Alright! We have made it to the Nutrition Portion of Beautiful U!
Today we’re going to:
- Discover How many calories you need to be eating each day for your goals
- Learn exactly what types of foods you should be eating
- Get Laser-focused on your body-weight goals
- Set realistic expectations on when we can expect our goals to be reached when following the plan laid out
- How to measure foods without using tricky online calculators that take up all of your time
First, I want you to take at your InBody Report. Look for the number that is labeled “Basal Metabolic Rate” or BMR . This is the amount of calories you need to eat if you wanted to maintain your weight with zero activity.
If you are in the online version and haven’t had an InBody, use the following calculator to determine your “BMR”.
https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/bmr_calculator.htm
Once you’ve found your Basal Metabolic Rate, we now want to take in consideration how active you are.
Take your BMR and multiply it by the following co-efficients based on how active you are.
An active day is defined as a day where your heart rate was elevated for 30 minutes or more.
Less than 3x per week = 1.2
3x per week = 1.3
4x per week = 1.35
5+ per week = 1.4
For example, if my BMR was 1200, and I was active 3x per week, I would do the following:
1200 calories x 1.3 = 1560
This new number we have calculated is the number of calories you need to eat to maintain your weight with your current activity. The is called our Daily Required Intake.
If you change your regular activity at any time, you’ll want to recalculate this number to determine your new calorie needs.
Now we want figure out what change we need to make to this number to reach our goal.
If you look on your InBody, you will see it gives you a control for body fat to lose or gain, and muscle mass to lose or gain. I want you to add the two up and find the difference.
Whatever that comes to, that is your goal weight gain or loss.
For example, if your inbody says:
-20lbs fat
+3lbs muscle
our goal will be to lose 17lbs.
If you don’t have the InBody, I want you to think back to the weight you were at when you were in your best shape ever.
That’s our goal.
Now that we know our calorie requirements and our goal, we need to make some adjustments to our calorie requirements so we’re moving in the direction of that goal.
Take note that 1lb of fat is = 3500 calories.
So, if your goal is to lose 17lbs, I want you to multiply 17 by 3500.
The number you would get would be 59,500.
Great.
Now that we have that number, I want you to divide it by 180 (half a year), 365 (1 year) and 547 (18 months).
Each calculation will give you the calorie deficit, the amount of calories less than your daily intake required to maintain your weight, to reach your goal in that period of time.
In our example, to lose 17lbs in 6 months there would need to be a deficit of 330 calories / day.
In 12 months, 163 calories.
In 18 Months, 108 calories.
We can then take each of these options, and subtract them from our Daily Required intake.
So in our example, we would take our Daily Required Intake, 1560, and subtract 330 calories.
We get 1,230 calories.
This is the amount of calories the example needs to eat each day, with the amount of exercise they are doing, to reach their goals in 6 months.
When you do this for yourself, if it seems too easy or too aggressive and unsustainable, try changing the amount of days you’re trying to reach your goal by.
Now that we know how many calories you need to eat for your goals over the course of the day, lets laser-focus.
Ask yourself:
“On average, how many meals am I eating per day?”
If its 3 meals great.
If its 6 small snacks, great.
I want you to take your Goal Calories for the day and divide it by how many meals you are currently eating.
For example:
If I currently eat 3 meals a day and my goal calorie intake for the day is 1,230 calories, each of my meals would consist of (1230 / 3) = 410 calories per meal.
Macro-nutrients
Now we want to determine how we are going to break these calories down.
I want you to ask yourself a question.
If there was steak and spaghetti beside each other, which would you pick?
If you picked the steak, great. If you picked the pasta, excellent. It doesn’t really matter!
If you picked steak, I want you to multiply your meal calories by (.35).
For example:
I would multiply 410 x .35 to equal 143 fat calories per meal.
Now what I want you to do is take that number and divide it by 9.
I got 16. This number now represents how many grams of fat I want each meal.
If you picked the pasta, multiply your meal calories by .35, and then divide by four.
For example:
410 x .35 = 143 calories
Then divide the 143 calories by 4.
I get 35. This represents 35g of carbs per meal.
I now want you to repeat this process with protein.
Multiply your meal calories by .35, and then divide by 4.
Finally, if you didn’t chose the spaghetti or you didn’t chose the pasta, multiply your meal calories by .3.
Then, if it is fat, divide by 9 to get amount of fat in grams.
If it is carbohydrates, divide by 4 to get amount of cars in grams.
In the video above, I walk you through exactly how to do this.
Based off of my example, I now know exactly what my meals need to look like for me to reach my goals.
I’m a steak kind of guy, so my meals will look like:
16g of fat
35g of protein
30g of carbohydrates
This is great and all, but we can simplify this even more.
We can actually use our hands to measure out portions, so we don’t have to use annoying, time-consuming calculators or measuring cups or food scales.
Generally, 1 cupped hand of carbohydrates is going to equal 25g carbs.
1 palm of protein is going to equal 25g of protein.
1 thumb of fat or 1 tbsp. of fat is going to equal 15g of fat.
So we can convert our portions needed for each meal into our hand measurements.
According to this, my example would need about:
1 thumb of fat, 1 palm and a third of protein, and a little over a cupped hand to hit my meal goal!
You can see a great infographic of this here, along with awesome options for each food group!
You’ll want to add one last thing to each of your meals!
If you’re a women, add 1 fist of veggies or more to each meal!
IF you’re a man, add 2 or more fists of veggies!
In the next lesson, I’ll be providing you with some meal plans, as well as strategies on how to prep cook effectively!