Hello from sunny Adelaide, Australia

[damien]

Howdy all,

I'm a 31 year old Australian Dad and I've been struggling with weight for quite some time. I was about 115kgs, and managed to get down to 75 for a glorious few weeks but once we had our first baby and I wasn't gymming and running every day I put the weight back on. That was 3 years ago, and since then we've had another baby too. I'm currently at 98 and aiming to reach 90 by the time my daughter is 1 (so in 3 months).

I've been reading a fair bit recently here, on Mark's Daily Apple and Fitocracy. I'm keen to make a change.

For exercise, I have one more month of a gym membership so I'm using that to really try to step up the weights - focussing on squats, lunges, chest and shoulder presses.. all that good stuff. I cannot do a single pull-up. I can't really afford to keep the gym membership up, so I've been introducing more and more body weight exercises, and my post-gym plan is a combination of pushups/crunches/lunges/squats/dips/dumbbell rows with 30 second sprints/jumping jacks. I am a huge fan of exercising for functional muscles - I don't like feeling trapped in my body, unable to make it do things it should be able to do.

I also practice and teach iaido, but that's less of an exercise and more just recreation

For food, I've just (yesterday) started to be a bit more scientific. Previously I've counted calories in a half-arsed manner, but never got a result and inevitably gave up. I tried Tim Ferris' slow carb for a month and lost weight, but also felt tired and irritable and I couldn't maintain the loss since I didn't permanently change my bad habits. With two kids and a loving wife I'm not about to do something that makes me -more- tired or makes them suffer bad moods from me. I've also tried to slow and steady, removing junk from my diet and eating more veges and the like, but again I think I've been too half-arsed about it and not stuck to my guns. I need an eating plan that works around what we have for dinner (I can't ask my family to change their eating habits, which are fine for them and I can't cook an extra meal for myself because it's hard enough with the kids) so all my work has to be done on the other meals.

I've started paying close attention to both calories and macronutrients. A few calculations have suggested I should have 215g of protein, 81g of carbs and 36g of fat on my rest days, and 215g/157g/70g on my workout days. That means about 1510 and 2120 calories respectively.. numbers higher than I was previously trying to hit (about 1200 a day) but -much- less carbs.. I know it's not full paleo but it allows me to fit dinner in first, and then plan my day to match that. So far it's also meant my mood has stayed normal and I'm only as tired as usual with regular wake ups during the night.

For the more experienced recruits here, I'd love to hear your thoughts on my plan. I'm trying to keep the carbs to wholemeal rice and fruit, the fats to cheese and almonds, and so far haven't hit my protein goals at all (I don't eat eggs).. I know I've gone from very vague to very specific, but it gives me a much greater feeling of control and it's much easier to stick to - all the onus is on me, not on some iPhone app, and I plan my whole day out in the morning or even the night before so I don't get as tempted.

Hmm.. if you're still reading thanks, that was more than I planned as a first post.. but hi!

[damien]

Heh, apparently this was all a bit much as an introductory post. What I meant to say was hi! I'm new here!

[azsf]

welcome to the boards!

if you look into good paleo websites, you'll easily find enough recipes that will blend in seamlessly or totally replace other meals. don't be afraid of having a few grain days here and there though if that's what your family enjoy though, maybe just try go for wholegrain pasta or brown rice? also, you can always just not serve yourself the fries or pasta salad when its BBQ night all that said, if the diet you're on now is working for you stick with it!

oh and try throwing in handstands to your training. they work pretty well with developing pull ups (and vice versa).

keep up the good work!

[RaeVynn]

Welcome! I had to pop in here and look at your intro... I have a friend in Adelaide!

Me and my husband are also transitioning to Paleo-esque eating. I'm trying to keep the long view in mind, and not focus too much on the daily stuff.. over time, we'll get it right.

[damien]

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm most fortunate in that my family actually eats pretty well.. generally a ton of roasted or steamed veges and then some kind of meat and often rice. My wife's Mum is Filipino, so veges and brown rice have been a staple for a while now. I think I was making my mistakes at work, eating stuff from the local bakery for breakfast and lunch, and I find once I plug in the numbers and account for our dinners it tends to leave me enough to have fruit and yoghurt for breakfast, chicken salad for lunch, and almonds or dried fruit during the day. Obviously much fewer grains than a muffin for breakfast and a bread roll for lunch though.

My wife is very healthy, so I'm the problem

I've brought some tinned salmon and roast chicken in to work to up my protein, as well as the yoghurt. Still I'm only getting about 100g, when I should be more like 215g.. and as a result my total calories are far too low too, in the area of 1000 for the day. I may need to look into protein shakes.. do you guys have any advice on that front?

[Pat G]

Hey Damien,

As soon as i saw your thread title i thought of the line "Adelaide, it's OK".

I won't judge. I like it there.

Good stuff on getting the protein levels up, do you like eggs? If you've got time in the morning, easy way to start the day with the protein intake.

As for the protein shakes, a simple whey only shake would do leaving all the excess sugar & additives alone. or you could grab something like the GNC Low Carb protein shake, doesn't taste too bad from personal experience.

Welcome.

[damien]

Heh, thanks Pat.. For a while they actually went with "Adelaide. You are here".. which kind of says it all

[Schmidt]

Hi Damien, I'm a dad from Adelaide too!

I also put on a bit of weight right after my daughter was born in September, I've managed to lose a bit, but still around 4 kilos off my goal weight of 75kg.

I've just started getting back into running and fitness, which I havent done since high school (nearly 10 years ago) and I'm finding NF really motivating.

If you ever want to talk to another local guy about anything fitness related, please feel free to contact me.

Best of luck with it all bud,

Dan.

"Adelaide: It beats having the skin scraped off your knuckles"