Counting Calories
It’s amazing how calories add up, or don’t add up, as I’ve found to be the case.
So far I’ve been using my newly created diet tracker sheet for 3 days, and already I’m pretty amazed at what I’ve seen. In short, it’s a good job I created it – because it’s proven beyond doubt to me that guestimating what I’m eating is about as accurate as a drunken sailor taking a leak on rough seas.
Because I’m currently bulking, I’m aiming for a caloric surplus of 500, and yesterday I was amazed to see I went a whopping 423 OVER that, putting me at a total of 923 over. (And I needed a calculator to work that out, I’m that lousy at maths.) Anyway, that’s not something I want to make a habit of unless I want to pile a ton of fat on. Nah, tah…
You see, I made a mistake. But, a valuable mistake; rather than add up everything as I was going along, I added everything up at the end of the day, expecting I’d have to eat even more before bed to make up any deficit. But I was already way over – I didn’t think I consumed anywhere near that many calories. How wrong I was.
But that’s good. Because it’s shown me the vital importance of adding everything up as I go along, so that way with my ‘flexible diet’ I’m testing out, I can find out what calories I’m lacking, and what macronutrients, and make up for them before the days out, and I have absolutely no excuse for going way over.
Typically, I have three meals now: breakfast, dinner, and tea (which will confuse you no end if you’re not British.) And I drink milk and have 2 protein shakes throughout the day.
For instance, today I’ve worked things out already, and I’ve figured I can drink a pint less of milk, which will bring me close to my aim of just 500 calories over. That’s good, because not only does it save money (however menial the amount will be), but it’s ensuring I’m not putting myself at excessive risk of getting fat.
This is an important lesson, and I’m glad I learned it before I had to call Jared Fogle to ask where he used to buy his old trousers.
