Thanks for the comments, and I certainly hope that my story can continue to inspire you. As it relates to calories, when I first started I really had no idea what my caloric intake was supposed to be, mostly because I had no idea how many calories I was expending when doing the program. However, I decided early on that given my weight and the amount of exercise I was doing, 2,200 calories was appropriate for me. I don’t have any science behind this, but I did study a little bit before arriving at the number. Plus, it just felt right. Now something you will notice is that I seldom got close to that number. I never intentionally kept my eating to 1,500 or 1,600 calories. In fact, I ate when I was hungry and tried to keep a continual stream of calories coming in. I would eat breakfast at about 7:30 in the morning, eat a snack of some sort at about 10:00 in the morning, eat lunch at about 12:00, eat another snack at about 3:00 then eat dinner at about 6:00 in the evening. Sometimes I would sneak in another snack at about 8:00 in the evening if I was feeling the need.

One thing I did do though was keep myself very hydrated. Never mind the frequency at which I went to the bathroom… keeping yourself full of water means not keeping yourself full of worthless calories. It also helps curb appetite and makes you feel more energetic throughout the day. So for me, I was drinking gallons (yes, gallons, with an “s”) of water every day. I was also making sure my sodium was kept under 1,500 mg. All of this is to say, that when you mess with your calories and find the right combination of foods and nutrients, the weight will take care of itself if you keep on the program. Too many calories will slow your weight loss. Too few will do the same thing, but for a different reason. I’d always recommend favoring eating too many calories as opposed to too few.

I’d also recommend taking a good look at your body style (aside from being fat – no offense intended). For me, I am pretty much textbook Endomorphic. That means I am stocky, big boned and muscular by nature. I gain weight very easily, do not lose weight easily at all, and carry a good amount of my body fat around my midsection. This means that for me, now, starches and simple sugars are my enemy. Proteins and fats are my allies. Back when I was doing Insanity, I had a different dietary target because of my health assessment at the time. If you look closely you will see that my focus was on reducing sugars, sodium and carbohydrates while increasing protein. I worked very hard to make sure I was vigilant about that when eating and it proved to be a worthwhile effort.

I know this is a lot of information for you to take in but I hope it helps in some capacity. You most certainly are in for one hell of a ride if you are going to commit to 60 days worth of Insanity. But I promise you, it will be worth it if you can get your diet squared away, because the amount of exercise you are doing is going to be burning a ton of calories and will only continue to burn more as you get stronger and more efficient in your workouts.

I did have one question, though. It looks like your daily caloric intake was very low in the early parts of the program and then was higher but bounced around a little in the second half, but I was just wondering what intake you found to be the most helpful for weightloss. I know that it’s not unusual for the scale not to move during the first week, but it’s still a little frustrating since I’ve always been able to consistently lose about half a pound a day with a pure low calorie/no exercise diet. I’ve been keeping my calories at a decent level, so I’m probably just retaining water, but I want to make sure that I’m doing this right. Insanity is just too much work for me to waste any of it by not eating the right amount.