MikeIsLosingIt.com

Here’s the rundown of my daily diet…

Every morning for breakfast I have three slices of turkey bacon, a six egg-white omlette (yes…six), and a piece of whole-wheat bread. Last week I got tired of the smell of bacon sticking around in the house for hours every day, so I changed my tactic. Now I fire-up the grill every weekend and cook seven days worth in advance. Yesterday I cooked thirty pieces at once to have my supply for the week (yes, I do realize that 3×7 doesn’t equal 30, but I couldn’t cook all that bacony goodness without us having some right then, too…so there). Then I broke up three pieces for each day into seven zip-top snack bags. Voila! Now I just empty the baggy of bacon bits into the eggs I cook every morning and I’ve got my ginormous bacon omlette, and all without the house smelling like IHOP’s kitchen all day.

Now what about the egg whites? Egg whites are the best protein you can get, but what a pain to separate six egg whites every morning by hand. My alternative for that is to use some egg whites from a carton that we get from Costco. They taste good, are real egg whites, there’s little mess, and so on. They’re a little more expensive than buying cartons of eggs, but well worth it. The best thing about egg whites? Those six egg-whites have the protein of six whole eggs but the calories of only about two-and-a-half. Excellent!

So that’s breakfast, but now what?

Next comes my first protein shake and some nutritional supplements. For you Hobbits out there I guess we can call it Second Breakfast–usually had about three hours after breakfast. Once again, more egg white protein for that too. Our solution for that? We bought 20 lbs of dried egg whites (powder) directly from Rose Acre Farms. That should last us half a year and it’s half the price of buying a protein shake powder from the health food store. The problem? It tastes NASTY! Three eggs worth of that powder in 8 oz. of milk might even make a billy goat retch. But, add some Splenda and a little bit of vanilla extract and it turns it into something kind of yummy. Billy goats no longer need to fear.

Lunch. Baked boneless chicken breast and either some brown rice or a large salad with a couple of tablespoons of dressing and a little bit of parmesan cheese on it. Nothing fancy. Louanne marinates the chicken in something like Newman’s Own and cooks it up for me every couple of days. She helps me immensely.

Second lunch, early dinner, afternoon snack, or whatever you want to call it…protein shake number two. Just like the first one, but I also have a couple of pieces of string cheese. Sometimes I skip the shake if I’m not really hungry at all.

Finally, dinner. That’s basically the same as lunch. Typically if I chose salad at lunch I choose the rice here, or vice versa. I may also throw in some green beans, broccoli, sugar peas, or some other good, green vegetable.

So, that’s what I eat every day. I’m having something every three hours or so, and I frequently feel pretty stuffed after I eat. It feels like I’m eating a ton of food, but it is actually only 1500 to 2000 calories every day, depending on portion sizes, whether or not I skip my second shake, and other variables. It’s also very low carb but about 200-225 grams of protein, which for my size and the amount of weight-lifting I’m doing is pretty basic for muscle gain.

So far this has all gone really well, and I’ve rarely had any sort of cravings. Yesterday and today I felt stressed over food a couple of times, but I just upped the portions a little and drank more water. I worked out really hard on Friday (I went to the gym twice), and this weekend I ended up having to repair a bunch of storm damage on my roof. So I just think the extra activity meant I needed to eat more. I’m also guessing my metabolism is increasing some as I get in better shape. In any case, upping the portions and water seemed to knock out the stress I was feeling over eating.

My point in all of this? If I can do it, so can you. I’ve finally come to grips with the fact that the only realistic way you can lose weight and keep it off is to eat less and exercise more. It’s not a difficult concept, but for some reason we seem to constantly search for some magic answer or revolutionary scientific program. You can read a thousand different diet books and bounce from program to program, but 99% of them are useless. Ultimately the solution always boils down to that same simple answer. If you want to lose weight and keep it off forever…eat less and exercise more, for the rest of your life.

What? Were you expecting something profound?