Week five of the diet road test marks the beginning of phase three of Jamie Eason’s LiveFit 12-Week Trainer. This phase is characterised by two things:

• Carb cycling – three consecutive low-carb days, one high-carb day, and
• Calorie counting.

The app has a little tool on it to help you work out your daily calorie intake and macros breakdown based on your weight, height, gender, and your goals. Mine ended up looking like this:

 

According to the app’s calculations, because I want to gain muscle and I exercise pretty hard when I work out – but sit on my ass the rest of the day – my daily calorie intake should be in excess of 2,000 calories, with most of those on carbohydrates …

…which is in complete contradiction to the ‘low-carb’ days I meant to have.

Hence some of the confusion.

However, I also had an easy solution. I have a confession: I hate calorie counting and I don’t have time to delicately weigh all of my food, particularly when I barely have time to meal prep. So I don’t do it. I make an educated guess and hope for the best.

Yes, this experiment is fundamentally flawed, but it was from the start, so let’s move on.

So, calorie-counting aside, let’s now look at the low-carb meal plan. Breakfast allows me a few more options – for once, I’m allowed whole eggs as well as egg whites – hooray! So my options are eggs and oatmeal, eggs and ezekiel bread (yeah I had no idea what that was either), or this tasty-looking combination:

Yes you read that right – protein shake, cottage cheese, almonds, and half a grapefruit.

I mean, seriously, what the actual f***?

Needless to say I went with the easiest and least time-consuming option – eggs, egg whites, and oats. Threw them in a blender and cooked them into one giant cardboard-tasting pancake. Mmm satisfying.

Let’s move on.

My mid-morning meal I’m mean to eat fish and veggies. Yes, fish at about 9.30 in the morning. Apart from the fact it just seems wrong (because it is), I’m also really conscious that fish is really stinky so I need to sneak off to the kitchen at work to avoid annoying my colleagues.

Lunch is meant to be one of these options:

 

By now you are probably well aware of my feelings on the turkey meatloaf muffins (ie, bluuuurgh) and I don’t have time to make some chilli concoction, so chicken or tofu and salad it is.

Mid-afternoon looks like this:

 

Well, yes, I have all the time in the world to make some gourmet turkey burger with spaghetti squash for my mid-afternoon snack, doesn’t everyone?

Let’s just say I went with the protein bars. And when I’ve run out of those, I’ve reverted back to my trusty old Quest protein bars.

Dinner is fairly standard – chicken, vegies, with some avo (or turkey meatloaf, but again, blurgh).

My evening snack is then a choice between egg white omelette + vegies + almonds (que?), or the protein shake/cottage cheese/grapefruit/almond combo from the breakfast meal.

Is it any wonder why people can’t stick to these diets? They’re confusing, restrictive, and boring.

However, I shall press on! I don’t have to travel for work for another few weeks, which will greatly increase my chances of being able to stick more closely to the plan. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, here’s a recap of some of my meals and prep from the last week and a bit, brought to you by my Insta feed.

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