Tuesday, 24 January 2012

Blog 6, Why was 6 scared of 7? Because 7, 8, 9 =) oh portion sizes and calorie counting!

Hi All,

Portion Sizes and calorie counting, so I briefly ran over my past blogs to make sure I haven't talked about this yet and it looks like I haven't.
It took me about 6 months till I was able to begin exercising and I didn't start personal training sessions till the 12 month mark, as previously mentioned this whole experience is about listening and feeling your body so of course everybody heals differently.

I wanted to touch on portion sizes pre and post operation and calorie intake per day as of about 1 month ago when I took notice of how little I was eating.

I never ate the wrong foods, I wasn't a big fan of fast food or deep fried, I just ate too much when I did eat. The standard dinner for the family would be spaghetti for example. Lean mince, canned tomatoes and pasta pre made, the only thing better than this would be fresh ingredients from the backyard.
Where Daniel and Mum would eat 1 average sized bowl and Dad would go for half of a second here's what I would consume (yeah that's a good word I like that), 2-3 full bowls including 4-6 pieces of white bread and probably half a bottle of a diet soft drink.
Today I rarely eat pasta because I have difficulty digesting any food that expands after eating, anything with yeast or self raising qualities such as: Bread, noodles, pasta, rice, lasagna, cupcakes, cake so on and so forth you get the idea. So these days I eat mainly wholemeal pita bread and gluten free products.
Now on the odd day that I do end up eating pasta I would eat about half of one bowl full.

Yup that's right, the pasta expands when it hits my stomach, because mine is so small now it fills me quicker by expanding, thing is about 75% of the time I would have problems with that type of food and get sick from it so I just stay away it's easier.

Another great example is chicken, during my time of scar tissue healing I was told to keep up the protean and a good amount every day so I would have it for lunch.
Before the operation I would consume half a chicken and chips, now I'm not talking about any commercial chicken I mean one of those smaller more generous chicken places that would serve you up 2 to 3 ladles of chips with the chicken, then I would look for something else in about an hour.
Now days it's a quarter chicken, skinless, breast with sauce to keep it moist.

An interesting thing to mention that I found out from my surgeon is that when he did my operation he used polyester stitching which never dissolves in the body, (unlike today where he uses something else that does) so my stomach day by day swells by this stitching because it is a foreign object in my body it will never completely accept it, this will never change I will live with this for the rest of my life.

The following is how each day is different due to the swelling; day 1 I have cereal, quarter chicken, half bowl of spaghetti, day 2 where I can eat is like this; cereal as usual, half a chicken, snacks such as protean bars/shake or a decent (big) packet of chips, full bowl of spaghetti then more protean shakes after dinner. When I don't have swelling I can eat excessive amounts of food, at most 2-3 times what I usually eat! It's crazy.
Now the exact opposite also happens where my stomach swells up more than usual and my day consists of this; half the usual cereal, if I'm lucky a quarter chicken and 3 mouthfuls of the spaghetti.

How do I know when one of these occurs? When I take my morning pills, if I have trouble with the 1 mouthful of water I drink to take them it's a "Bad" day, if I can take 2 mouthfuls and it hurts a little it's a "Standard" day and if I can take 2 and 3 with no problems whatsoever it's a "Good" day! Note: I like "Good" days =)

So calories hey? I got an iPhone application recently from a work colleague that tells me how many calories I'm eating with each piece of food I eat, turns out the results are as follows:

Before the operation I was eating around 8500 calories a day and burning about 3000 from walking, moving around, that's still 5000 calories I'm not loosing each day.
Post operation:
Standard Day: 1200 calories
Bad Day: 600-700 calories
Good Day: 2500 - 3000 calories
To continue burning 2.5kgs a week I need to eat less than 2000 calories and burn at least 500 per day, each time I go to the gym for a workout I burn the at least 400 calories.

So even on a good day I will continue to lose huge amounts of weight, but will I ever plateau?
Since I have started to build muscle I have slowed down to half a kilo (1 pound) to nothing a week which is great but what am I actually doing to stop it?
Eating meat pies, eating all the bad food we all love to hate, that's right people, I get to eat junk food!
I cannot eat that kind of food every day though, I haven't touched a meat pie in about 3 weeks now, last time I had something bad would be the chicken schnitzel on Sunday, once again instead of eating 6 all in sandwiches I eat 2 (if I'm lucky) with nothing but sauce and cheese, oh there only about 120gram pieces, which is very small.

Apart from the occasional binge of junk food muscle weighs twice as much as fat does, so when I don't lose weight it means I gained muscle about 2-3kgs of muscle to be exact a month which is about average to just over I believe, I'll have to check that. So yes if I wasn't building muscle I would still be losing 6-8 kgs a month, it's a little scary because I don't know what my body will do as it get's closer to my goal of 98kgs.

Only time will tell.

Thanks for reading,
Big Age.

Remember any questions or comments you can email me directly evileldrin@gmail.com or add me on facebook if you haven't already you can find me under Adrian Cuvello

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