Welcome back Misfits!
So, as we have gone through the steps of our Pillars of Fitness, and established both our purpose and our goals, and then solidified SMART goals… We moved from Purpose into Planning, with a quick overview of the components of a good plan:
Nutrition
Hydration
Exercise
Recovery
Supplements
Planning for each of these is that tangible step that you can perform that takes that "pie in the sky" goal and turns it into a concrete goal complete with steps for HOW to ACCOMPLISH those goals.
This is where a lot of people go astray... or get led astray.
Because it's in this step, that it would be really easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of information out there…
Which is again why I advise the use of a navigator - a coach - to help you disseminate all the information and advice that’s out there and distill it into not only correct, factual, accurate information, but also to put it in the context of your journey.
Today we start with nutrition.
Now with nutrition, with everything that I say, I always caveat that you really should go see a nutritionist or a dietitian first.
Why?
Well, first and foremost (and most practically) is that I like to cover my bases professionally, as somoene who respects professionals who work in the fitness industry not speaking out of turn/their field of expertise. This is both out of respect for registered and qualified nutritionists and dietitians, and to make sure that I don’t put myself in any other trouble, but also because I don’t believe in steering people onto the incorrect path… But finally (and most importantly) because there’s a lot of information that might be left out of that bigger picture if you don’t have things like a blood panel done, or assess for your personal family and genetic history, etc.
So I can give you broad strokes that apply to much of the population: calories, macros, and general healthy eating practices,etc.
All of which are based on your goals and all based on assuming that you’re a relatively healthy individual whose bodyweight is just a reflection of normal genetic and family history with little or no pre-existing conditions.
Hopefully most of those will help you on your journey whether you are maintaining, recomping, dropping weight, or gaining muscle.
Should these practices not work (after giving it an honest try), I'd advise seeking out a nutritionist or dietitian to make sure you’re not working against yourself in the gym and in the kitchen.
So, the core components of a good nutrition plan are:
Calories
Macros
Micros
Hydration
Meal Frequency
I'll make each of these relatively quick, in case I decide to spend a little more time on them after this installment (spoiler alert: in writing this out, I decided to stop at calories). As this is a living breathing series, I'm taking the time to delve into things deeper as I think they merit more attention, and trying to keep each of these to no more than 15 minutes in order to make them easy to digest and absorb (nutrition pun not intended).
Calories...
Again, 300 foot view:
If you want to lose weight, you need to be in a caloric deficit.
If you want to gain weight, you need to be in a caloric surplus.
If you want to maintain, you eat just as much as you need.
How do you know how much you need, in order to eat under or over?
Funny thing... caloric burn, for as much research has been done on it, is still not a wholly exact science. Human error, genetic variation, and many more factors play a part in throwing it off.
BUT in short, you want to find your TDEE - Total Daily Energy Expenditure. Your TDEE is your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) and add the amount of calories you burn through daily activity and through exercise or strenuous work. This is all based on age, height, current weight, etc.
THEN... then you take some calories off of that so that you are sitting somewhere between your BMR and your TDEE - enough to function, live, and grow... but less than you need to maintain, so you drop weight.
If all of that sounds complicated, that's when I'd advise grabbing a coach, online calculator, or nutritionist to figure it out.
But back to the idea behind the math, and a LITTLE bit of a segue to explain why you need to cut yourself some grace for the process it will take to figure this out...
In the past, studies found that roughly 3500 calories of energy probably equaled 1 pound of fat. So, understandably, if we spread that out over a 7 day period, that would equate to about 500 calories a day that we would need to cut from our diet to lose 1 pound a week.
But, as with all things fitness... that is *necessarily* true for everyone.
In reality, in general, if you cut about 500 calories a day from your diet, you may lose about ½ to 1 pound a week. But this can vary greatly depending on your body, genetics, how much weight you want to lose, where you're already at in that process, gender, and activity level (both in and out of the gym).
The math gets hazy because when you lose weight, you usually lose a mix of fat, lean tissue and water. Also, because of changes that occur in the body during weight loss, you may need to decrease calories even further to keep losing weight.
So, like I said above, ALL of the reasons that exact caloric deficit can be fuzzy is EXACTLY why you need to allow yourself the time for this to be a PROCESS and not a one-off solution. It will take time to figure this out, and you will most likely have to revisit it again. I know I have.
Just remember:
--Calories are just one part of the puzzle. Calories are what help shape your size. Macros (which will cover next) are what help shape your performance. And Micros (which we will also cover) are what help shape how you feel.
--Shooting for any estimated amount of caloric deficit will help you get closer to weight loss.
--Shooting for any estimated amount of caloric surplus will help you get closer to weight gain.
--Movement of just about any kind will help accelerate both of these towards your goal.
--Food is fuel. Not a reward or a punishment. But we will get to that in our later sections on perspective.
Next up, we are going to talk about Macros. And I MAY or may NOT end up spending an entire installment on each. If you were in this for the short, quick, dirty overview... I'm sorry.
For now,
This has been Coach Cap, helping put the Fit… in MisFit.
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