Is there such a thing as "over-researching"?

Well, if you paid attention to that article I posted last week about "Working Out Like a Man" then... yes. But I can't seem to break my female intuition to come at things from "all angles".

I want to talk a little bit about caloric intake. How much is too much and how little is too little?

I feel like it's the forever-asked question when you're trying to not only exercise regularly but also eat healthy. "How many calories should I be eating?" From the hundreds of articles I've read on nutrition, it seems like eating 3000 calories worth of vegetables a day is not going to have the weight-gain effect that eating 3000 calories worth of, well, basically anything else would have. Most of us don't really love vegetables enough to eat enough veggies to add up to 3000 calories... especially considering most servings of veggies are 60 calories or less. I reach my "strive for 5" goal almost everyday. Sometimes I even have 10 or more servings of fruits and vegetables (keeping in mind that a serving size is one cup/one whole fruit - the salad I have for lunch and/or dinner alone is about 5 cups of lettuce, not including all the veggies I put IN the salad)... so I feel like I'm pretty good to go on that aspect. Since changing my eating habits I would say between 60 and 80% of my caloric intake comes from fruits and veggies - with the other 20-40% coming from meat/animal proteins, nuts/seeds, and whole-grains like oatmeal, whole wheat, etc. I eat very few processed foods/sugars these days and I'm incredibly proud of that. There are still days where I eat processed foods - basically if I'm eating at any fast food place - but those days are few. Plus I'm learning how to make healthier choices when it comes to fast food, as well as being conscious of what I'm eating at sit-down restaurants. Now I'm digressing a bit...

Lately I've been consuming between 1500-1800 calories a day. I'm having slow but steady success with this. And although I would like to think I've done an "excellent" job of exercising as well as changing my eating habits - that is just simply not true. There have only been maybe 3 weeks total (and not consecutive) that I've exercised 5 days/week, whether that be cardio or weight training or a combination of both. I've been pretty consistent with doing cardio 2-3 days a week... however for the kind of weight-loss I'm working toward and the type of body I want to come along with that weight-loss I know I need to really focus heavily on weight training and less on hours of cardio. The personal trainer I met with yesterday confirmed this for me - and the workout we proceeded to do after the consultation confirmed it even more. My heart is strong - my muscles are weak. The question running through my mind this morning though was: If I'm going to be strength training 4-5 days a week, will an average of 1600 calories/day be enough? And the resounding answer in my health/fitness/nutrition article stuffed brain was ABSOLUTELY NOT.

So I did a little research this morning. I think I may have talked a little bit about BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) in earlier posts - I'm going to revisit. BMR is the amount of calories your body would burn if you just laid in bed all day. In order to find out how many calories you could consume to maintain your current weight without any kind of exercise you would take your BMR x 1.2... for me this is (196lbs) approx. 2,040 calories. (FYI - this is called the Harris Benedict Equation, and you can find out more about it here, and this is the link I used to calculate my BMR.) This probably explains why I have only averaged about 1lb/week weight-loss, with several of those weeks seeing no loss whatsoever. I thought it was interesting that after two weeks of eating 200-400 calories a day (starting with my NLR trip) more than what I had been eating, I saw a 4 pound weight-loss in one week.

Using the Harris-Benedict Equation, and keeping in mind that it is more recommended for use by people that are close to a healthy weight (as is explained in the above link), if I can keep up my consistent work-out routine and continue to eat mostly whole foods, healthy fats, and avoid processed sugars - I should be eating closer to 2100 calories a day. I'm going to try this out for a few weeks and see how I fare.

It feels like this whole process is just one big experiment sometimes!

Okay, so, stats for yesterday:

12/9:

• total calories: 1591
• calories burned: I estimate about 450, maybe 500. I was continually exercising for about an hour and a half.
• 2 cigarettes
• 11pm bedtime - it felt sooooo goooooood
• $3 spent on Starbucks - lunch was free thanks to my buddy Derek! :)  ($18 left for the week)