Number400

...and supplements their hunger with things like cereal, cookies and doughnuts or other junk foods? Carbs just drive hunger for more carbs.

I'm 6'1" and weigh 165lbs. My summer weight is 160.
My typical weekday breakfast is:
Large glass of water before leaving the house
1 hour later at work, I eat about 3 tablespoons of plain Irish oatmeal
Then around 10am I eat a banana and a small box of raisins and a tangerine or cutie
Lots of plain hot tea and water during the day

Lunch:
PB&J on wheat bread or if I buy, it's either a 6" Turkey sub from Subway, or one plain Flatizza and if I had a good workout the night before, it will be a 6" roast beef sub. I never get condiments, just spinach, cheese and the meat on wheat. And always two chocolate chip cookies...
Then around 3pm I will have an apple
Then I will buy a bag of cookies from the vending machine
Some days I will eat 10-20 Hershey kisses as well

Dinner:
Usually a pasta dish or roasted chicken breasts with brown rice and broccoli. I do eat broccoli 3-4 times a week.
and then several huge bowls of Raisin Bran with flax or Cinnamon life cereal with 2% milk.
And sometimes cookies after dinner
I also have a stash of baking chocolate chips that I will eat with spoonfuls of peanut butter

I typically eat more junk on workout days and fight not to on recovery days. I row, ride or run most days and sometimes two activities per day in the warmer months. I never drink soda or eat at fast food restaurants and I do not drink alcohol. When I do eat out, it's always a burger or Indian food and for a change do eat large portions.

I'm told that I typically barely eat enough food to sustain human life. I struggle with this daily and then binge on cookies and other crap to satisfy my hunger. I am a healthy weight and have good cholesterol numbers and am quite fit but I never feel that great. I typically start a ride or workout without enough calories on board and it hurts my performance. Last night, I ate a big dinner for a change and jumped straight on the trainer and took more than 10 minutes off of a climbing stage that kicked my butt last week. I never ran out of energy, hmmm...

I am working to correct this crazy eating. Anyone else have a similar diet struggle?

Dunbar

Lately I've been having success with getting at least 1.2g/kg of protein per day plus a good amount of healthy fats. Lots of avocado, nuts and almond butter and I'm usually in the 100g of fat per day range. For carbs I avoid junk food and white flour as much as possible and generally get around 3-5g/kg of carbs depending on how hard I'm riding that day. Junk food is not going to fill you up so I would cut down on that as much as possible and replace it with protein/fat.

Machka 

You might want to start using one of the calorie and nutrient tracking websites discussed here:
https://www.bikeforums.net/training-n...-websites.html

I suspect, if you're meticulous and honest about your tracking, that the results will be rather eye-opening. And then you can start making changes ... like eating yogurt instead of those cookies, and eating more veggies.


This thread also has some good ideas:
https://www.bikeforums.net/training-n...hing-easy.html

Igualmente

Really? Seems like the amount you eat would cause some of the more sedentary members of the species to gain a pile of weight. Not sure of that, but it would be my guess.

I add some dumb stuff into my otherwise healthy diet too, but one thing I don't do is cookies. I'd be starting with replacing the cookies you eat with something else. If you don't have kids around, there is no need to actually ever buy a cookie at the grocery store. Just skip the entire section of cookies when shopping. Walk right by it... "Nothing to see here, folks, nothing to see." Then perhaps there wont be any at home and you can have another apple or some nuts or yogurt or something. Same goes for sugary soda/pop drinks. Those sections of the grocery store do not need to be visited 90% of the time.

My problem is I have kids around, so there are cookies in the house, so I have to draw on a little bit of restraint.

Also, after a certain time of the evening, I just avoid the kitchen except for one bedtime snack. Going in there is just a recipe for trouble.

Number400

I should have said not enough REAL food to sustain human life. My dinner portions are tiny compared to the family. I really really eat too much white flour.

Flyboy718

You sound very similar to me in some aspects. I am 6'2" and 170 lbs. I workout everyday alternating cardio and strength training. Cardio consists of bike/run/plyometrics. In the winter months the bike doesn't get used a lot at all so its mostly run/plyometrics. I average about 30-35 minutes on cardio workouts and burn 400-500 calories on those workouts. As far as strength I do pullups, pushups and situps usually 50/50/100 and it takes me about 20-25 minutes and usually burn 200 calories doing that. I am lean and have crazy definition. I worry that I am not eating enough like you and that my body may be feeding off itself? I started all this back in June of 2014 and weighed 185 so I have lost 15 pounds and most of it was my little gut which was basically caused by dark beer and lot's and lot's of sweet things like you talked about...I am a recovering choc-o-haulic. Although on weekends...I allow the choc-o-haulic in me relapse a little. I am keeping up with my calories/protein/carbs now...I don't care about all the other stuff. I also upped my caloric intake to 3000 calories a day...I started this last week. But NO SUGAR or at worst very very little until the weekend.

Looking at my notes this week I averaged 3,038 calories a day. 150 grams of protein and 363 grams of carbs...all not sweet carbs. Granted like you said some of this is hard to determine because I eat evening meals that my wife cooks (throws together) and we have no idea what the nutrition content is so I just throw some numbers to it. My daily constants are: 2/3 cup of Uncle Sam cerial with 1 cup whole milk, 1 banana, 1 190 calorie protein bar with 10 grams protein, 1/2 cup oatmeal(old fashioned) 1 oz of almonds, 2tbs peanut butter, another banana, another cup of milk, 1/2-1 cup of greek yogurt, 1 green apple, 1 cheese stick, small can of tuna every other day, turkey sandwich almost everyday...left overs from night before for lunch sometimes and then whatever the evening meal is. Very little sugar and no junk food...except on weekends I will treat myself a little.

My monthly totals all though not complete yet for February are 7,300 calories burned with 10 hours of cardio...which is 30 miles of running, 30 miles of biking and 2 hours of plyometrics... 530 pullups, 552 pushups, 1,150 situps

GeorgeBMac

+1

It will not only open your eyes but also make you more conscious of what you are doing while you are doing it.

For myself: I found the best way for me to lose weight is to be sure that I eat enough at each meal (and I eat 4 a day) plus I make sure that I have healthy snacks available for between meals in case I get hungry - because once I get hungry I'll eat anything that doesn't move quickly enough...

For workouts, I've learned to time my meals and my workouts so that I eat before each one -- and usually have a snack afterwards. I eat before to insure that I have enough energy for a good workout (particularly if it's over an hour of aerobic/cardio). I snack after to avoid letting myself get too hungry and then gorging on the wrong stuff...