Question

THE NEW ME asks:

"what kind of diet did you before you started the warrior diet?"

The main change to my diet that allowed me to lose the weight, I believe, was learning and exercising portion control. I can eat a great amount of food. My appetizers used to be a bag of doritos and a can of cheese dip. I would often drink half a case of beer in a day along with a half a pizza. When I started journaling my calories (tracking calories is what I did, set a limit, and keep under it), it really hit home how many calories/bad fats/sugar was in the food and how small real portions were. I like trail mix and would often eat 1 or 2 cups worth. I figured that wasn't a problem, it's trail mix after all, healthy stuff. But a 1/4 cup of that stuff had 225 calories. If I eat two cups, I've got nearly my calories for the entire day. Not a good thing to snack on in front of the TV. My diet now isn't much different although I've made a point to cut out garbage sugars like corn syrup while on this diet. They seem to effect you more during the fast, making you crash hard. But I don't believe in cutting out foods you enjoy, learn how to enjoy them in moderation. When I first lost the weight, my macro-nutrient breakdown was something like 45% Carbs, 30% Fats, 25% proteins. It's been a lot like that this week. The only difference is that most of the carbs are fruits and veggies over grains and the fats are up a bit because of all the nuts/seeds I'm eating. Both are positive changes in my opinion. Like I said before, I don't have any great secrets to give about changing diet to lose weight. Figure out how many calories you need a day, keep under that and workout.

To hell with the Warrior Diet

"What did you do during Phase One when you lost 37 pounds?"

I'm not giving up already, just sure some people will want information about Phase One. Incidentally, that's just an arbitrary nomenclature that I've assigned to that period of time. I never had a plan with separate phases. I'll go into detail eventually, or if you'd like to leave a comment and ask a specific question, I can help with that too. I will say that I'm not harboring and secret Jedi tricks of weight-loss and a good many of you may be disappointed with the explanation on how I lost 37 pounds to go from 212 to 175 and 28% body fat to 15%.

I will say that I used the DietPower software. I tracked calories. The Warrior Diet doesn't ask you to track calories and I am fine with that, it gets annoying. But I can honestly say that the 6 month period where I tracked every piece of food or drink that went into my body was a great learning experience. You learn quite a bit about your food ratios, how much fiber, protein, sugars, and fats you get from certain foods and how that effects your macro-nutrient ratios (daily Carb-Fat-Protein ratios). You learn to guess fairly accurately the number of calories in something along with the appropriate portion size for that item. For one, I wasn't aware that a half cup of my favorite trail mix was over 500 calories. When you're trying to lose a bunch of fat, sitting down eating trail mix out of the bag isn't probably your best option as an extra 500 calories can sneak up on you quick. DietPower is free to try for 15 days and that's what I did. I lost 10 pounds the first two weeks I tried it, so I bought it outright. FitDay is free and so is The Daily Plate. I found DietPower easier to use than Fitday and I didn't become aware of the Daily Plate until after I bought DietPower so I never used it. Whichever you use (and if you try or buy DietPower, why not use the links in the sidebar? I'll get like 50 cents or something, I'm not too proud to accept it), I think it's important to take some time to log everything you eat. Not just for tracking calories, but to gain a basic knowledge of food and nutrition. Studies have shown that most people severely miscalculate what they eat during the day and if you don't know what you're eating, how are you going to be able to get in shape?

People estimate that, on average, they make about 15 food- and beverage-related decisions each day. But the truth is, they make more than 15 times that -- more than 200 such decisions.