Diary of a Fat Man: The all-inclusive experience. Going to Turkey and not gaining weight

My weight loss as part of the project “Championship. Lifestyle” is already 1.5 months old, and during this time I have realized a lot of things. And to be precise in terms of wording, I have experienced the popular clichés that accompany a thinning person. This post is going to be all about food. Oh, you can talk about it for hours. And do it in such a delicious way that you will drool. In the first few days of my “new life” I refreshed my memory of the meaning of this phrase again. Drool flowed often, like characters from cartoons, where one tries to eat the other. However, then the situation changed. Smoothly and gradually.

You are what you eat! Analyze your diet

My nutritionist coach Andrei Semeshov, in response to a direct question: “What to eat and drink?”, answered also directly: “You should not artificially deprive yourself of everything. There was a well-feeling comrade who likes to drink beer with friends in an Irish bar a couple times a week. He realized that he had to take care of himself. So if you explain to him that everything, the bar is dead, then how long will he live so boring and sad? Our job is to make it fun. Even if it’s a little hungry.”

Sounds encouraging. But to be fair, before that, he strongly recommended “the minimum task – to fit into the originally specified caloric content. And the subtask is to keep fats at the specified level.” That is, you should start by analyzing your current diet to understand the difference between the desired calorie limit and the actual one. This is what I did with the help of a special app that counts calories, fats, carbohydrates, proteins and gives a lot more useful information. I have FatSecret on my phone, but MyFitnessPal, Runtastic Balance and others will do. In apps like these, you just need to type in the name of the product you are consuming and its mass. Most likely this product is already in the system down to specific variations of popular brands. Calories and other metrics will be counted automatically. The day in the application is divided into “breakfast”, “lunch”, “dinner”, “snacks”. The report for the week is formed in one touch. It is insanely convenient.

Example report.

Before my trip, I packed my bag with athletic sneakers and a lot of white t-shirts to run in them along the sea at 7 am and change them after each workout. As a result, at 7am all I wanted to do was crawl deeper under my blanket and not look at my watch.

How do you analyze your nutrition report? Learning how to count calories

This report was generated back in April when I first started participating in the program. Of course, I decided for myself in advance to give up fast food, fried food, everything that I considered harmful. I was not forced, but I really wanted to cultivate a new culture of eating. After the first report, the nutritionist trainer concluded:

“Dmitry’s average daily calorie intake was in the range of 2300-2400 Kcal. It seems that he is very accurate in determining his caloric intake. If we just use the formula, his basic metabolism is defined at the level of 1800-1900 Kcal. Further it is proposed to use coefficients – 1.2 at a minimum level of physical activity, 1.4 – if during the day it is possible to maintain a certain level of movement and two or three times a week go to the gym.

In our case, this “fork” is 2265-2642 Kcal. Dmitry, as we remember, successfully solves the problem of weight loss, limiting his diet to 2300-2400 Kcal. And while the process is going on steadily, I would in no case advise to follow the path of further calorie reduction. It makes sense to ‘squeeze’ the most out of each stage.”

It was the figures of 2300-2400 Kcal per day that became my guideline for food intake. Most importantly, I realized that I could afford a candy bar or a few beers. But! If you remember that there are 500 Kcal in 100g of a popular chocolate product, you don’t want to waste them so thoughtlessly (and not very efficiently).

Since then, my food has temporarily turned into numbers. The math was not aggravating. I soon picked a set of foods that I like, fit the key “harmlessness” metrics, and are easy to prepare. When it comes to side dishes, it’s buckwheat, rice and a wide variety of cereals. Sometimes boiled potatoes or pasta. If we are talking about main courses, then preference was given to boiled chicken or turkey, a little less often chicken cutlet. A salad of chopped vegetables without dressing became a favorite dinner. I ate red peppers, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes wholeheartedly and with great pleasure. It was all great, but then vacation happened.

Take care not only of the sun, but also of temptations in food and drink

No, I didn’t lay on the beach or in bed until noon. Twice a year I take a vacation from my main job to then work hard at the Sporting Wave soccer festival. You got it right – everyone on vacation rests, and I work from morning until late evening, sometimes without eating at all. And that’s the first problem – my eating habits are broken. Now there are no breakfasts and lunches, there are “no, I will not go to breakfast, I’d rather sleep” and “after 0:00 can still eat? Great, I’m going to the restaurant.” The second problem is that I stopped counting calories in the app. It was just really lazy to spend time counting the mass of food consumed. The third problem is food temptations and overeating. If you’ve been to an ultra all-inclusive hotel, you know what I mean. In such hotels you can eat at least 24 hours a day, and there are always dishes that you just can’t not try. You don’t notice how three times you come to the buffet table for more. The fourth problem follows from the third – alcohol. It, too, is available almost around the clock. At the beginning of the program I decided for myself that I would definitely keep even beer consumption to a minimum, but at sporting events and in good company it is impossible to ignore it.

Going to the sea and working in a crazy rhythm had a big impact on my diet. But, to be fair, I understood the responsibility to myself, and all the above-mentioned problems did not go to the extreme. However, I returned home exhausted. Meals again had to be systematized, and homemade rice and chicken were no longer perceived. I did not want to return to monotony.

Even more frightening was the prospect of taking a meter in his hands and standing on the scale. The only thing that calmed things down was the smartwatch. Every day they counted more than 15,000 steps, which indicated an acceptable physical activity. In the end, the scale showed no change in weight – 94.2 kilograms. That’s how much I weighed before the trip. My waist, on the other hand, added 1 centimeter. I really wanted to believe in a mathematical error, but the feeling of heaviness and fatigue said otherwise. Thankfully, it didn’t start to regress.

Before the trip we agreed with the trainer that I would send him a photo of the gym in the hotel and he would make me a program. I don’t even know where exactly the gym was located. Before my trip, I had packed my bag with athletic sneakers and lots of white t-shirts to run in them along the sea at 7am and change them after each workout. As a result, at 7am all I wanted to do was crawl deeper under my blanket and not look at my watch.

After my trip, I looked at myself in the mirror and realized that it was impossible to lose what I had achieved. The gym, walking is great, but I need help organizing my nutrition again. What steps I took, what test I failed, and how I found my food option, I will tell you in detail in a new entry of the “Diary of a fat man”. For now, sorry, pizza won’t eat itself… I wish it would and neither will I.