Calorie Confusion

Calorie confusion

I thought by switching to a plant-based diet I could eat as much as I wanted.  I was wrong.  Wow.  How difficult is this nutrition thing?  I guess that explains why there is a multi-billion dollar empire built around the diet-exercise-supplement industry.  It is just a morass of confusing information and there are no silver bullets.

I’ve been injured for 3-4 months now and haven’t been putting in the long runs and bikes that I’m used to.  This creates a large calorie difference in my life.

I’m still an active guy. I’ve still been working out 3-6 times a week. But the duration and intensity is less.  There is no good replacement for a 2-hour zone-3 run.  That’s about 1400 calories burnt.  I just can’t make that up doing pushups and sit-ups…well I guess I could but I’d have to do them continuously for 2 hours.

With my retreat from running I’m probably not burning around 1000 calories a week that I normally would.  This adds up quickly.

On the other side of the equation I’ve never been a small guy.  I’m not what you would call ‘petite’.  I’ve been sporting a belly for 40+ years.  I love to eat.  I love to eat until I feel full.  Running and that spectacular calorie burn keeps my weight in check.  It also means that if I want to lose a little al I have to do is slow down my intake and it will burn off quickly.

With the injury I’m caught in a double edged sword situation.  Fewer calories burnt and more time on my hands to eat!

I thought I was tricking the system by switching to a plant-based diet a couple months ago.  My theory was that plant-based foods had fewer calories and more nutrients.  Less calories in would match the less calories out and I would be able to maintain my weight equilibrium until I got back on my feet.

Good theory.  Bad execution.

Over the last couple months I’ve been pretty good with the plant based diet and I’ve been fairly rigorous in my fitness routine but despite all that I’ve been slowly gaining weight.  It’s not extra muscle. Whatever upper body muscle I’m gaining is surely offset by the loss in my legs.  It’s fat.  It’s my gut.

What went wrong?

The key fallacy here is twofold.  Fallacy number one is that you can eat as much as you want on a plant-based diet and still lose weight.  Fallacy number two is that all plant-based foods are lower in calories.

You cannot defeat the old nemesis of calories-in versus calories-out.  I probably did better than I would have if I wasn’t on a plant-based diet, but it’s not enough.  I’m still losing because of the high-calorie plant-based choices I’m making.

Nuts!  I love nuts and dried fruit.  Turns out nuts and dried fruit are extremely calorically dense.  So much so that they are causing me to gain weight.

Frustrated at my weight gain I started counting calories last night.   I charted all the food I ate yesterday.  I was around 2600 calories when I added it all up and 40% of it was nuts! I ate a few ounces of peanuts with my lunch salad and I had a few handfuls with dinner.  If you take these relatively small portions of nuts out of the day I’m under my calorie quota.

Key learning here is that certain plant-based foods can be calorie dense. I’m going count calories for a while to learn where to invest my calories to get this weight off.  I want to be able to hit the ground running, when I start running again!