My Diet / Exercise Habits

A rough idea of my diet as of 2016.04.25:

http://www.custommealplanner.com/bodybuilding/1073701/Nathan/ (later: the link is dead...)

What I eat / drink

• Drink:
  • Water
  • protein powder
• Carbs
  • Fruit
    • As of 2017.02.08 I'm not really eating any fruit. Maybe a package of raspberries or a banana once every few weeks.
    • What fruit I eat, when I eat it:
      • apples
      • cantaloupe
      • raspberries
      • bananas
      • tomatoes
      • peaches

Vegetables

• steam-in-bag vegetables (broccoli, string beans)
• small packages of baby carrots
• red bell peppers
• packaged mixed greens salad

Grains

• Quaker Oats - Old Fashioned (1/2 cup) [Update 2016.02.15 - I've been staying away from any grains, including oatmeal. IDK though, oatmeal may be OK.]

Protein

• protein powder
• chicken cooked in the microwave
• canned sardines (in water or olive oil)
• shrimp
• canned salmon (eg salmon salad)
• chicken (eg grilled chicken salad)
• canned tuna
• plain greek yogurt
• cottage cheese
• eggs
• Tyson Grilled & Ready chicken (just microwave it for 3 mins). Strict eaters would complain about the crap they add to these but I think they're a decent way to mix up my diet when I'm sick of protein powder and don't want to cook.

Fat

• Almonds
• Flax seeds
  • I've developed a love of Flax seeds. They taste great! The smell / flavor reminds me of when I used to eat bread; I guess the bread had flax in it?
  • Update 2017.02.15 - Yesterday I ate a lot of flax seeds and chia seeds and today I'm noticing that I have some gas. Nothing else in my diet has changed, so I'm guessing it's the seeds that's doing it.
• Chia seeds
• Scooby rec'd avocados but I haven't eaten them. Would guacamole count?
• Scooby rec'd peanut butter but idk if I'd be able to limit myself once I started eating it

Salt

• I've found if I haven't eaten enough salt I'll end up craving pizza or other junk food that has sodium in it.
• As of 2016.02.07 the main way I get salt is by putting salt on the chicken I cook every day.
• Kashi frozen meals have a good amount of sodium in them
• chilled jarred pickles have a good amount of sodium
• cottage cheese has a good amount of sodium

Misc

• I think Kashi frozen meals are delicious and relatively healthy for what they are. Strict eaters would probably have a lot to criticize ("too much sodium, too many carbs") but I think they're a nice break, definitely better than giving into a craving for Oreos. I think they're a good stepping stone for people.

My exercise log:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing


My habits change over time as I get bored with one type of food or one type of exercise. I'll try to keep a record of them here for my future reference (and for anyone else who may find them helpful).

General Findings
- Try to eat/drink very frequently in small amounts. For example, eat a sushi-sized portion or smaller every 10 minutes. Some trainers will say "drink lots of water", but I found that made me need to go to the bathroom more often, and my abdomen would be more filled-out. Instead I would limit myself to taking ~3 sips every few minutes, where before I would gulp down ~2 cups of water at a time.
- On the other hand, a larger portion of protein (~40-50g) eaten in the hour before bed has had me recover from soreness much faster.
- The key to avoiding impulsive-eating of junk food is to be very careful to make sure you don't end up with a deficit of something that that junk food provides. For example, I'll crave Clif bars and cookies when I really just want some sugar, and eating some watermelon will take care of that need and make me able to have Clif bars right in front of me without me craving them.
- Caffeine pills are a great way to get yourself motivated to work out on days where you don't really feel like it. But to make them as effective as possible, try to eliminate other sources of caffeine from your diet. (Advice taken from Scooby)
- If you're craving cookies (eg Oreo cookies), you may need some carbs. After eating 1/2 cup of oatmeal my craving for the oreos in the office totally went away.
- If you're craving ice cream or cereal, you may be dehydrated. Or at least, whenever I'm craving Haagen-Dazs or sugary cereal, it's usually that I'm dehydrated.


2011.07.29
taken from one of my Facebook posts:

2015.04

Daily diet:
- I have a habit of eating too quickly and thus eating too much. To fix this I'm trying to:
-- eat every ten minutes,
-- and each time I eat I eat a roughly-sushi-sized portion, so like a single sardine, or a single slice of cantaloupe the size of 2 fingers, 10 almonds, etc.
-- and I try to chew everything around fifty times (not being too strict about it), basically until it's like baby-sauce. The idea is that if I can increase the surface area of the food I can make it easier for my body to digest it, which means I don't need to eat as much to get the same benefit, which means my stomach gets slimmer (because I'm carrying around a smaller volume of food inside me). I also end up saving money b/c I don't need to eat as much.
- I use TimeLeft (software for Windows), which has a stopwatch widget you can keep on your desktop. I use that program to 
- 2 scoops of protein, mixed with water, from a Blender bottle, kept in a freezer until it's cold and then kept by my desk. I take three sips every 10 minutes.
-- I was using Optimum Nutrition and it was working great, I wasn't having any intestinal gas at all. Then the product I usually buy went up to $100 for 5lbs and I decided to try some other brands. Right now I'm using Isopure, which uses xylitol as a sweetener, and this morning I had some gas, which I suspect was caused by the xylitol. I've noticed in the past that I can't use chewing gum with sorbitol without getting serious intestinal gas.
- A can of sardines eaten in the afternoon (today I had it when I woke up b/c I didn't have anything else to eat at home). The cans usually have ~5 sardines, I eat one sardine every ten minutes.
- A 1lb plastic bin of cut-up cantaloupe ($3.99), bought from Safeway. I eat one "spear" every ten minutes, there are ~10 spears in the container.
- On Mon/Thurs/Fri we get healthy lunches from MyEatClub which are delicious, it's usually a meat (chicken/salmon), and vegetables (kale/carrots/etc.). I eat it slowly, every 10 minutes.
- I just yesterday bought a 1lb can of Bush's Vegeterian Low-Sodium baked beans ($2 on sale) and found it delicious (it has ~40g sugar and ~400mg salt in it, so not super healthy), so I may start eating that too because I've been feeling like I'm undereating.
- A banana, which I eat in ~4-6 bites (so, 40-60 minutes).
- 2015.04.30 - Three things:
-- 1) avoid protein powder that uses xylitol as a sweetener! I had the same issues with this that I have with bubble-gum that uses sorbitol as a sweetener: intestinal gas. I did some Google searches and they're both "sugar alcohols" and are both known for this problem. Apparently it doesn't affect everyone, which makes sense because otherwise I don't know why the companies would put out a product with those side-effects.
-- 2) either limit the rate at which you eat beans, or eat them every other day, or avoid them, because I had really unpleasant intestinal gas this morning, to the point that it actually woke me up at ~6am and kept me awake for an hour or two until it subsided. Very unpleasant. I bought a big stockpile of beans (~2+ weeks' worth), so I'll continue to experiment with them, but this is discouraging. On the other hand, I do think I've noticed their appetite-suppressing effects (something Scooby mentions on his website; apparently they make the stomach hold onto food for longer).
-- 3) The caffeine pills Scooby recommended have been working pretty well. I've been taking 200mg (two 100mg pills) and have noticed that I can go from feeling groggy and tired to alert and feeling good within about 15 -30 minutes. Last night I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted (because the beans woke me up), and when I woke up I was very, very close to deciding to skip the workout today, but I was able to convince myself after 15 minutes to at least take the caffeine pills, and that was the bootstrap that was able to get me to actually get out the door and over to the YMCA.
2015.05.04 - I found that eating a larger-than-average portion of protein before I go to sleep really helps me get rid of soreness by the next morning. For example, one night I had about half a blender bottle's worth of protein (so about a scoop) and a bunch of shrimp right before I went to bed, and I felt a MUCH more pronounced decrease in soreness than I usually feel overnight. I tried it again the next night (I had a 350 cal can of beans and half a blender-bottle) and it worked the second time too.
2015.05.12 - Went for coffee with Alison, didn't eat anything for an hour or two, then ended up buying a chicken at Whole Foods and eating ~half of it, including the skin. I was then able to summon the willpower to get rid of the skin from the rest of it.

2015.08.27
- Two days ago I was having really bad cravings for ice cream, and I noticed that this coincided with me not having exercised in a few days (~4 days+?). I had been eating very clean and exercising almost every day before then. So people need to be aware that if they stop exercising, they may get cravings back for junk food. I think I've noticed this in the past.

Diet / Exercise Log

• Sat / Mon / Thurs I do a 4,000 meter row on a Concept2. For the one I did today, I finished with a time of 16:04 (or 2:00.5 per 500m). I've been using a water-resistance level of 8 but it looks like your time is based on your total power output, so I don't think it should be necessary to keep the water-resistance-level constant in order to gauge your progress over time(?).
• I'm experimenting with Scooby's recommendation to take 3mg/kg caffeine an hour before exercise to increase your motivation: http://scoobysworkshop.com/caffeine-as- ... upplement/
• 2015.04.26 - I woke up with lower-back pain after rowing a 4k yesterday morning. I should have watched Concept2's advice on proper technique. After looking at their videos, my guess is that this lower-back pain was probably caused by me over-reaching at the catch. However, I was also leaning back past the 11 o'clock position, so that may also be part of it. On a probably-unrelated note, I've also probably been extending my shins past the vertical (ie sliding my seat too far forward). And in past sessions I had my knees bending outside of my arms, which is not right (it can cause knee pain, as I learned the hard way).
• 2015.04.30 - After adjusting my form the back pain went away, but now I have some slight knee pain. I'm going to switch to pull-downs for a session or two (giving my knees a few days to a week to rest) and then see if my knees feel better. I think the knee pain may have come from sliding too far forward at the catch, but I'm not sure. The next time I row I'll make sure to not slide as far forward and I'll see if that helps. I'm also wondering if the knee pain may be coming from having my seat too low on my bicycle, as that has given me knee pain in the past.
• 2015.04.30 - I wanted to take a break from erging to rest my knee, and I remembered my facebook post 4 years ago where I talked about my pull-down routine, so I looked it up and decided to just follow the same routine. I ended up doing 100x50#, 100x37.5# of pull-downs with my arms in the regular pull-up position (ie shoulder-width, not wide-grip). I wanted to do 200x50# but couldn't, so after 100 reps I immediately switched to the next-lowest weight of 37.5# and did another 100 reps. My goal was 200 reps without stopping. I noticed that a big difference between the pull-down machine and erging is that you don't get any kind of "break" between reps; with the erg you can totally relax between reps, but with the pull-down machine you always have the weight pulling on your arms.
  • I then was thinking about leaving but didn't feel tired, so I decided to use the push-press machine. I was originally planning to do 200 reps, but the lowest weight setting was 30# and I got tired quickly, so I ended up doing 100x30#, and for the last 40-50 reps I would take my arms off the machine for a second between reps in order to rest; I got that idea from erging, where I would be able to take a break between reps.
• 2015.05.07 - Took 200mg of caffeine ~15 mins before starting, did a 4k in 15:24.5, shaving off like 30 secs from my previous PR. My form also felt WAY better after having spent last session practicing my form. I wasn't leaning over past 1 o'clock at the catch, I was stopping my slide forward as soon as I felt myself roll up onto my toes, and I was stopping my lean back at 11 o'clock. I had a higher row rate this time, before I was like at 15 strokes / minute, now I was something around 23. [Update @ 12:45pm: I now have a cough that feels like I may have breathed in some dust while I was exercising. I also feel like I've lost a lot of the 'high' I felt at 10-11am.]
• 2015.05.08 - (Fri / rest) - I didn't feel at all sore yesterday, but today I woke up with sore traps (from the rowing). Otherwise I'm not really sore at all. I'm not sure what to think about that.
• 2016.01.29 - I took a break from working out for ~2-3 months because it got cold and I was craving high-calorie food and got sick of eating tons of protein, but now I'm getting back into eating healthy / working out. I put on ~30 lbs, which is a lot, but I didn't worry about it because I was totally confident that I could lose the weight when I wanted to. It ended up being a useful experience for advising people who are seriously overweight, because the exercises that you can do when you're very overweight are different from the exercises that you can do when you're not overweight or only a little overweight. Experiencing it firsthand helped me learn what exercises I should recommend to others. I had enough of a belly that I didn't want to jog / run because I was worried about messing up my knee, and I didn't want to do sit-ups because I tried it once and I ended up feeling like I was going to die, I think because I was putting too much pressure on my abdomen. I also had to be careful about how far I bent over when I was rowing on the erg, because if I bent over too far I put pressure on my belly and it would end up hurting / making me feel sick. It sounds like the kind of thing most people would be embarrassed to talk about but I found it interesting, because (like I said above) I'm interested in helping overweight people get down to a normal weight and I want to know what issues keep them from making progress.
  • I found this workout to work very well for me when I had a belly:
    • start with a 1 mile walk at 4mph on an incline (increase the incline over successive workouts, today I did 8 degrees)
    • get a drink of water, go to the bathroom if you need to
    • do a 2k on the erg, only bend over as much as you can comfortably (ie not putting pressure on your belly)
    • get a drink of water, go to the bathroom if you need to
    • do three sets of:
      • 10 leg presses on the incline leg press, try to push yourself and gradually increase the weight, I did ~320 lbs today in plates (idk what the min weight of the machine is)
      • 20 russian twists (I use a 45 lb plate)  or cable twists. I found this to be a way to work my abdomen without putting too much pressure on my belly.
      • 10 overhead presses / deadlifts / some kind of heavy olympic lift / dumbbell press / incline dumbbell press
      • 20 kettlebell swings (I started at 20kg and today I did 24kg)
• 2016.02.16 - I've started eating eggs again over the past week or so after going for years without eating them because of the sulfur, and I'm really loving them. I remember now how I felt in 2013 when I was eating ~5 eggs a day and feeling great, and how Carlo (college friend who's now a CrossFit trainer) was very positive about them in a FB post.
  • The big trick I've thought of this time is to be very thoughtful about when I eat eggs. I've decided that I'll only eat eggs when I'm unlikely to be around anyone 24 hours later. So, for example, I'll eat eggs on Fridays and Saturdays, or on Monday nights (because Tuesday night I won't be around anyone, and Wednesdays are work-from-home so there won't be as many people around me).
  • So my diet over the past week (which I think has been working well) has been the one I put on Instagram, but switching to eating eggs on the weekends.
    
  • Also, I'm making a point of not eating protein if I don't feel like it, ie if I don't have any muscle soreness. One of the big things that I think broke my diet last time (a few months ago) was that I got sick of eating so much protein.
• 2016.02.16 - I've been rowing again and I recently finally felt like I understood how to row properly.
  • For a long time I couldn't understand why you were supposed to only lean back after extending your legs all the way.
  • Recently I've been "externally rotating my shoulders" (as my CrossFit trainers would say), where I keep my arms forward but I try to pull my shoulders back and down as much as possible, so that my back muscles are flexed as much as possible.
  • I've discovered that if I do this while leaning forward at the catch, and also flexing my lower back, I can turn my legs, lower back, and shoulders into an unmoving single thing(?). It's hard to explain but basically it allows me to use my leg muscles to drive a lot harder without having it just have me lean over further, which was happening before. Before my back and legs and arms felt disconnected or loosely connected.
  • However, I also found yesterday that it's very important to totally relax my shoulder and lower back muscles during the "recovery" (sliding back to the catch). Otherwise my back muscles get tired very quickly from being flexed nonstop.
  • I've also found that it's important for me to try to use my arm / wrist / hand muscles as little as possible, because they get tired much more quickly than my legs / back muscles. So I just try to relax my arms / wrist totally during the catch and let them lock out.
• 2016.11.22 - Two things I've noticed recently:
  • 1) If I don't get enough salt, I start craving junk food (like pizza) that has salt in it. Recently I wasn't microwaving any meat, which is the only time I use salt, and so I wasn't getting any salt.
  • 2) Lifting and sleep are really crucial for curbing my cravings for sweets. If I don't do those two things, I crave sweets. If I do those two things, I don't crave sweets. It's really that simple.
• 2017.01.12 - A good trick I've been using recently is this: If I'm craving ice cream, I first close my eyes and kind of roll my eyes back in my head a little, and I see if the craving for ice cream goes away. If it does, I'm just tired, and what I should actually do is go take a nap. I just did that right before writing this up, and it worked great. I still need to learn what being low on calories feels like as opposed to craving carbs/fat/protein. IIRC from when I was running the marathon / studying for the LSAT, it may manifest as a general sluggishness, without any particular craving.
  • Also, when I got up I was still craving ice cream a little (although not nearly as much), so I cooked a bag of broccoli, and now (halfway through eating the bag) I feel great, no more craving for ice cream (as far as I can tell).
• 2018.01.21 - Started going to the gym almost every day and doing an hour each session on a stationary bike, and to deal with the craving for carbs that inevitably accompanies doing lots of cardio I started buying Gala apples and eating about a dozen of them every day, and I just noticed it seems to be giving me intestinal gas. IIRC I had the same issue when I was training for the NYC marathon: lots of cardio made me eat lots of carbs, which gave me gas.