I like to experiment with my life, health, and fitness. In 2011 I used the 4-Hour Body to lose 17 pounds. Later that year I started CrossFit and tried the Paleo diet. During April-May of 2012 I hit my lowest recorded adult weight at 173.5 pounds after a Paleo challenge at the gym. Since then my diet and weight have gone through many phases. I’ve gained a lot of muscle over the years and hit a high of 217 pounds (@ 17% body fat) in February of 2017. Back in May of this year I started getting meals from Factor 75, which led to losing 16 pounds and correcting some health markers.

Over the years I dabbled a little bit in the quality + quantity of my food. I really hate weighing food and recording macros though, so I never stuck with it for very long. I also really hate New Year’s resolutions, so I thought I would try pairing a couple of hates together for a new experiment. I was sick for several days last week and got the idea and inspiration while watching season 2 of CrossFit’s Killing the Fat Man.

For 3 or 4 days, starting on the 1st, I’ll continue eating as I have been to get a baseline. During a typical week I get 12 meals delivered from Factor 75, which have the macros on the label and will make it easy to record most of my meals. For the rest of my food, I rely on snacks, fast food, and eating out. The F75 meals are usually 500-600 calories, but I snack on a lot of high calorie junk, which probably ends up getting me enough calories by the end of the day. Most days I don’t eat anything until after noon and often not until 2pm. This is a big reason why I want to set that baseline.

I just read through The Renaissance Diet 2.0, which is what I’m going to use as my guide to macros. I had good results when I followed some things from the first book and I really like that the principles are based on science and study results. Depending on what I see from the baseline, I’ll decide what to set for my initial macro goals, because I don’t want to make a lot of huge changes in the first week or two.

I’m also going to look at my water intake, which is something I’ve never been able to successfully monitor for more than a couple of days. Maybe I’ll try timed reminders through the day to make sure I’m hitting certain volumes. If you have any tips I’d love to hear them.

My goal with this experiment is to create healthier eating habits. I made a big shift with 50-80% of what I consume by getting the Factor 75 meals but that has left a lot of room for improvement. This goal isn’t very easy to measure, but the macro tracking with  MyFitnessPal will help with it.

Wish me luck! I’m going to plan for a weekly update post on the process. If you want to join along on your own journey, please do by leaving comments or writing your own blog posts (leave a link so I can follow along).

Continue to read about my baseline and setting macros.

All of these posts will be tagged 2019 calorie counting to make it easy to browse the posts.