Calorie cycling and metabolic confusion

Yesterday was a low calorie and low fat day, though I discovered my 3.5 day detox was even less pure than I thought. On the peanuts packet I realised there is sunflower oil. It was like the time I found flour on the shredded cheese ingredients list. 

The reason I was looking at nuts yesterday was that I'd had a harder workout. I'd increased my weights and added a few hiit exercises. Afterwards, I had a carrot smoothie and a grapefruit, but I figured I should add more protein to my post-workout meal, so I had a few handfuls of nuts. 

I went for a walk but my energy levels weren't there and I also needed a toilet break as the smoothie was making its way through my body. 

So it was a shorter walk than usual. It was drizzling on and off. It was grey and my heart wasn't in it. 

Back at home, I had an early dinner of tom yum vegetable soup, which was extra delicious as the flavours had become richer overnight. 

I'm pleased with the diet I managed yesterday, but I started to think about calorie cycling. I was rrading about alternate days of low calories, the diet equivalent of a hiit workout. 

The idea of metabolic confusion complements the flexitarian diet since meat days will be higher calories. 

What was interesting was 3 to 7 days of high calories after days or weeks of low calories. It is cheat days but more than one day. The trick is staying disciplined and going back to low calorie days. Could this be how I become guilt free on the days I deviate from my normal? 

What I've also tried to incorporate is intermittent fasting. I have breakfast at least 12 hours since my last snack. 

Metabolism is an important part of our health and any weight loss management program, which is why I workout to boost the low calories intake and to increase my metabolism which might be falling as my calories going in goes down. 

It seems that with calorie cycling and fasting, it might make metabolism management even more effective. Could this be one of the secrets to weight management and living a healthier life?

I feel more productive during this flexitarian diet plus heavy workout regime. It is taking up more time, but I am sleeping much better than before I began. 

The shift to more meat free meals is a trend in the UK. I'm not sure how much this has influenced me, but certainly doing detoxes over the years and trying to do more meat free meals has meant it is a direction I've been taking to try to improve my overall health. 

They say vegetarians live longer. I figure a few more meat free meals is great for my grocery bills which seem to be getting higher and also with energy bills / inflation rising, if I can save a bit extra, lose weight and feel healthier, then why not? 

Here are some articles that I found useful:

• Calorie cycling and metabolic confusion
• Intermittent fasting
• UK eats less meat

What's the Best Diet for You?

Slow cooked beef brisket

Did you know U.S. News & World Report does an annual Best Diet Rankings?

For those of you looking to try a new diet, it provides a list of different ways people have come up with to restrict their diet.

For two weeks, I've been on a sort of diet. It started off for three and a half days with what I call a detox:

• No wheat 
• No meat, fish or eggs
• No salt
• No oil
• No sugar
• No caffeine or alcohol (I don't normally anyway)
• No processed food
• Almost no dairy ( I had yoghurt for two mornings)

It was essentially just fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds. 

I've had a few meat, fish or egg meals since then, but nowhere near the levels I'm used to. I've also had only a minimal amount of wheat, salt, oil, sugar and dairy throughout this period. Most meals I still don't have any of them. I've had zero processed food. 

The closest diet I can find to what I'm doing is the Flexitarian diet ie. a part-time vegetarian.  The flexitarian was tied for 2nd place in the U.S. News & World Report 2021 Best Diet Rankings. 

It's been challenging but not difficult to do expert level flexitarian. I've flirted with meat free meals and days over the last year. I've also done detoxes once or twice annually for a few years. 

The flexitarian two weeks has been a huge reduction in calories and I feel healthier. I might need to buy some new clothes. All my trousers are way too loose - yay!

Tofu and cauliflower

I've tried to balance out meals. Some are meat free, some are grain free, some are oil free or a combination of these. Some meals I'm trying for the trifecta, which is easiest for breakfast. I base my decision on what I have in the fridge, use by dates and my exercise needs.

For example, I had salmon and beef brisket. Two meals in the last 7 days were salmon and another two meals were beef. For these meals, I didn't have any grains. I also tried to mix it up, meat free lunch one day then meat free dinner the next. Each day I was having two meals meat free. 

Just after my three and a half day detox, I had two meals of sardines and four meals of turkey breast.  

I've started doing Hiit which is a harder workout so the beef recently has been great. By the way, did you know different cuts of beef vary significantly in terms of fat content? Brisket is fairly low compared to the highest at about 8g per 100g. I also tried to avoid eating the fat and skimmed it away after each cooling session from the slow cooker. 

The brisket is the cow's chest. I am curious about food more when I'm on a diet. 

Incidentally, a prime rib and beef rib has 33.7 and 28.1 grams per 100gs respecticely. I'm definitely being more careful in my beef choices in the future. 

My fridge is nearly empty so I have to be  more creative before my next online grocery delivery. 

This is the healthy eating I'm thinking of:

Today:

• Kiwi banana yoghurt oats seeds & nuts
• Carrot smoothie and a grapefruit for lunch
• Nuts, yoghurt and banana as snacks
• Tom yum vegetarian soup for dinner

Tomorrow:

• Carrot smoothie
• Baked potato with homemade hummus (I'm making hummus today)
• Spelt and vegetables with tom yum soup 
• Nuts, citrus and banana to snack on

Saturday

• Mango with nuts, seeds and chia 
• Roasted potatoes w boiled egg 
• Carrot soup   

The next few days are more calorie restricted since I've just had beef and salmon for a few days. 

I am thinking about whether to add a run into my workout, which would mean a pasta meal to fuel me. I'm not sure about carrot smoothie and grapefruit for lunch today. I might add a potato salad into the mix. I'm just going to see what happens. 

It's felt very healthy with a flexitarian type diet. I am hungry more, but I'm not starving. A bit of hunger is good for us every once in awhile. 

I'll try to do a blog post on how the next few days of dieting goes. 

Here are some sites you might be interested in:

• 2021 Diet Rankings
  
• Flexitarian diet
  

You might also be interested in some of my earlier blogs:

• Salads and detoxing
  
• Hiit workout

Happy dieting! Make sure you seek medical advice if you're not sure as diets are not suitable for everyone. 

Healthy snacking at night

A healthy lunch but you're still hungry

When you have salad and vegetables for lunch and / or dinner, you get hungry at night. You're trying to limit calories and be healthy, so what do you do?

You think about treating yourself, but you have been working out more and eating healthy. You really want to be good and not take away from all your hard work. 

I've been having an orange for dessert. I peel it with a knife. It takes longer, but I find that I'm giving my body time to digest my dinner and build up an appetite for dessert. 

If you're still craving more food, then a banana is a good go to. It is more filling and satisfying. 

So what if the banana is not enough? I have a few handfuls of nuts. It gives me that snacking motion of bite sized hand to packet to mouth eating. It is the treat. 

After the orange, banana and almonds, you hope you're satisfied, but you still feel like eating. Next comes yoghurt. It's full fat, flavoured and might have a bit of sugar, but it's creamy and you convince yourself it's like having ice-cream. 

After waiting 30 - 60 minutes between each snack, it's bedtime and I'm not feeling hungry any more. 

If I had wanted to eat something else, I might have tried a clementine or two. If I was desperate, I might have a second yoghurt. Then some melon. 

Worst case scenario, I'd resort to dry crackers or rice cakes. 

The key for me is variety. Since I've been eating healthier and exercising more, I've been going to bed earlier. 

You can read about this in some of my other posts:

• Salads and detoxing
  
• Hiit workout

Late night snacking tends to encourage very bad choices like chocolate, biscuits and crisps. If you have none of these at home, thst helps. Otherwise, you need will-power, healthy options and good habits.

The great thing is you wake up the next day knowing you achieved and maintained what you wanted. This is important for your self esteem, health and happiness. 

Be strong, stick to your goals and find your way to a balanced, healthy happy life.  

Brown fat and getting results

The last few weeks I've been focusing on my health, in particular eating healthy and exercising more.

When you are looking to improve your  health and well being, you want to see results. It might not be reflected in the scales, but we can measure it in other ways - Measure weight loss without a scale

I've become interested in learning about brown fat. Brown fat takes us less space compared to white fat. It keeps you warm when it's cold whilst white fat stores energy. 

Babies have lots of brown fat. Some studies suggest women might have more brown fat than men and those who workout more will have even more. As adults, we don't have much brown fat. 

The takeaway is working out more and eating smaller meals but more frequently and letting your body be exposed to the cold can affect the level of brown fat. 

There seems to be a link between brown fat and metabolism. 

It has also been suggested that 'exposing people to cold temperatures while they sleep causes them to accumulate more brown fat — fat tissue whose main function is heat production — and burn more calories.' 

So don't rug up too much when you sleep and exercise outdoorseven if it's cold and seems uninviting. 

After two weeks, I'm feeling leaner and stronger. One really strange aspect is my dreams are so vivid. I'm very proud that healthy decisions are coming much more easily. The thing is when you've put in so much effort, you don't want it to be wasted. 

This week I'm intensifying my workouts. I call them doubles - where I do two workouts either back-to-back or morning / afternoon. It is time consuming and tiring, but it pushes my body to do that little bit extra. 

In the past, I've seen positive results from doing this after a few weeks of a regular workout. The key is to avoid injury, rest days and fuel the body with more but not too much healthy wheat and protein. 

Also eggs and vegetables for breakfast for a few days is a great way to add more healthy calories with less fat into the daily diet. Plus more bananas and nuts can make a difference. These might help with the brown fat / white fat too. In the youtube video at the top of this post, it also mentions turmeric, chilli and fish. These are all great for your metabolism and I have these in my diet regularly too, but a bit extra this week might not hurt.  

The idea is to get a healthy baseline which you can maintain. 

What makes a difference is knowing that I have achieved alot with my health and physique in the past. Hard work and discipline were required and the pay off was outstanding. 

Early on, it might seem like it's not working, but you need to have faith that this is good for you. As outlined in this article about weight gain instead of loss when working out, your body goes through initial changes. In my case, my weight has stayed the same even though I know that it is definitely improving for the better. I can see and feel it. It will take a few weeks or months for it to be reflected on the scales. 

Your body adapts to less calories or more exercise which can be frustrating if you think you're not seeing results. 

Like with many things in life, patience, perseverance and good habits may be helpful. 

Here are some articles which might be of interest:

• Brown fat - facts
• How to get brown fat
• Brown fat diet
• Metabolism - vox
• Fitness slump so intensify your workout
  
• Understand your metabolism
  
• Fasted cardio
  
• Adrenal Fatigue 
  

These are some of the healthy things I've been doing:

• Healthy snacking at night
• Salads and detoxing
  
• Hiit workout
  
• Why I don't crave pizza and burgers?
  

Salad, salad and salad - detox time again

September has been get healthy month for me. 

I did a 3 day detox - no meat, eggs, fish, sugar, dairy, wheat, caffeine, alcohol, salt and oil. Although, I did have yoghurt on two mornings - I hate to throw things away! Usually my detoxes are strict, but this time I decided it was ok to have a bit of yoghurt. My primary goal was to have a low fat diet. 

I find a detox once or twice a year jumpstarts healthy habits and really helps me feel better about myself. 

It might also help with the adrenal glands - Adrenal diet

Food becomes very boring on a detox. This time round I ate lots of nuts, potatoes and bananas. Since I was not eating wheat, I ate both regular and sweet potatoes which are a good carb and protein hit. They kept meals reasonably satisfying and filling. I ate a lot of salad and smoothies in the morning.

Tips:

1. Spinach and celery smoothies are low fat and healthy. I add grapes and apple for sweetness. Ginger and lemon give it a kick. Switch to carrot smoothies when you get bored. Note - lemon is a good addition to the morning routine. 
2. For breakfast too, I'd have grapefruit some morning, or else seeds with nuts & fruit. 
3. Nuts are also great and filling. At night I'd snack on almonds. Go unsalted. 
4. I did a big grocery shop before I started to make sure I was prepared.
5. Buy organic if budget and convenience permits. 
6. Fruit make salads a bit more interesting. Figs, pear, mango and papaya are great. Red onions give it flavour. 
7. Samphire, nuts or garlic is great if you're craving salt. 
8. Exfoliate to aid any toxin removal.
9. Be prepared for tiredness, headaches and going to the toilet alot (high fibre and less water retention). Eating took longer. A plate of vegetables is slow to get through. I also slept more and better! 
10. Bananas or nuts were great when I was feeling weak. 
11. Go easy when you come off the detox. Have a bit of fish to start or wheat.
12. Drink lots of water. Herbal teas are great when you want some variation. 

My 3 day detox evolved to a 7 day no wheat or sugar diet. I'm balancing my days with a boring almost detox 2 meals plus a semi healthy one (by semi I mean add wheat, meat / fish). One meal I try to go meat free. 

Lots of exercise also complements detoxes.

The results:

• My waist seems trimmer and I feel more toned. I'm sleeping so much better after months of really poor sleep. 
• I'm doing much more exercise, conscious healthy eating and I'm adopting better habits.
• Portion sizes have shrunk. I'm use to five to six meals a day instead - eg. Watermelon, banana or nuts might be a snack / small meal.

Note that a detox is not suitable for everyone and a health practitioner should be consulted if you have any medical conditions before undergoing one. 

Also any diet may not be sustainable and could result in a nutrient deficient intake, so care should be taken. 

You may also find these posts useful:

• Healthy snacking at night
• Hiit workout
• Eat more vegetables
  
• Detox - what's it all about?
  
• Boost your detox
  

With winter coming, you might find it helpful to read this: When you feel a cold coming