There are so many important components regarding diet and nutrition we're going to look at. I will work to parse this information down into small but detailed posts where the focus will be on just a handful (or less) of pertinent pieces that you can use and put into practice right away. Today, we'll build on the basic groundwork information we've covered so far about our daily caloric needs, portion sizes and quality of nutrition we're ingesting.
Daily Calorie Needs
If you haven't already, you'll need to revisit this post to get a baseline idea of what your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is. The calculators provided there will attempt to account for your approximate level of daily activity/exercise as well as what your body needs to function. There are a couple of important things to keep in mind with these calculations:
1) Your BMR based on your current physical condition will basically give you the daily caloric requirements to maintain that physical condition.
2) You will want to determine your current BMR and your projected BMR based on your specific goal for your transformed physical condition.
In doing this, you will essentially get a range of daily caloric needs to work within. For example, I know that based on my current physical condition and my goal for my transformed physical condition I will need to work within a daily caloric range of ~1,800 to 2,200 calories.
This range is helpful on two levels. First, it's much easier to land within this range rather than targeting a very specific number and secondly, your daily activity level will have an impact on where you need to be within or outside of this range.
We need to know our daily caloric needs because to lose fat weight we must to create a calorie deficit. This can be accomplished by either increasing activity and/or reducing caloric intake. Both of these methods seemingly have limited periods of effectiveness when used individually due to the body's ability to adapt. We can however use both of these methods concurrently in a varying manner to sustain reliable weight loss over lengthy periods of time.
On days where we're not scheduled to do any additional activity or exercise (workout, cardio, etc) we can opt to be at or near the low end of our daily caloric range to ensure that we're not getting a surplus of calories the body will want to store as fat. The quality of the food we eat on these days will contribute to our recovery and repair so we can be sure that we're getting enough, but not too much.
On those days when we're working out, doing a cardio session or some active recreational activity, we can plan to be at or near the upper end of this range (or higher if you're certain you need it and you're eating quality food). It's critical to keep in mind that all of that activity won't be helping you reach your goal if you're not creating the needed caloric deficit during the day. While you can potentially eat more on these days if you feel you need to, be sure to not over do it. We'll look at some detailed examples (beyond what's outlined below) in future posts regarding specific diet plans on these days.
Keep The Portion Sizes Down
As we spoke about here, one of the best ways to begin rationing caloric intake is to keep portion sizes small but plentiful throughout the day. Eating five or more small meals per day will allow your body to feel more full with less food, have less cravings throughout the day and keep insulin secretion more controlled which will prevent the ups and downs many of us feel before, during and after eating big meals. If you have already been putting the smaller portions sizes into practice, good for you! Even if you've still been eating the same, possibly not great quality foods, these smaller portions will limit the impact they have on the body. Once you start making the shift to high quality foods, the results pick up drastically.
Keep Food Quality Up
You've been increasing your activity and decreasing your portion sizes but you still don't feel too great. My friend, it all comes down to food quality. A donut for breakfast, coffee for snack, cheeseburger value meal for lunch, small bag of chips in the afternoon, maccaroni and cheese for dinner and a glass of chocolate milk before bed isn't the type of quality that will have you feeling great during the day! A migration away from this type of eating will have you feeling fantastic in no time. The hardest part about this transition that I can attest to is getting used to eating foods that aren't processed and refined to the max. Again, due to the body's incredible ability to adapt, we get used to eating highly processed foods and the tastes and flavors we experience with these processed foods becomes the norm. We become desensitized to the natural flavors and ingredients inherent in fresh, unaltered foods. Our bodies weren't designed to function at 100% on corn syrup solids, MSG and partially hydrogenated oils! They function a million times better on long chain, complex carbohydrates, naturally occuring sodium and potassium and essential fatty acids. All of which can be found in unrefined foods.
With that said, I completely understand the difficulties that can arise in planning and preparing meals of this nature. Like you, I certainly don't have the time to think all these things through ahead of time and plan every meal I'm going to eat. But, we do need to make an effort here. One thing I tend to do is rely heavily on meal replacement supplements (I have my own personal favorites and will make some recommendations in a future post). Once or twice per day I will have some form of 'liquid nutrition' to supplement my solid food diet. There have been some days where I barely eat any 'real food' at all! It all comes down to my schedule, timing and what I'm doing that day. Plus, many of the varieties of dietary supplements in the marketplace today taste fabulous!
Some positive substitutions you can make with your meals could include:
Breakfast
1 cup of rolled oats (plain oatmeal - no sugar added. Throw in 2 tablespoons of natural peanut butter to liven it up)
Snack
1oz Plain/unsalted almonds (if you can handle the salt, choose the Smokehouse flavor for more variety)
Lunch
Grilled Chicken Salad from a fast food restaurant - HOLD THE DRESSING! Once you get used to eating these with no dressing (and they begin to taste good that way!) you will be able to master your entire eating plan!
Snack
1 meal replacement bar - you can't miss! They taste almost like a candy bar.
Dinner
2 slices whole wheat bread toasted
2 whole eggs microwaved (spray a bowl with a shot of spray olive oil, crack the eggs in, put some kind of non-sealed cover on the bowl, heat until cooked through)
1 slice of provolone cheese (put this on the eggs in the bowl after their cooked and keep the cover on to steam melt the cheese.)
Before Bed
16oz glass of skim milk
Easy!
This looks like a lot, but it only comes out to about 1,700 calories. If you were to eat this and split it up throughout the day, you'd find yourself eating every 2.5 hours or so and rarely ever feeling starved. Hungry at time, yes, but famished, not necessarily.
The key points to take away from this example however, is the ease in which it can all be prepared, how little disruption there is to your daily scheduling and how simple the foods/meals are. Eating along these lines gives you plenty of high quality protein, a moderate amount of complex carbohydrates, very little saturated fats and a fair amount of 'good fats'. Plus, you'll feel great from eating simple but high quality foods with little bulk to them.
We'll continue to explore various meals and recipes going forward to see how we can keep things simple but still liven it up a bit so we can enjoy what we eat.
Next Time:
- We'll look at what proportion of macro nutrients will work best for us
- How to figure out the macro nutrient ratios
- A brief discussion on carbohydrate types
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Sunday, November 1, 2009
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