I’m under 1500 calories each day (regardless of protein) it’s still a weight loss win.
So what have I been eating? Pizza. Pizza, hoagies, triple cheeseburgers, sausage and bacon breakfast sandwiches, and everything has been amazing. With a few tweaks to the products I was buying at the store I can load up two meat lover’s pizzas with toppings, on flatbread crusts, and pack both of them away for a single meal.
Above is my food diary for today, just what I felt like eating today. We can learn alot from this one image.
1,378/1,500 calories consumed. 152g of Protein vs 119g carbs and 33g fat. Enough sodium to petrify a water buffalo… Etc.
When we look at the actual ingredients here, first and foremost, there’s bread. In every meal. So miss me with that no-carb crap. Yes, the english muffin for breakfast is a low-cal (90 cal) version, but the hoagie rolls for lunch AND dinner are straight up fluffy buns.
Secondly, there’s alot of low or no fat options. I know, sounds terrible and scary. But from my experience they are perfectly acceptable replacements for their full fat counter parts. If I could recommend just one product/replacement from my current setup, it would be fat free cheese. Chedder, mozzerella, american singles. All of them have fat free versions that are still perfectly tasty.
If I could recommend a second substitution, it would be 93% lean beef to replace the 85/15 I’m used to. I am eating smash burgers and chopped cheese hoagies on the regular and it is a barely noticeable change.
Overall I’m down from my “starting” weight of 212 (I didn’t start logging my food until a few days in, I’d estimate 214 was my real high water mark) to 204.7 in just under three weeks. That’s slow but meaningful progress and importantly I don’t feel a desire to stop. I’m sure I may get bored of this diet eventually, but going into week four I think I’m feeling even better about it than I did when I started.
I’ll be posting some recipes and progress updates as there are developments. Stay tuned.