Dieting has failed for me before because the food never really fit my life. I am trying to figure out a version built around 40/40/20 macros, blood sugar, protein desserts and food I actually want to keep eating.
Lately I have been thinking about dieting, especially dessert.
Almost every dessert is just straight carbs. I probably would not have cared as much before, but as I get older, and with my family history around diabetes and blood sugar, it feels harder to ignore. I do not want that to be my path.
It also made me think about when I used to watch the HodgeTwins on YouTube, probably in high school or college. They used to talk about the 40/40/20 macro ratio all the time. Back then, I understood the words — protein, carbs, fat — but I did not really understand why it mattered.
After gaining extra weight over the last couple of years, body recomposition started to make more sense to me. Just losing weight is not enough. You also want to preserve muscle. You do not want to become lighter but still look skinny fat.
I think I was there at one point. I was probably close to the weight I was “supposed” to be, but I still looked weak and kind of soft. So now the goal is not just to be smaller. The goal is to have better body composition. I do not know if I will hit 40/40/20 every day, but at least I know that is the direction.
The problem is that I have tried dieting many times, and I usually fail because I do not know what to keep eating. It is not that I do not know what healthy food is. Everyone knows chicken breast, vegetables and rice. Salmon works too, but salmon is actually pretty high in fat. Tuna has the mercury issue. Somehow it always circles back to chicken breast.
That is why protein desserts caught my attention. Things like banana bread made with protein powder. The point is not to pretend dessert is suddenly health food. It is more like: if I already want banana bread, can it be something other than straight carbs? Can it carry a reasonable amount of protein too?
Ideally, I want most meals to have carbs and protein closer together. Not perfect every time, but close enough that I am not just eating a piece of banana bread for breakfast and spiking my blood sugar. Maybe eating protein with the carbs helps. I do not know yet, but it feels worth testing.
There is also the practical side. My whey protein is already chocolate, so adding it into something like banana bread might not ruin the taste. It might even make the recipe better for what I am trying to do.
Calories are the other issue. Right now I am aiming for around 1,600 calories a day. If I eat one piece of banana bread and then drink a full protein shake separately, that can easily become several hundred calories, but mentally it still feels like a snack. Then later I still want a real meal, and the whole day gets harder to control.
So this is really the question: can I design a way of eating where the things I actually want still fit the goal? Not perfectly. Just well enough that I do not quit again.
Real cake and sweets are still a problem. Diet Coke and diet drinks are their own thing too. They fill me up, but the carbonation makes me bloated, so it solves one problem while creating another annoying one.
What I want to test is whether dieting can become more like a system I can actually live with, instead of another plan I follow for a few weeks and abandon.