Tweaking my daily intake....

So today was the first day(in a long time) I started  tracking my daily food intake. I bought a note book and logged everything I have eatten. I am trying to trade some fat for muscle. I now weigh 215-218 depending on the scale. I originally droped to 196lbs than stabilized arround 206lbs. So I have put on some weight over the last year. Granted this has not been my diet for the last year. I have been just eatting what ever I wanted. Pizza,crap and sugar. These were my numbers of a good eatting day. Coffee non dair creaamer, south beach protien bar,weight control oatmeal. 2 slices lean ham 2 slices 2% cheese. 15-20 almonds. 1 Chic burrito supreme fresco style(taco bell) 1/4 spaghetti sauce 1/4 cup jenno turkey ground lean 1/4 protien pasta 1 slice 100% wheat bread. 2 scoop protien shake with 2tbsp pb and 2tbsp torini sf choc sauce. Total calories   2,128 Total fat             71.5g Total Protien    149.5g I need to lower the fat and up the protien some. I would like to get arround 200g a day of protien.  Most of the fat came from cheese and peanutbutter. I add 2tbsp of pb to my protien shake. The cheese is 2% american I wrap in lean ham no bread. So no more cheese just the ham. The pb stays....lol Makes the shake much more tasty. Also I eat almonds witch is high in fat but is supposed to be a good fat. I ate so many eggs and chicken beasts in the past it is hard to even think about it, more or less stick them in my pie hole..... So I will track it for awile and see how I can tweak my diet into what I want. Well I guess this my attempt at fessing up. Any ideas that might help? Well this by far the longest rant of my OH career!!

Hey Derrick.   If you factor in your daily BMR and whatever exercise you are doing you are still probably in a daily caloric deficiency if you are eating 2128 calories.  

A 6', 218 pound, 35 year old man's daily BMR is 2100 calories.    Let's assume that man is moderately active.  His daily BMR goes up to 2700ish calories a day.   2700 calories is what that man will burn in a day sitting on his ass.  Add the calories you actually burn DURING the exercise and it will go over 3000 calories a day.   So if that man ate 2128 calories in a given day his caloric deficiency for that day would be 872 calories.   If you maintained that exercise level and still ate the same amount of calories every day you would lose approximately 1 pound every 4 days.   (3500 calories = 1 pound)

Calories is all I look at now.   While I do try to eat less carbs and fats I don't beat myself up over it.  

I work out 5-6 days a week at pretty hard levels. I pu**** every week to do a little more. I would say it's at a moderate level(not iron man yet ). What does BMR stand for? Body Mass ? just a guess.... So should I bump my calories up some. I have really watched what I have eatten the last week and not one pound lost. Also I have felt very dizzy at times mostly late in the day. How would I calculate what I need a day.  I am 6' 3" 217lbs age 39. Thanks for the help. Derrick

Looked bmr  up on line. Makes sense now. So with what I have been eatting and the ammount of exercise I have been doing my body is probably eatting muscle for fuel. Well I will up it some and see how things turn out. Thanks, Derrick

BMR is your basal metabolic rate.  It's the amount of calories that you will burn in a single day sitting on your ass or in more scientific terms the amount of calories that it would take for you to maintain the weight you are currently at.  

Your BMR estimate in the case of being 6'3" / 217 pounds / 39 years old is 2121 calories.   That base rate multiplied by your activity level would be 2747 calories.   So without doing any exercise you would burn approximately 2747 a day sitting on your ass.   Add your exercise to that number to get the total amount of calories you burned in a day.    Take that number and subtract the number of calories you ate in that day.   That number will be your caloric deficiency for the day.   You have to burn 3500 calories to lose one pound.   So add up how ever many calories you were deficient for a week, divide by 3500 and that's how many pounds you lost that week.   BMR is not exact but it's pretty damn close and it DEFINATELY explains why people lose so much weight in the beginning months after weight loss surgery.  

When I weighed 464 pounds my base BMR was somewhere around 4500 calories.   The food restriction caused by the surgery had me eating around 500 calories a day for the first month or so.   I had a caloric deficiency of 4000 or so calories a DAY!  That meant that I was losing over a pound a day.   Add that up over a month and you see where the drastic weight loss comes from.   Your BMR goes down with every pound you lose and the farther out you get the more you take in so that's why the weight loss eventually slows down.  

I love dicking around with BMR and I even built an Excel Spreadsheet food jouranl to calculate what I'm eating, exercising and should be losing.   It's pretty close when I am religious about putting everything in.  

Thank!!! That is too funny about the excell thing I was just thinking about making one yesterday. thought it would be alot faster than doing the calculations manualy. Derrick