Nutrition Information
will be updated periodically, so check back often.
How do I calculate my caloric needs? What about how much fats, proteins or carbs? What if I just do cardio instead of resistance training, will I get the same results as quickly?
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Where to start?
This is where you start and this is what you will probably NOT find in any pamphlet that comes with an exercise program that you buy. You will actually have to do something here....add. Add up all the calories you eat. Add up all the grams of fat, proteins and carbs you eat in a typical day. This serves a purpose and an important one. The diet guidelines for your specific caloric intake will probably be substantially higher or lower than your current caloric intake. Do NOT make drastic and sudden changes to your diet. You will find out why when you read this entire section, but for now...just trust me. After you figure up your NEW caloric intake for fat loss, compare the total amounts to what you are currently eating today. IF it's higher or lower than 15% then you will do yourself a HUGE favor by taking a couple of weeks (or longer if it's much higher or lower) by slowing increasing or decreasing (which ever the case may be) your calories to meet your new caloric intake by no more than 15% at a time for at least a week. Example....say you are currently eating 3000 calories a day. After reading the sections below, you discover that in order to lose weight the healthy way you need to consume 2100 calories. Well, staying within my guidelines of no more than 15% fluctuations you will drop your calories by no more than 15%. 3000 - 15% is 2550 calories. Eat this for at least a week, perhaps even for 10 days. Then drop it again...2550 - 15% is 2168. Eat this for a week to 10 days. Next drop the other 68 calories and you've reached your targeted caloric intake goal. Why do it this way? Well, to paraphrase what you will be reading next....you do this so you won't throw your body into a sudden survival mode which will cause your body to do 2 primary things. 1. Slow down your metabolism (for survival) and 2. To hold on to body fat (for survival). Your body does not know what your intentions are, nor does it care. It's only concerned about it's survival despite what you are doing. By slowly decreasing calories you greatly reduce your risk of this happening when first starting out on your own journey. The same is true when you are eating too little and you need to increase your caloric intake. If you suddenly eat much more than what your body is used to then you will make your body store the excess as body fat and you will be defeating your purpose either way.
Next...once you reach your fat loss goals it may take a week or two for your body to adjust and to begin losing body fat so do not panic and do not be impatient. Impatience will kill your motivation, desire and progress very quickly. You would do well to keep this in mind.
Start off with small, reasonable and healthy goals. Saying I have to lose "x" amount of weight in 3 months, 2 months, 6 months is a complete waste of time, in my opinion. Every person's body is different and will respond differently and setting a time table for your fat loss goals is the same thing as being impatient. So....how much weight can you reasonably expect to lose in a healthy manner? Here is a general time frame: If you are trying to lose...
10-15 lbs then shoot for 1 lb a week.
16-30 lbs then shoot for 1-2 lbs per week.
for extremely overweight people who needs to lose 31+ pounds it is possible to lose up to 3 lbs per week, then the body will adapt after 2-4 weeks and then you should lose about 2 lbs per week after that.
So....just add up the lbs per week you should be losing and you have your ball park figure of your personal general time frame. When we are talking losing "weight" we mean losing body fat, NOT muscle mass. Anyone can starve themselves and losing weight, but they also lose a lot of muscle mass in the process which, as you will read, is a very self defeating purpose.
Personally....you should have a goal of how you want your body to look in your head, then give yourself a reasonable time frame to achieve it. 3 months will more than likely NOT achieve your goals, unless you just have just 5-10 lbs to lose. My goal is 12 months and then I should be seeing a physique that is close to the physique I have in my head. But I don't want a huge amount of muscle though. That would take several years longer to obtain, without steroids.
The point is...keep your goals realistic and keep your time frames logical.
This will all make more sense when you read this section in its entirety.
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Proper Caloric Intake----Part 1
Here is my take on why it is not a good idea to drastically cut calories and to make sure you are taking in the right amount when trying to lose body fat.
From what I’ve read…..your body will adapt fairly quickly to drastic calorie restrictions. Why? For survival. Just like you will get frost bite on your extremities long before you freeze to death because your body is working on keeping your core warm, so it sacrifices the blood flow to the extremities for survival. Well….when you suddenly reduce your calories or suddenly raise the amount of calories you burn in a day you will lose weight, at first. Then, as we all know…you plateau and sometimes even get smaller due to loss in muscle mass. Your body needs so many calories for basic survival based on your body weight. It also needs so many calories based on how many calories you burn doing daily tasks and exercises. If you body does not get the appropriate amount of calories it needs for fuel then instead of burning body fat….it will actually slow your metabolism down even MORE and actually resist and hold on to body fat thereby defeating your efforts and actually making your condition worse, especially when you go off your “diet”.
Your body is smart enough to know that if you reduce your caloric intake and exercise more that you will soon burn through all your body fat, ie…reserves of fuel, THEN it will need to start using your muscles and organs for fuel after that. To combat this it will slow your metabolism down to burn LESS fuel so it can hold on to it’s reserves, ie…body fat, for as long as possible so it doesn’t have to resort to using muscles and organs as fuel. Your body will become more efficient at burning it’s reserves because it does not know you will feed it long before you starve to death.
An easy and effective way to lose weight and reduce calories and burn body fat without setting off red flags and sending your body into survival mode is to find out your maintenance amount. The amount your body needs to maintain it’s current weight at the activity level you are at. There are several tools and calculators to do this. One that I find helpful is:
1. Find your lean muscle mass. This is done by subtracting your body fat percentage from your total body weight.
2. Multiply the lean body weight by 10. If your lean muscle mass is 150 lbs, then it's 1500.
3. Multiply that number by your activity level:
Extremely active.....1, Very active---.7, moderately active--.4, non active--.2
Most p90x-ers with a sitdown job and are NOT doing additional running or exercises will by .4, a physical job with p90x .7 or .9 as well as people who do additional exercises.
Example...1500 x .4 is 600
Add this number to your other figure of 1500. 1500 + 600 is 2100 caloric intake to lose weight. This already has a weight loss figure built in. IF you are currently well above this or well below your amount then you should SLOWLY adjust your caloric intake by 10-15% each week until you get to where you need to be. Do NOT suddenly change your calories. this is completely stupid and will cause your body to hold on to body fat and will delay your success.
You should stay on this schedule for about 6-10 weeks to give your body a base to work from and then you can make adjustments when the plateaus happen.
Eventually everyone will plateau. When that happens you will either want to increase your activity level or play around with your caloric and carbohydrate intake. You want to do one or the other to see which one is making the difference. This is a whole different scenario.
Other things come into play such as….protein needs, fat needs and carbohydrate needs but I’m simply talking about calories at the moment.
I hope some people find this helpful and answers some of the questions as to why it is very self defeating to drastically reduce your caloric intake or to have just 1 meal a day.
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Proper Caloric Intake-----Part 2.
Other things to lose body fat..
You will actually have to do something here. Read. Look up low and high glycemic index carbohydrates. Look up foods that contain fiber such as broccoli, apples, lentils, green beans, ect...
It's a good idea to eat a fibrous food with a starchy food such as broccoli with rice.
Low glycemic foods will fill you up more, digest more slowly and are usually better for you anyway. Foods that contain fiber, especially green foods, will slow the digestion down even further. You can eat green fibrous foods to your little heart's content because the contain very little calories or carbs.
Why is this important? The amount of gluose in your blood, in other words...the amount of sugar in your blood at any given time. One of the keys to losing weight is having an even keel in your blood without any spikes. People sometimes call these insulin spikes because it's the insulin that is the carrier for the sugar that drives the sugar into your muscles and carries them through your blood stream. You want insulin sensitivity, meaning, you want your muscles to basically have more "doors", if you will, open and available to receive insulin and thus, glucose, which turns into glycogen when it's in the muscles. When you have an insulin spike throughout the day by eating junk food all the time then your muscles and organs become insulin resistant because there is a constant barrage of insulin trying to get in and the many of those "doors" start closing and you have more sugar staying in your blood than you should. This is a simple answer, but hopefully you get the point.
Carbohydrates is the main thing that puts weight on you. You don't cut them out all together because they are also one of two things that give your body energy. Fats being the other one. Carbs also are great and vital for many process's that go on in your body...such as brain activity.
If you choose lean sources of proteins then your fats will be low, if you choose low glycemic index carbs OR eat a low glycemic index carb with each meal or every other meal (because they will "carry over" to the next meal and lower the GI index of the next meal) and if you choose healthy fats such as olive oil, avocado's, omega 3, flax seed, coconut oil, ect... and if you eat fibrous carbs then you are doing a combination of things. Keeping your blood sugar from staying high or having these highs and lows all day, the fats..while contributing to calories are actually helping you burn body fat, and you will be getting enough proteins for maintaining your muscle mass (which is extremely important for burning off body fat) and you will supply your body and brain with enough fuel to exercise.
How much fats? 10-20% will give you a low fat diet that is good for slimming down and losing body fat.
How much protein? AT LEAST 1 gram per LEAN body lb, not total weight. Why? Because your total body weight consists of lean body weight plus body fat. Do you really want to continue to feed your body fat? 1.15 will give you an added benefit though. Your lean body weight is your body fat weight subtracted from your total body weight.
How much carbs? That is whats left over. That is where you will cut calories.
Your lean body weight takes 10 times that much in calories. If your lean body weight is 125 you MUST have 1250 calories per day to function properly. Then, you add your activity level to get your total caloric needs for the day. Then you subtract your fats, you subtract your protein needs and then you have your carbs.
Each GRAM of protein or carbs is 4 calories. 1 gram of protein (or carbs) is 4 calories. Each GRAM of fat is 9 calories...thats why it doesn't take much fat to put weight on you. I will leave it up to you people to do the math and to find out the right carbs and fats that fit this criteria.
Couple this with the other post I made about calorie cutting and it should help most, if not all, of you. Lose weight too fast, like most of these exercise plans that you buy have you do and what happens to many people? They quickly plateau because the weight they lost was water and muscle mass. Why? Because they want to lose 50 pounds in 90 days or something equally as ridiculous as that. Losing body fat is not pain staking slow, but it's not rapid either. A "diet" is not something bad, like some of you make it out to be. It should be a total change in eating habits that you adopt for the rest of your life if you expect the weight to stay off. So if anyone tells you that a method is too slow, they will almost definitely put the weight back on and not be able to stay with their new eating habits. No one gained 20 lbs in a week and as you know...it takes longer, MUCH longer, to lose the weight that you gained. So....a 10-15% reduction is a very wise decision rather than throwing out a number like 500 or 1000. A 500 or 1000 calorie cut may be 15% for one person but 50% for another and what happens when you cut your calories 50%?
You should stay on your initial diet for a minimum of 6 weeks and up to 10 weeks before making adjustments so your body will be able to detect a 10-15% reduction and burn body fat as fuel instead of seeing it as a zig zag in calories and hold on to your fat.
If I didn't already mention this in my other post...you MUST eat a minimum of 5 times a day. 3 or 4 will not do it. 6 is optimum, 7 would be even better. Why? It keeps your body working; a working body is a body with a higher metabolism. If you don’t have the time, the money or the food or whatever...that is irrelevant. Your body does not care.
This does NOT follow the p90x diet.
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HOW MUSCLE HELPS BURN BODY FAT---------
Here's a plain simple answer to the question of "why does more muscle burn more fat". This is only part of the answer, but it's a good foundation for people to wrap their heads around because I realize some people just need to know the "why" behind something before they do it or take it seriously.
Training with weights increases your lean body weight (total weight minus your body fat). The more muscle your body has, the higher the metabolic rate you have, even at resting states. Not to mention...the more muscle you have the more calories you NEED to keep your muscles, so starving yourself with too low of caloric intake is defeating your whole purpose to begin with. Why people continue to do this on a daily basis when there is sooooo much information available for FREE is beyond my comprehension. A Dodge viper takes more gas to run down the highway than a honda civic does. Yes? The more muscle and less body fat you have the MORE calories you need...not less.
Ok...the more calories you burn at rest is directly related to how much muscle mass you have.
Here's an example...say a guy is 176 lbs with 19% body fat. His lean body mass is about 142.6 lbs. His caloric intake needs are about 1770 a day.
Suppose he drops down to 9% body fat and then builds his weight back up to 176. He is now carrying a lean body mass of 160 and his caloric needs are 1940 a day. He is burning 170 MORE calories than before.
3500 (a pound of body fat) divide by 170 (extra) calories burned per day is a pound of body fat lost every 20.5 days which adds up to 17.7 pounds of body fat lost in a year with NO additional activity on his part.
Maximum fat loss abilities comes from Weights, cardio (HIIT is better) and diet. All 3 together are greater than their individual parts.
Weights burn the fat AFTER working out and at rest, Cardio burns it WHILE you are working out and diet is important because of insulin and glucose and glycogen...which I've already talked about before
