Metabolic Efficiency Update - Week 2 - NEO Endurance Sports & Fitness

I just finished day 13 of my metabolic efficiency study and I’ve got 8 more to go. Read about the first week here. And daily updates of meals consumed are published on my personal blog, http://bananadeath.blogspot.com.
Last we I reviewed how I was tracking my nutrition and activity data in TrainingPeaks. I found that my carbohydrate intake was a little low, at around 35%. My goal for this week was to get it closer to 45% for the week. So let’s see how I did!

First we can look at my caloric intake. Can you guess how which day I had the holiday party. What is interesting is that I didn’t eat as much the next day. Remember I’m not counting calories to determine what I eat (just tracking them) so I eat when I’m hungry. The top graph has exercise calories accounted for, which is why the bar dips below (food consumed – RMR – exercise). The bottom graph is just calories consumed.

Fig 1.: Calories consumed

Reviewing the macronutrients, I’m still a little low this week, but closer to 41%. Over 5% improvement over last week. And I just realized the soy milk entry I had been using in the database didn’t contain any carbohydrates, so technically I am actually a little higher as I’ve had a few servings of soy milk during the week. This is one of the issues of a large food/nutrition database. If you are relying on what someone else has entered, make sure it is correct!

Fig 2.: Macro nutrient intake Dec 7 – Dec 13, 2010

And we can take a quick look at some other metrics – I swam for an hour, rode my bike for 30 minutes, and did 50 minutes of strength training. Yeah, not a whole lot of activity in a week! My weight came in on Wednesday at just under 136lbs and body fat (from a Tanita scale at just above 23%). These might not be accurate but I’m using the same scale each week and measuring at the same time of day.

Fig. 3: activity summary for the week and body metrics from Dec 8.

We’ll see if I can kick up my activity level this week (not off to a good start so far)… but I’ll try!

Additional comments: Data aside, how do I feel? And probably one of the biggest questions people have is am I noticing any changes, body composition wise? I feel really good – despite getting only about 6 hours of sleep each night during the week (and about 7-8 on the weekends), I actually have energy. I drink a cup of coffee most days, (12-16oz cup, but one cup – sometimes that one cup lasts me all day) but I am still making it through each busy day (8 hours at my day job, home chores, then 3-4 on my coaching/triathlon work). That might be why my exercise is lacking. My body hasn’t changed drastically, if much at all that I can tell, but I am wearing a pair of jeans today that I haven’t worn in a while and they fit better than I remember, so that’s got to be a good sign. So on that note I will go off to bed! Come back next week for one more update before the final report!