What are you eating?
Do you know? Do you want to know?
If you are overweight, do you ever wonder why? If you are thin, do you think that means you are healthy?
Being born with a fast, or slow, metabolism can be viewed as a blessing or a curse. I do not mean a fast metabolism is good and a slow metabolism is bad. Having a fast metabolism can lead you to beleive that you are “healthy” becasue you don’t have a fat stomach. Having a slow metabolism can make eating, diet and health a challenge.
Let’s fix these problems!
I am sure you know what you are physically putting into your mouth everyday, but what does it all look like (big picture)? Most would rather not have that question answered. But hey, let’s find out!
My Quick Story
Jerred and Emily decide to eat like cavemen: Part 1
When Emily and I first started eating Paleo, over a year ago…I needed numbers. I needed math. I came from the background of burn XXXX calories, eat XXXX calories. Which will always ring true, but Paleo is not about counting calories like other diets out there [even if you have no interest in Paleo…keep reading, this applies to you too].
So what did I do? I did what any fitness nerd guru would do who is obsessed with the numbers…I made a spreadsheet.
I wanted a visual representation (pie chart) of what my diet actually looked like. So I ate how I normally would for a week and put it all in this excel masterpiece (which is similar to a sheet in The Ultimate WOD Log).
Boy was I surprised!!
I have never really eaten incredibly unhealthy, but even those “healthy foods”, if not planned correctly…aren’t that healthy. I found out that my diet was overwhelmingly carbohydrates, little fat and a decent amount of protein…not Paleo, or healthy, at all.
What Am I Eating: Diet Analysis
Now, I know nobody likes to count calories or run around with a food journal writing everything down, but how else are we going to find out??
It is time to…
- KNOW what your are eating
- UNDERSTAND the effects of what you are eating, and
- CONTROL what you are eating.
Let’s do some diet analysis! Like I said, nobody likes to count calories, but I am only asking you to do it for seven days. Seven days of counting calories to find out what your current diet looks like, and you will have a weeks worth of diet analysis. It may sound like an annoying task, but we both know you probably eat basically the same thing everyday…so it’s really just one day of counting calories and six days of copy/paste.
How do I start my diet analysis?
First, do not try to diet when doing your diet analysis. Eat what you would normally eat everyday for a week, just document it.
Second, no diet analysis would be complete without a calorie counter. Spark People has a great calorie counter and it has a really cool recipe calculator. Of course, there are about 1,000 different websites or mobile apps you could use for that, so it’s your call.
Third, start writing. You will need a notepad or piece of paper to write down the nutritional info in your diet.
All you need for this diet analysis:
- CALORIES
- FAT
- CARBS
- PROTEIN
The rest of the work will be done for you.
Next step, take all of your diet info and put it into the “What Am I Eating” diet analysis Spreadsheet.
- Download here
Yes, you have to download the sheet to use it. Enter in all of the food that you ate for the day/week. Once you have accomplished this, look at the pie chart and the summary area.
What does you pie chart look like???
As you will see next to the percentages there are 3 different types of dietary requirments listed. The Paleo Diet, The Zone Diet and the FDA’s recommendation for a 2,000 calorie diet (I highly discourage listening to the FDA).
Sometimes it helps to have an actual visual representation of your diet. In this process you are able to quickly compare what your diet looks like to Paleo, Zone, and what the government recommends…and it can be scary!!
Quick Tip:
This spreadsheet is just for a snapshot. If you end up using this calculator to try and modify your diet to shape up to be more like the Paleo, Zone or FDA recommendations…don’t obsess over the numbers.
When I first showed this calculator to Emily (hopefully she doesn’t kill me for sharing this story), she obsessed a little :). We wanted to be strict Paleo, so she was using this spreadsheet everyday. However, when her protein was just a few percentage points off she would go into the kitchen and cook a full chicken breast and eat it by itself, or have a protein shake…and if you know Emily, she never has protein shakes.
It was actually pretty funny to watch here choke down a protein shake, that she hated, just for the numbers, but Emily is a perfectionist and I love her for it.
###
Hopefully this will be another tool you can add to your toolkit to be fit and healthy!
Let me know how your diet analysis goes.
P.S. this spreadsheet has been hidden on Eo3 for a long time, but I decided to make sure it was no secret anymore.
-Jerred