My Story
 

Just thought I'll share my story in case it stops someone from making a silly mistake, or it inspires someone:-

Beginning of last year (2005), I was ~85kg/30% BFR at 172cm, and although it's not too bad, I thought I better get my act together before I'm forced to. So in my ignorance, I followed what everyone else does - eat less.

So I started a Subway diet, where I ate 1 footlong a day (in other words, starving myself silly).

I lost weight, but I felt like poo 80% of the time. Then I found out about bodybuilders like Tom Venuto, etc. and started reading up on nutrition & fitness.

So I slowly learnt the techniques (supplement w/fish oil, multivitamins and avoid the white stuff - bread, sugar, flour, etc.), but boy I was lazy in the cooking department! Being a student back then living ~ home, I didn't know much about cooking - I would make 6 chicken sandwiches, and eat those throughout the day, lift heavy and run lots. After a few weeks or so, I realised I didn't feel so good (alot of exercise seems to mask how bad your diet is at times).

I was mono-dieting and eating an extremely acidic diet. Since I didn't like food preparation/cooking back then, I was too lazy to add variety so I continued with my mono-dieting, and ate lots of carrots & celery instead.

I remember reading on the Internet once about celery being a negative calorie, since it takes more calories to digest it than what you get out of it. So I sat in front of a television and ate like 20 stalks. I felt so sick, I crawled myself into a ball and felt sorry for myself for the rest of the day.

However after awhile, I didn't feel much better eating mainly just chicken, carrots & celery, and I would binge on everything in sight about 1-3 times a week.

However in saying all this - throughout all that time, I had been losing alot of body fat, as I whittled my way down to about 12% BFR and 67kg, and it plateau there. I believe this was only because I was doing about 2 hours of cardio & 1 hour of weightlifting a day, and that my plateau at 12% BFR was because my diet was about 50% protein, 40% carbs & 10% fats. I mean, 3 hours of exercise DAILY and I stayed at 12% for a few weeks! That was extremely frustrating. I was dead-set wanting to achieve 8% back then.

However, I think I did pretty well but had I kept on going, I would've probably suffered more health problems with a poor diet and exercise overtraining. And also, I didn't have much of a life outside of uni and let's just say there are more important things in life like family & friends, so I eventually quit.

But I kept going back and forth, basically yo-yo dieting. In this time though, I learnt to remember the approximate calories & macronutrient breakdown of most foods and this really helped keep me in check (good ol' nutritiondata.com). Plus, I learnt to start appreciating the joys of cooking (although this probably contributed to my not so lean frame at the moment).

Fast forward to a few weeks ago (somewhere July 2006), I'm at 19% BFR and 72kg. I decided to take another serious shot at it, and read up on nutrition. This time, I set a few conditions:

- 1 hour workouts a day and no more (30-45min weights & 15min cardio)
- Increase in my lifts every week (the heavier you can lift, you leaner you can get)
- Not feel like poo
- Stay lean (~8% BFR)

Which has led me to give the low carb diet a go.

I did try to go low carb before, but I would stay on for 2-3 days and go "This is killing me", and stop. And I think my low carbs were made up of starchy vegetables like sweet potato & corn. This time, I'm being a bit smarter about it, and I've taken a long term approach.

So a few weeks ago, I've been slowly reducing my starchy carbs intake to nothing, replacing all with starchy/fibrous vegetables. And then I went entirely to fibrous vegetables, and now I'm finding that happy spot where I can have minimal carbs and my brain still works properly.

It's funny though - I find that I can hold my thoughts and analyse things alot better with this high fat diet, but I can tell the headaches I get are from glucose deprivation. So I'm still trying to determine the minimal amount of carbs I can have (in fibrous vegetables) without suffering brain fog and also improve in my workouts (my fitness has been stagnating at the moment), so it's been a balancing act.

At the moment, I'm taking about 50-75g of fibrous vegetables 6 things a day, 3 hours apart, making up about 45g carbs (or 8%) of my overall intake. Protein is ~40% and fat is ~40% as well.

And the great thing is, I've finally come to the realisation that this is a lifestyle, not a diet. And although it seems like a long-winded way of getting things right, I believe it's a good process to go through and experiment on yourself, because it reinforces the importance of adopting it as a lifestyle, rather than as a temporary solution. Plus the fact my goals are probably much more overkill than others.

Moral of my story:
- Learn to know approx. the calorie & macronutrient breakdown of food categories in general (cheeses, fish, chicken, beef, vegetables). This will allow you to plan your meals better, be more creative without feeling restricted and avoid mono-dieting

- Get an electronic food scale and measure everything. You may think this is silly, but being accurate is important so you can measure your results against what you eat

- I found daily exercise to be extremely helpful, as it makes me competitive and strengthens my resolve to eat healthy

- Try everything to find what works best, but the most important thing is to transition into it & not jump straight into it.

Oh well, let's see how I go!

Chris