New week, new macros

After trying a round of carb/calorie cycling, and not seeing ANY result from it, I tried a solid calorie goal for each day - no cycling. Keeping my carb intake around 41%, protein at 26% and fat at 33%. That didn't seem to do a whole lot either, although I only gave it a 5 day run before the Nebraska trip. I don't expect to see phenomenal changes from week to week but I should see SOME form of improvement each week. The pisser of it is, I'm wasting away weeks here trying to figure out what will work at this point. I'm getting closer and closer to my goal date and don't feel like I'm going to make it.

The deal with low/mod/high day cycling was that the moderate days weren't cutting it. Because they weren't high enough in calories to promote muscle growth and not low enough in calories to produce fat loss. So they were just a waste of time.

Then, I tried bumping up the carbs while keeping my calorie range in a place that should allow for fat loss. I'm trying to believe that carbs are my friends. But it didn't feel like my carbs were all that high since I was eating most of them before and after my workouts, a lot of them in the form of a drink. I thought the fat content to be a little high along with higher carbs.

So now what am I doing? Well, I'm trying to keep the same range of calories daily but now my macros are looking more like this: Protein 45%, Carb 31%, Fat 24%. That's 162g of protein for me! You know how incredibly hard it is to get that much protein and try to keep a calorie goal in check?? Yesterday I hit 141 grams, still 21 grams away. I guess I could have had another protein drink and that would have hit the target exactly. But I had 4 of them the way it was. I have to have one pre workout, one post workout, one 4 hours post workout and one before bed.

Calories for me are 1438 per day (500 lower than maintenance for a fast metabolism). And I have two days a week where I bump up the carb intake. Monday and Friday. Oops, I was supposed to do that yesterday! Stupid! I will have to move it to tomorrow.


But, I'm going to keep up with these macros because I am a Protein Type. Something new I learned about myself. Have you heard of metabolic typing? Each person has a metabolic type. This explains why one person can lose weight on a particular diet, while another person might gain weight on exactly the same diet. It makes sense really.

I answered two different questionares from two totally different sources and both said that I was a protein type. What that means for me is that I metabolize food really quickly and can feel hungrier more often as a result. I do better on a high protein diet. Not only that, but the fattier proteins like chicken thighs over breasts, for instance. Carbs don't do my body well and I should never eat them alone. I may have trouble losing fat when cutting calories (BINGO!!). This is quite obvious since I've spent weeks working my tail feathers off at very low net calories with NO RESULT.

This is even more interesting to me: juice in moderation. Even freshly juiced vegetables because this will strongly imbalance my metebolic type and lead to weight gain, food cravings, energy disruption and desire for sugar! That blew my mind. How could that be??? Juicing is so healthy! But here I am probably doing all the things I shouldn't be for my type. Even caffeine is bad for protein types. And to think that I was taking Prograde Metabolism for like 3 months and it didn't do a thing for me! Maybe because the main ingredient was a caffeine blend. I love coffee but I don't drink much of it anymore so I should be ok there. I'm starting to like my daily "tea times".

I'm supposed to avoid foods high in oxalic acid. This includes healthy fare like green peppers, berries and tomatoes! All of which I love and eat often.

Citrus fruits are the second worse offenders next to alcohol. And I religiously drink 1/2 cup of grapefruit juice every day and squeeze fresh lemon juice into my water throughout the day. Ugh! All these things that are supposed to be so healthy are possibly hindering my progress! Who knew?

I just don't know how to feel about discovering all of this, but I am interested in finding out if there is really some truth to it. Only one way to find out! I seem to be running around in circles of insanity, doing the same things over and over because EVERY guru on the net says to, yet I don't seem to be progressing. Maybe metabolizing food quickly makes it harder to gain muscle?? I don't claim to understand it all, but I am dying to find out more.

If you are interested in finding out your metabolic type and hence a diet that is ideal for YOU, you can take one of the online tests I did here.