Protein and Calorie Counting Diet

My most recent attempt at the potato diet ended in failure*, but I still want to find a way to shed some weight while maintaining or possibly gaining muscle strength. After New Year's this year, I counted calories pretty strictly for about two weeks and lost some weight, but gave up and gained the weight back. After looking around some Reddit forums on how weightlifters "cut" weight, I came up with a plan: Calorie counting, but lead with protein, and reduce the variety of food initially so I can easily keep up with the calories. Over time, as I get a better sense for how much of what I can eat, I'll expand the variety of foods.

Based on my size and activity levels, I probably need to consume ~3200 calories/day to maintain weight. I'm aiming for ~2,500 /day with this diet, with 200+ grams of protein/day. How? I'm starting out with a spreadsheet to track calories and protein consumption daily, expanding the entries based on what I eat:

Each day starts out at breakfast with a balance of protein and carbs. Lunch is protein based, with a vegetable and a smaller amount of carbs. I can have a mid-afternoon snack, as long as it's primarily protein. Any foods not on the list are put under "Misc" until I get an entry for them. Based on my calorie total prior to dinner, I can go and ahead and eat anything for that meal as long as I don't overdo it.

So I am strict with protein and calories until dinner, opening up space to then try and use my judgement/relax a bit. Most dinners I have 1,200 to 1,500 calories to play with, which easily includes a McDonald's value meal with soda (just as an example, I'm not eating that, at least not too often). And if I go over a bit one day, it's ok, because my actual needs are around 3,200 calories. So if I exceed 2,500 calories by 500, I'm still -200 for the day.

This morning I had 1 lb of cottage cheese and a medium sized pancake with a bit of syrup (entered in the Misc line). For lunch I had a ~0.5 lb poached chicken breast (boneless, skinless), some leftover corned beef, and leftover cabbage. For a snack I had ~0.25 lb fat free yogurt. This only comes to around 1,100 calories, with most of my daily protein accounted for. As for dinner, I'll likely have some beef tacos and whatever leftover vegetables are on hand in the fridge. If it looks like I'll still have some calories left over, I might have some chips and guacamole dip, though that dip would add up quickly.

Results so far: It's only eight days in, but I now feel a little hungry before meals, whereas before I did not due to overeating. The protein is satiating enough that I can usually last between meals, and any snacks are small, and not overly calorie heavy. Carbs are absolutely necessary--the first day I omitted them until dinner and had a headache--but can easily take over if not carefully monitored. Starting the day by focusing on proteins first tends to get me to a high protein, low/moderate calorie spot by dinnertime, allowing me to eat just about whatever I want for the last meal. I have started to notice I'm getting hungry before bed, so I suspect I'll have to raise my calorie ceiling a bit, close to 3,000. This will slow my weight loss, but would be more sustainable in the long run.

In the last eight days, I had ice cream four times (birthday parties, etc.) and have still lost ten pounds. Now, much of that is water weight, but I'm finding the diet easy to stay on. I'm slowly building up my food repertoire via this spreadsheet list, and am not having any energy or other problems thus far. I'll be travelling a lot this summer, and this diet should be easier to stick with while away from home.

And my daily schedule so far is: 7:45am wake up, usually 9:30am breakfast, 12pm lunch, 2 or 3pm afternoon snack, 6pm dinner. If I do need a snack after dinner, it's usually around 10:30pm. Bed at 12am. I usually get 7 to 7.5 hours of sleep per night.

Activity levels: Weightlifting three nights/week following the gzclp routine. Taekwondo practice two or three nights/week. Rest one or two nights/week.

*Re: failure of potato diet, it worked great the first time. SlimeMoldTimeMold has indicated that the problem this time around was likely my consumption of protein shakes during the diet. If I need to, I'll try the potato diet again this coming fall, but for now I'm sticking to this calorie counting protein diet.