Recent Fitness + Nutrition History & Goals:
It's been years since I worked in labor, and I can't afford a gym membership. So I'm not getting as much cardio exercise as I used to. From an hour once/week last year to 5 minutes of cardio at home a couple times per week this year, not counting time spent running which I've started doing this year any time I would need to go someplace on foot (even to the bathroom) just to burn some extra calories. I'm still doing about the same amount of lifting, but somehow my strength always grows without ever losing any fat even when I don't increase food consumption. If anything it makes me look fatter rather than improving the look of my physique, but the main reason I do it is for health.
A few months ago (March?) I was still quite thin, but it's really hard for me to get any visible definition. I started this intense "8 pack abs" work out I found online without changing my diet / food intake whatsoever, and in less than a month my gut was protruding to the point my pants stopped fitting. It technically did what it promised as I could feel the now noticeable larger bulges underneath the skin, 8 in fact, but it did nothing to that thin layer of fat that completely hides them making it look like I have a small pot belly.
My pants are all mid to high end slacks. So I'd prefer to lose the gut instead of crippling my savings to buy new ones. I stopped the workout immediately, but muscle is just as hard for me to lose as fat.
After months of no noticeable change it started turning into fat, and I'd hoped it would just continue dissolving away. Instead I realized I must be eating a pretty high calorie diet (around 1500 calories/day; I'm 6'/1.85m tall) for my activity level (mostly sitting all week). As more of it turned into fat, and it started growing even larger; with no change to diet nor exercise level.
I was forced to buy a couple pairs of new pants in a larger size. From 34 to 36, but I wore a 32 until I was 19 and my metabolism started to stall. However they shrunk in the wash and now fit as well as the rest of them now.
Since my metabolism stalled only cardio and reducing my food intake seems to help with keeping my body fat down. The only times in my life after that that I was able to burn off that final layer of surface fat that sits around my entire body obscuring all of my muscles was when I had no money for food and only ate like twice per week. That's never been a goal of mine since it's so unhealthy to achieve it though.
Exercise Issue:
Part of my problem is that exercising is extremely boring for me; even more so with cardio since I can't multitask while doing it without a treadmill. So I'd rather just adjust my diet to my level of activity if I can. Plus the weights I have at home are too old to safely use while doing cardio, making my cardio workouts less effective than they could be.
Even when I did sports and martial arts growing up, exercising for about an hour per day for many years (from age 7 through teens), I never once experienced a "runners high" or anything like that. I did it as part of a disciplined routine, not because I enjoyed it. After a severe back injury putting me out of it for a year when I was a young adult (luckily made a full recovery) I discovered how difficult it was to regain that discipline after it's been broken.
Diet Issues:
So I've cut my calories down to about 800/day for the last couple weeks now, but it's not making any noticeable difference, and I'm often hangry now. I'm not really sure why my body is refusing to use the fat reserves. Maybe just because I'm getting old (32) making my metabolism slow even more, along with obesity being very common in my family due to who knows how many genetic issues.
My performance has also dropped quite a bit. I can't think or move as quickly sometimes, making the important stuff take longer, and causing me to have much less free time. Most meals for me right now are like half a sandwich, a smoothie, or a fiber bar. I'll eat 1 "big" meal/day in the evening when the hunger is the worst, that being maybe a Cup of stirfried meat and vegetables for supper, a few bites of rice with a sausage, or some kind of instant/canned noodles.
I've been making things like stirfry and smoothies less and less because I lack the energy to pull out a bunch of ingredients and cook. I don't really snack, and if I do eat a snack food (e.g. a couple cookies) I count that as my meal for that time period since they have just as many calories. I'm now also behind on my workout this week.
I took multivitamins with meals a couple times since starting this when I was feeling particularly hungry in the evenings, and that seemed to offset some of the performance decline as well as help with the hunger. In the past when I couldn't afford food (like when I worked in landscaping for $20/day in my early 20s) but knew people I could get free supplements from I could survive pretty well on vitamins and a couple instant noodles per week. I even gained muscle mass despite losing body fat; after bottoming out with the initial fat loss measured weight started going up with muscle gains.
My hunger, irritability, and low energy primarily comes from vitamin and mineral needs in my experience. So I'm not worried about eating too few calories, but I can't afford daily multivitamins. I'd prefer to just eat foods with a low calorie to vitamin/mineral ratio if I can. Meat works the best for me, but it's pretty expensive too.
Cooking & Food Problems:
I also don't have very good imagination when it comes to cooking. So I'm thinking that's part of my problem. I'm good at baking, but I try not to eat any baked goods for health reasons. I do bake with stevia and gluten free flour (I'm gluten intolerant), but processed grain still isn't healthy. When I had a barbecue I grilled food often, but there's no place for one where I live now. I'll grill on the stove sometimes, but it's not as convenient.
I also have a ton of food intolerances (mostly vegetables), and it's hard to find things that don't have gluten, citrus, tomato, corn, or any of the other vegetables that give me rapid expulsions from both ends. Sneaky beets being the worst as well as rare in local cuisine almost killed me a couple times (e.g. in a fruity smoothie at a restaurant). I mostly stick to dairy, meat, fungi, the few vegetables I know I can eat (lettuce, spinach, cucumber, zucchini, potato, carrot, et cetera), seeds (including nuts and peas), and my gluten intolerance is mild compared to my vegetable intolerances so I eat a bit of glutinous grain too.
I think people die if they don't eat any grain, so I've never cut that out from my diet entirely. Though I try to minimize the processed grains and eat gluten free or potato bread instead when I can. The gluten free flour costs triple here, so baking my bread would be a luxury for me. Some vegetables like broccoli and celery don't trigger expulsion if I eat it whole/raw, but come out completely undigested. So I can tolerate a little before it gets stuck and I need medical intervention.
Unusual Food Tolerances:
I have an abnormally high tolerance for meat, and discovered when I was little that I can easily digest even raw meats and blood without suffering ill effects. Even a little of it can satisfy my hunger better than anything else. Before starting this low calorie diet about half of what I ate was meat; that's including white meat and fish meat. It's about ¼ of what I eat now.
Red meat and chicken is the easiest to get because I can buy a large slab of red meat or a whole chicken and cut the meat myself. Even though I've never had any negative effects from eating red meat (even when I ate it by the pound in my teens) I don't eat too much because it's supposedly unhealthy and I try to diversify what I eat as much as possible. White meat other than chicken as well as seafood sold whole is uncommonly sold anywhere I've shopped before. Small packages of precut fish meat and such (maybe a meal or 2) is more common, but it's going to be as much as that large slab of red meat that could last for several meals, and somehow much more expensive than just buying the whole fish whenever I can find one for sale.
I've found in the past that I could eat some unusual things I didn't expect, but nothing I can find sold at a normal grocery store. Like the stems of oxalis flowers, and insects. I'm also good with lactose, non citrus fruits (e.g. berries, banana, avocado, et cetera), and I don't have any food allergies.
So I'm hoping there's some highly nutritious stuff out there that I've never heard of that I could try. I've already tried all the normal grocery store stuff, so in order to try something new I'd have to get a store recommendation too. I know there's a ton of small market stores that cater to the pallets of foreign cultures around SoCal, but they're hard to find, and I usually have no idea if what I'm buying is going to actually be nutritious or if it could be unhealthy when I do find them.
If it's a vegetable there's a chance I won't be able to digest it, but I'll still try it if I can find a way to get some. I've tried web searches many times, but they're very rarely helpful. When they are it's usually posts from people mentioning things on forums like this one. I've read that grubs and insects are highly nutritious and actually very cheap to farm for food, but I've never found a place that sells them. Even though I think there must be some in SoCal, because food fads seem to always be in fashion.
TL;DR
Exercise (mostly strength based) + low calorie diet + mostly sedentary = pot belly. I have intolerances to many vegetables (see: Cooking & Food Problems), citrus, and gluten. No lactose problem, no food allergies, high tolerance for meat. I'm looking for ways to diversify my diet with highly nutritious low calorie foods.
It's been years since I worked in labor, and I can't afford a gym membership. So I'm not getting as much cardio exercise as I used to. From an hour once/week last year to 5 minutes of cardio at home a couple times per week this year, not counting time spent running which I've started doing this year any time I would need to go someplace on foot (even to the bathroom) just to burn some extra calories. I'm still doing about the same amount of lifting, but somehow my strength always grows without ever losing any fat even when I don't increase food consumption. If anything it makes me look fatter rather than improving the look of my physique, but the main reason I do it is for health.
A few months ago (March?) I was still quite thin, but it's really hard for me to get any visible definition. I started this intense "8 pack abs" work out I found online without changing my diet / food intake whatsoever, and in less than a month my gut was protruding to the point my pants stopped fitting. It technically did what it promised as I could feel the now noticeable larger bulges underneath the skin, 8 in fact, but it did nothing to that thin layer of fat that completely hides them making it look like I have a small pot belly.
My pants are all mid to high end slacks. So I'd prefer to lose the gut instead of crippling my savings to buy new ones. I stopped the workout immediately, but muscle is just as hard for me to lose as fat.
After months of no noticeable change it started turning into fat, and I'd hoped it would just continue dissolving away. Instead I realized I must be eating a pretty high calorie diet (around 1500 calories/day; I'm 6'/1.85m tall) for my activity level (mostly sitting all week). As more of it turned into fat, and it started growing even larger; with no change to diet nor exercise level.
I was forced to buy a couple pairs of new pants in a larger size. From 34 to 36, but I wore a 32 until I was 19 and my metabolism started to stall. However they shrunk in the wash and now fit as well as the rest of them now.
Since my metabolism stalled only cardio and reducing my food intake seems to help with keeping my body fat down. The only times in my life after that that I was able to burn off that final layer of surface fat that sits around my entire body obscuring all of my muscles was when I had no money for food and only ate like twice per week. That's never been a goal of mine since it's so unhealthy to achieve it though.
Exercise Issue:
Part of my problem is that exercising is extremely boring for me; even more so with cardio since I can't multitask while doing it without a treadmill. So I'd rather just adjust my diet to my level of activity if I can. Plus the weights I have at home are too old to safely use while doing cardio, making my cardio workouts less effective than they could be.
Even when I did sports and martial arts growing up, exercising for about an hour per day for many years (from age 7 through teens), I never once experienced a "runners high" or anything like that. I did it as part of a disciplined routine, not because I enjoyed it. After a severe back injury putting me out of it for a year when I was a young adult (luckily made a full recovery) I discovered how difficult it was to regain that discipline after it's been broken.
Diet Issues:
So I've cut my calories down to about 800/day for the last couple weeks now, but it's not making any noticeable difference, and I'm often hangry now. I'm not really sure why my body is refusing to use the fat reserves. Maybe just because I'm getting old (32) making my metabolism slow even more, along with obesity being very common in my family due to who knows how many genetic issues.
My performance has also dropped quite a bit. I can't think or move as quickly sometimes, making the important stuff take longer, and causing me to have much less free time. Most meals for me right now are like half a sandwich, a smoothie, or a fiber bar. I'll eat 1 "big" meal/day in the evening when the hunger is the worst, that being maybe a Cup of stirfried meat and vegetables for supper, a few bites of rice with a sausage, or some kind of instant/canned noodles.
I've been making things like stirfry and smoothies less and less because I lack the energy to pull out a bunch of ingredients and cook. I don't really snack, and if I do eat a snack food (e.g. a couple cookies) I count that as my meal for that time period since they have just as many calories. I'm now also behind on my workout this week.
I took multivitamins with meals a couple times since starting this when I was feeling particularly hungry in the evenings, and that seemed to offset some of the performance decline as well as help with the hunger. In the past when I couldn't afford food (like when I worked in landscaping for $20/day in my early 20s) but knew people I could get free supplements from I could survive pretty well on vitamins and a couple instant noodles per week. I even gained muscle mass despite losing body fat; after bottoming out with the initial fat loss measured weight started going up with muscle gains.
My hunger, irritability, and low energy primarily comes from vitamin and mineral needs in my experience. So I'm not worried about eating too few calories, but I can't afford daily multivitamins. I'd prefer to just eat foods with a low calorie to vitamin/mineral ratio if I can. Meat works the best for me, but it's pretty expensive too.
Cooking & Food Problems:
I also don't have very good imagination when it comes to cooking. So I'm thinking that's part of my problem. I'm good at baking, but I try not to eat any baked goods for health reasons. I do bake with stevia and gluten free flour (I'm gluten intolerant), but processed grain still isn't healthy. When I had a barbecue I grilled food often, but there's no place for one where I live now. I'll grill on the stove sometimes, but it's not as convenient.
I also have a ton of food intolerances (mostly vegetables), and it's hard to find things that don't have gluten, citrus, tomato, corn, or any of the other vegetables that give me rapid expulsions from both ends. Sneaky beets being the worst as well as rare in local cuisine almost killed me a couple times (e.g. in a fruity smoothie at a restaurant). I mostly stick to dairy, meat, fungi, the few vegetables I know I can eat (lettuce, spinach, cucumber, zucchini, potato, carrot, et cetera), seeds (including nuts and peas), and my gluten intolerance is mild compared to my vegetable intolerances so I eat a bit of glutinous grain too.
I think people die if they don't eat any grain, so I've never cut that out from my diet entirely. Though I try to minimize the processed grains and eat gluten free or potato bread instead when I can. The gluten free flour costs triple here, so baking my bread would be a luxury for me. Some vegetables like broccoli and celery don't trigger expulsion if I eat it whole/raw, but come out completely undigested. So I can tolerate a little before it gets stuck and I need medical intervention.
Unusual Food Tolerances:
I have an abnormally high tolerance for meat, and discovered when I was little that I can easily digest even raw meats and blood without suffering ill effects. Even a little of it can satisfy my hunger better than anything else. Before starting this low calorie diet about half of what I ate was meat; that's including white meat and fish meat. It's about ¼ of what I eat now.
Red meat and chicken is the easiest to get because I can buy a large slab of red meat or a whole chicken and cut the meat myself. Even though I've never had any negative effects from eating red meat (even when I ate it by the pound in my teens) I don't eat too much because it's supposedly unhealthy and I try to diversify what I eat as much as possible. White meat other than chicken as well as seafood sold whole is uncommonly sold anywhere I've shopped before. Small packages of precut fish meat and such (maybe a meal or 2) is more common, but it's going to be as much as that large slab of red meat that could last for several meals, and somehow much more expensive than just buying the whole fish whenever I can find one for sale.
I've found in the past that I could eat some unusual things I didn't expect, but nothing I can find sold at a normal grocery store. Like the stems of oxalis flowers, and insects. I'm also good with lactose, non citrus fruits (e.g. berries, banana, avocado, et cetera), and I don't have any food allergies.
So I'm hoping there's some highly nutritious stuff out there that I've never heard of that I could try. I've already tried all the normal grocery store stuff, so in order to try something new I'd have to get a store recommendation too. I know there's a ton of small market stores that cater to the pallets of foreign cultures around SoCal, but they're hard to find, and I usually have no idea if what I'm buying is going to actually be nutritious or if it could be unhealthy when I do find them.
If it's a vegetable there's a chance I won't be able to digest it, but I'll still try it if I can find a way to get some. I've tried web searches many times, but they're very rarely helpful. When they are it's usually posts from people mentioning things on forums like this one. I've read that grubs and insects are highly nutritious and actually very cheap to farm for food, but I've never found a place that sells them. Even though I think there must be some in SoCal, because food fads seem to always be in fashion.
TL;DR
Exercise (mostly strength based) + low calorie diet + mostly sedentary = pot belly. I have intolerances to many vegetables (see: Cooking & Food Problems), citrus, and gluten. No lactose problem, no food allergies, high tolerance for meat. I'm looking for ways to diversify my diet with highly nutritious low calorie foods.
from Bodybuilding.com Forums - Nutrition https://ift.tt/tRWUnXO
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