Meal advice for nutrition newbie?

[Nevoooooo]

I've been eating a lot of chicken breast, and various forms of turkey, tonight i switched it up, and had pre seasoned drum sticks, and i kinda feel guilty, because it had all kinds of seasonings on it, salt, sugar, brown sugar. in all honestly, you could barely taste it, or see it, so im hoping it wasn't much. also had a piece of italian wheat bread no sugar no fat bread. with mild salsa (10 cal per serving 2g sugar) and some sliced garlic with a bunch of garlic powder, and an orange. that was my daily meal. so my meal was 2 large drumsticks, a slice of the bread with the salsa and garlic, and an orange. did the seasoning on the chicken ruin everything for me.

[dynamicyandere]

I wouldn’t say so.


There’s a time and place to be rigid, but unless you’re on a strict deadline to reach a certain body fat percentage for a bodybuilding show, you don’t have to be so strict as to only eat chicken breast and turkey.


The main thing is tracking your progress and seeing how this change affects things — your performance (if you’re going for performance), your strength, your size, etc.


Track your metrics, see how things are trending. Learn to understand how your body responds to different meal plans.


Then, make adjustments accordingly.


For example, if I changed my diet, and I saw that there was no effect on my lifts, or my body-fat, then it means that it was an acceptable change.


Now, if I changed my diet and I found that I was beginning to be weaker on my lifts or I was putting on more body-fat than usual, then I would re-assess my diet and adjust it again so that I’m either progressively getting stronger and/or leaner.

[dynamicyandere]

You don’t need to feel guilty. Focus on your results and let the results do the talking. It’s easy to be too hard on ourselves about things that may make a much smaller difference than we anticipate.

[Nevoooooo]

well, i think i went about it wrong and possibly have developed an eating disorder, because what started as 1200 calories, turned into 1000, then 800, now im eating roughly 600 calories a day. its either chicken, ground turkey or eggs, some wheat bread here and there, and whatever vegetable i got. i am seeing great results, im down to 228 from 260, and honestly, i feel the same. dont have decreased energy, no headaches, no fatigue at all, once i do eat my daily 600 calories, i get a spike in energy though. i dont think ill ever put bad food in my body again, but for now, i plan to stay focused on getting to around 180 pounds, then VERY slowly upping my calories, while also training my body more, because as is i dont think weight lifting is possible with how little i eat, but once i reach 180, creep my way up to maintenance and then hit the gym, little fearful i won't be able to convince myself to eat more, but ill have to see when the time comes.

[dynamicyandere]

@Nevoooooo

600 calories is incredibly low.

At least your main source of calories comes from unprocessed protein though. That’s going to be key when you start building your metabolism back up.

More Muscle = Faster Metabolism

But muscle requires protein to build and maintain.

That can be your motivation to start eating more — to replace your fat with muscle and to cultivate a stronger metabolism.

You’re going to need to repair your metabolism at one point with your caloric intake so low. (Our metabolism gradually slows down to match whatever our caloric intake is if we stay in a deficit for too long.)

The process to repair your metabolism is called ‘reverse dieting’. You can learn more about that here: https://youtu.be/okRSrhJbq8c?si=pjIxapBX8-pZ99O6

(Mind Pump & Layne Norton is a fantastic resource for fitness education by the way. 🙂)