🍔 Wk 8: Caloric Restriction & Cravings

Hi friends,

This week I’m writing to you about caloric restriction and cravings while watching the latest season of Selling Sunset.

In case you missed it - my friend Jesse and I are embarking on a 90 day Blueprint challenge (learn more here) where we eat all BP meals, workout 7 days/week, and try to get a 100% sleep score each night.

In summary, caloric restriction is hard. I felt hungry for a good chunk of the week which made me uncomfortable and irritable.

The upside is improved metabolism, lower body fat %, longer life span, and delayed onset of age associated-diseases (e.g. dementia, diabetes, etc).

Practically speaking, how did we do it?

I’ll cover how we calculated 10% caloric restriction, what that looks like food wise for each of us, and the challenges / how to get through those challenges.

Quick note:

Why 10% caloric restriction? Why not 20%, 30%, etc?

We went with 10% for two reasons:

1. That’s what Bryan Johnson’s currently doing and we’re following his protocol (he originally did 20% restriction until it caused him to lose substantial fat in his face, making him look older), and

2. 10% caloric restriction is considered reasonable: not too aggressive, while still making a noticeable difference.

🧮 Caloric Calculation

To calculate caloric restriction there are three guiding questions:

1. How many calories do you burn?

2. How many do you eat?

3. How many should you eat for X% caloric restriction?

How many calories do you burn?

For this we just took our average calories burned from our Whoop app.

Which looks like this:

How many calories do you eat?

We’ve both been eating Bryan Johnson’s meal plan (2250) and just eating until full. This means generally I’ve been overeating (+31% calories), and Jesse has been majorly under eating (-35% calories - that’s a huge caloric deficit).

Here’s a simple excel breakdown:

How many calories should we eat?

This is simply the amount of calories we burn minus 10% of that number. Which for me reduced my intake by 670 calories, and for Jesse added an extra 500 calories.

This is quite an adjustment for both of us.

So what will we eat?

🍓 Food Breakdown

We decided to stick as closely to the Blueprint diet as possible.

Here’s what we we ate before the adjustment:

Here’s how we reduced calories for me:

That means this week I’ve been eating 2 meals (nutty pudding + super veggie). I put the evoo, avocado, and sauerkraut on the super veggie, and the dark chocolate on the nutty pudding. The pea protein I like to drink separately shaken with water.

Here’s how we’ve added calories for Jesse:

For Jesse, in addition to the original Blueprint diet we added 1 tbsp of olive oil, an avocado, and a scoop of almond butter.

🏔️ Challenges

• Sierra: This week has been a huge swing from surplus to deficit. Too much of a swing I’d say, since I found myself quite stressed by the sudden lack of food. But the upside is I’m now appreciating every morsel. Long term I’d prefer to do caloric restriction cycling (which Siim Land does) where one restricts for a few days and then bumps up the calories for a day or two. This seems like a much more intuitive and natural approach.

• Jesse: This week has been an interesting challenge for him. It’s quite a mental shift to suddenly eat an additional meals worth of food. Ironically, this shift will likely help Jesse lose more weight. Large caloric deficits (like 30%+) can actually cause the body to slow down it’s metabolism and reduce weight loss. More food should make it easier for him to lose weight.

I’ll be sure to update you on how things progress. If you have any advice on how to navigate caloric restriction I’d love to know!

With love,
Sierra

🎬 My Latest Videos

🧴I Tried Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint for 90 Days [Day 43-49]. This week's vlog includes our 45 day (half way!) results, oral care routine, and food prep details. Check out the fun here.

💥 Atomic Wins

What small change did you make this week to improve your health?

Share your atomic win here (e.g. eating veggies, taking a walk). I’d love to give you a shoutout in the next vlog and celebrate together.

Thank you!