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Joshua Greene's avatar

Inspired by this post, I got a copy of The Hungry Brain ("THB.")

Overall, the principles are consistent with my experience. My most effective diet (for health, energy, and optimized weight) was under conditions where (1) I was hardcore about tracking calories and (2) I controlled 95% of my meals.

The link with THB was that calorie tracking is annoying, so my kludge was to work out the details for a small number of options for each meal and repeat those. This potentially had the effect of making food boring.

Aside from being boring, though, I think it just eliminated significant decisions about food. For contrast, I'm at home right now, feeling a bit tired and, maybe, a bit hungry. I have roughly 100 reasonable and convenient choices of what food to eat and a continuum of choices about how much.

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Joshua Greene's avatar

What do you consider a daily intake of DBS?

My rough estimate is that the reference portion you listed (based on 1lb of ground beef with butter) is about 1000 kcal or 900 without butter.

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Sapph Star's avatar

1000 seems about right. Maybe slightly more if you don't discount fiber calories (most do).

It would deiend on your caloric needs? I'm pretty active so my maintenance calories is around 3000. So if I'm maintaining:

2 portions of dbs 2000

Coffee 500 (ridiculous Starbucks type stuff)

2 protein shakes 340

That's a big under but I have a few off diet meals a week.

If I'm cutting:

2 portions dbs 2000

2 cups Almond milk creamer 260

Plain coffee 0

2 Protein shakes 340

If cutting I will be strict and not have off diet food. The above is a lot of food. Even half a portion is a small meal. A big deal is definitely large.

Obviously if you exercise less you are going to eat less calories. But exercise also stimulates appetite. In my experience it's much easier to eat very little if I take a full rest day.

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