First you will need to determine what your ideal calorie level is. You need to calculate your approximate base metabolic rate using the calculator below. This is the number of calories you would burn if you were asleep 24 hours a day.
Personal Deficit
Part 1: It's recommend to recalculate for every 5 lbs you lose. At lower body weight you will require fewer calories for fat loss and also a lower deficit. Lesser aggressive deficits are used as your body's fat % goes down as it's more difficult to keep your lean mass as you get leaner. You want to avoid lean mass loss as much as possible.
Part 2: Allow yourself a treat once a week , or one day to take in higher amount of carbohydrates. Eating at your maintenance calories on this day is recommended. This will help keep your metabolic rate up, and help stave off cravings.
Gauging Your Progress
Measure your problem area's once every week or two to gauge your progress. Measure when you wake up after using the washroom. If you are female, not measuring when you are on your cycle as you will be retaining water as this will give you a false measurement. Some or all of the following measurements will change.
Customization
You estimated above for your maintenance calories this will be an approximation. Which may need to be adjusted due to how many calories you eat based on results. IF no results are seen in how your clothes fit, or with the measuring tape then lower your daily calories by 300. Wait 2 weeks and re-evaluate every 2 weeks.
DO NOT consume less than the number you calculated. IF no progress and you have lowered your calories to the estimated BMR, Read the article on repairing a damaged metabolism: Venuto - How to repair a damaged metabolism
Designing a Diet
* Get rid of junk foods from your home if possible - ie. chips, ice cream, pizza. They bring in a lot of extra calories. They also sacrifice your health. Save junk foods for the once per week "treat" with a maximum of 500 extra calories. * Meals that are based around a protein, a carbohydrate (fruit, vegetable or grain), and a fat. Is complete meal.
* Eat something before morning exercise and don't skip breakfast. You could end up burning muscle tissue.
* Water, water, water. If you don't drink enough water you may get more hungry when you are thirsty. Approximately 1 gallon a day, more if you are very active. Increase water intake slowly though, such as over the period of a week with an extra 16 oz per day.
* Store meals in tupperware containers and cook in advance. It can be frozen for later in the week. This prevents the "there was nothing ready to eat" excuse.
* Get a digital food scale and measure out your servings. No need to measure broccoli, you can guesstimate it and similar vegetables (ie. things with 20 or fewer calories per serving). * Intake at least 1 gram of protein per pound of goal weight (ie. if you would like to weigh 120 lbs, eat at least 120g of protein per day).
Advance Planning of Meals
Nutrition diary's can help plan meals based on your desired caloric and macro-nutrient intake. You can either add the meals the day before, or you can use a word processor or spreadsheet program to write up week long meal plans in advance. Planning in advance helps with staying compliant to the meal plan as there are no "last minute" decisions to be made, and you can precook and store in tupperware in advance. Most meats last at most 4 days in the refrigerator, so advance cooking requires cooking twice per week or freezing of some meals.
Meal Examples/Ideas
1. 100 grams of cooked chicken breast, 2/3 cup cooked brown rice, 6 walnut halves, 1 cup strawberries.
2. 4 oz cooked measure sirloin steak, 1 cup broccoli, 200 grams sweet potato.
3. 0.5 cups 2% fat cottage cheese, 1 cup cubed cantaloupe
4. 3 oz shaved home cooked turkey breast, 2 slices 100% whole wheat bread, mustard or light mayo, 1 oz light cheddar sliced. Calorie Counting and Tracking Macro-nutrients
Three macro-nutrients are protein, carbohydrates and fats. Protein has 4 calories per gram, carbohydrates have 4 calories per gram, and fats have 9 calories per gram. Fiber contains between 0 and 2 calories per gram but we don't explicitly take this into account when doing ratios (just use total carbs, it will be close enough). Alcohol contains 7 calories per gram. Macro-nutrient Ratios
The percent of calories coming from a macro-nutrient ratio gives you the carbohydrates, protein or fat.
Being strict with a particular ratio is not good, and the one you favor will be dependent on you. There is also no need to switch ratios when switching from cutting to bulking (although, you may wish to make changes for increased satiety when cutting, or decreased fullness when bulking). A macro-nutrient ratio gives you the percent of calories from each nutrient in your diet. Here are a few suggestions (again, no need to be strict):
Make sure that you are getting at least 1g of protein per pound of "goal" body weight. For fat loss, goal body weight is where you would like to end up. For muscle gain, use the body weight you expect to be in 6 months. So if you would like to weigh 120 lbs, then you would want at least 120 g of protein. As well, for dieting, 20% fat intake could put your fat intake very low, I suggest for most women to intake at least 40g of fat per day. Example
Needing 2000 calories, you are using a 40% carbohydrates, 40% protein, and 20% fat ratio (often written 40c/40p/20f), then you calculate the grams of each by the following calculation: You will be aiming for 200 grams of carbohydrates, 200 grams of protein, and 44 grams of fat per day. Assuming you are aiming for 5 meals a day, the easiest way to determine approximately what to intake per meal, is by dividing these numbers by 5.
The simple way to count calories and track macro-nutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat) is through the use of free calorie tracking software such as Nutridiary. You simply add the foods in that you ate that day or, preferably, plan in advance by skipping ahead to the next day(s), and entering ahead of time.
The preferred Nutridiary for the ability to design meals that you can easily tweak to get desired nutritional amounts. Another website that is helpful is NutritionData. NutritionData is good for quick searching of nutrition info, and for calculating calories from recipes. I do hope that this will help you in your quest towards a healthier body, body weight and life! - 33373
Personal Deficit
Part 1: It's recommend to recalculate for every 5 lbs you lose. At lower body weight you will require fewer calories for fat loss and also a lower deficit. Lesser aggressive deficits are used as your body's fat % goes down as it's more difficult to keep your lean mass as you get leaner. You want to avoid lean mass loss as much as possible.
Part 2: Allow yourself a treat once a week , or one day to take in higher amount of carbohydrates. Eating at your maintenance calories on this day is recommended. This will help keep your metabolic rate up, and help stave off cravings.
Gauging Your Progress
Measure your problem area's once every week or two to gauge your progress. Measure when you wake up after using the washroom. If you are female, not measuring when you are on your cycle as you will be retaining water as this will give you a false measurement. Some or all of the following measurements will change.
Customization
You estimated above for your maintenance calories this will be an approximation. Which may need to be adjusted due to how many calories you eat based on results. IF no results are seen in how your clothes fit, or with the measuring tape then lower your daily calories by 300. Wait 2 weeks and re-evaluate every 2 weeks.
DO NOT consume less than the number you calculated. IF no progress and you have lowered your calories to the estimated BMR, Read the article on repairing a damaged metabolism: Venuto - How to repair a damaged metabolism
Designing a Diet
* Get rid of junk foods from your home if possible - ie. chips, ice cream, pizza. They bring in a lot of extra calories. They also sacrifice your health. Save junk foods for the once per week "treat" with a maximum of 500 extra calories. * Meals that are based around a protein, a carbohydrate (fruit, vegetable or grain), and a fat. Is complete meal.
* Eat something before morning exercise and don't skip breakfast. You could end up burning muscle tissue.
* Water, water, water. If you don't drink enough water you may get more hungry when you are thirsty. Approximately 1 gallon a day, more if you are very active. Increase water intake slowly though, such as over the period of a week with an extra 16 oz per day.
* Store meals in tupperware containers and cook in advance. It can be frozen for later in the week. This prevents the "there was nothing ready to eat" excuse.
* Get a digital food scale and measure out your servings. No need to measure broccoli, you can guesstimate it and similar vegetables (ie. things with 20 or fewer calories per serving). * Intake at least 1 gram of protein per pound of goal weight (ie. if you would like to weigh 120 lbs, eat at least 120g of protein per day).
Advance Planning of Meals
Nutrition diary's can help plan meals based on your desired caloric and macro-nutrient intake. You can either add the meals the day before, or you can use a word processor or spreadsheet program to write up week long meal plans in advance. Planning in advance helps with staying compliant to the meal plan as there are no "last minute" decisions to be made, and you can precook and store in tupperware in advance. Most meats last at most 4 days in the refrigerator, so advance cooking requires cooking twice per week or freezing of some meals.
Meal Examples/Ideas
1. 100 grams of cooked chicken breast, 2/3 cup cooked brown rice, 6 walnut halves, 1 cup strawberries.
2. 4 oz cooked measure sirloin steak, 1 cup broccoli, 200 grams sweet potato.
3. 0.5 cups 2% fat cottage cheese, 1 cup cubed cantaloupe
4. 3 oz shaved home cooked turkey breast, 2 slices 100% whole wheat bread, mustard or light mayo, 1 oz light cheddar sliced. Calorie Counting and Tracking Macro-nutrients
Three macro-nutrients are protein, carbohydrates and fats. Protein has 4 calories per gram, carbohydrates have 4 calories per gram, and fats have 9 calories per gram. Fiber contains between 0 and 2 calories per gram but we don't explicitly take this into account when doing ratios (just use total carbs, it will be close enough). Alcohol contains 7 calories per gram. Macro-nutrient Ratios
The percent of calories coming from a macro-nutrient ratio gives you the carbohydrates, protein or fat.
Being strict with a particular ratio is not good, and the one you favor will be dependent on you. There is also no need to switch ratios when switching from cutting to bulking (although, you may wish to make changes for increased satiety when cutting, or decreased fullness when bulking). A macro-nutrient ratio gives you the percent of calories from each nutrient in your diet. Here are a few suggestions (again, no need to be strict):
Make sure that you are getting at least 1g of protein per pound of "goal" body weight. For fat loss, goal body weight is where you would like to end up. For muscle gain, use the body weight you expect to be in 6 months. So if you would like to weigh 120 lbs, then you would want at least 120 g of protein. As well, for dieting, 20% fat intake could put your fat intake very low, I suggest for most women to intake at least 40g of fat per day. Example
Needing 2000 calories, you are using a 40% carbohydrates, 40% protein, and 20% fat ratio (often written 40c/40p/20f), then you calculate the grams of each by the following calculation: You will be aiming for 200 grams of carbohydrates, 200 grams of protein, and 44 grams of fat per day. Assuming you are aiming for 5 meals a day, the easiest way to determine approximately what to intake per meal, is by dividing these numbers by 5.
The simple way to count calories and track macro-nutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat) is through the use of free calorie tracking software such as Nutridiary. You simply add the foods in that you ate that day or, preferably, plan in advance by skipping ahead to the next day(s), and entering ahead of time.
The preferred Nutridiary for the ability to design meals that you can easily tweak to get desired nutritional amounts. Another website that is helpful is NutritionData. NutritionData is good for quick searching of nutrition info, and for calculating calories from recipes. I do hope that this will help you in your quest towards a healthier body, body weight and life! - 33373
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