The biggest objection to planning & implementing good nutrition is that it's difficult and time-consuming. If you believe much of what circulates in the fitness world, you have to work out daily calorie requirements, calculate macronutrient ratios (referred to simply as "macros") & weigh every morsel of food before it passes your lips.
I absolutely accept that if you're a bodybuilder or physique competitor, who needs to have low single digit body fat, then this is the best way to do this.
Yes, done that way, it is time-consuming and requires a lot of planning if you're not going to eat steamed chicken and broccoli. To be really good at it, it's very complicated indeed.
However, that's not what we're talking about here.
Our goal is to achieve a level of nutritional health that will help us to live well, perform well at our sport & look good. Yes, looking good is important too. The definition of "looking good" varies wildly from person to person, but if you have body fat in the "good" range that we looked at in lesson 15, you're looking pretty good compared to the average.
If you broadly follow the rules & principles you've learned so far, your health and your body will change. For many, that might mean a reduction in body mass but there are some of us who need to build a bit more muscle to support health & those people will put on a bit. Both are OK.
Using the worksheets provided, here's how to plan the first part of both nutrition plan options presented in this course.
Planning Your Nutrition - First Steps
Optional Step: Calculate your lean body mass
- Enter body mass
- Enter bodyfat percentage
- Multiply body mass by bodyfat percentage (in the video example, 75 x 0.12 = 9)
- Enter resulting fat mass
- Subtract fat mass from body mass (in the video example, 75 - 9 = 66)
- Enter resulting lean body mass
*This works exactly the same, whether you use lbs or kg.
Step 1: Work out your daily protein intake
- Multiply body mass in kilograms by 2.2 or simply use body mass in lbs (in the video example, 66 x 2.2 = 145g)
(If you did the optional step, use your lean body mass. Generally speaking, you want to do this if you are a little leaner).
- Enter this number in the box.
Now move on to the video for your chosen approach (watch the other one too for context too).
At this point, the standard approach - the one used in the apps - calculates a daily calorie requirement, subtracts your protein, assigns ratios for the other macronutrients & sets a daily target for macronutrients.
We're not doing that because, as mentioned before, this ties most people to this approach for life if they're to hold onto the progress they made. Instead, we're going to look after our protein intake, set a limit on one of the other macronutrients and follow principle #1 by eating real food until we're satisfied.
We're designed to read our hunger signals. It's time to relearn that ability.
Task for this lesson:
Print out the worksheets (download button above) and complete step 1.