Counting Calories : The Right Way
Diet and nutrition are the two most important factors when it comes to reaching your goal body and ideal physique. I would even argue that what you put in your mouth is far more important that what you are doing in the gym, especially if you have a specific goal such as losing fat or gaining muscle, it works out at roughly 70% diet and 30% exercise. You can train all you want in the gym and do a million variations of a million different exercises but you aren’t going to get anywhere if you don’t pay attention to your calorie intake!
The first thing we need to work out is our calorie maintenance.
Your calorie maintenance is essentially the amount of calories your body will burn in a day to keep your weight the same. This can be estimated by multiplying your body weight in pounds by 16-17, so say you weigh 200lbs, your maintenance calorie limit would be around 3200-3400 calories each day. This may seem like a lot, but remember that the more you weigh, the more energy it takes to keep you at that level!
Your calorie level will also change depending on your activity level, but this can easily be taken into consideration with online calorie counters. Here is one that me and my girl friend like to use. Here's my GF website www.tashinahill.com if you want see her results. You input your basics such as age, gender, weight, height and your activity level and it will calculate your maintenance for you! Simple eh? Though remember that this may not be perfect but it will give you a rough idea of what to aim for.
Calories for losing weight
Okay so we have covered the basics, and we know how much calories your body will burn in a day. Now we want to know how much calories we need to eat in order to lose weight.
Firstly to lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit, plain and simple. Its also pretty easy to work this out, all we need to do is subtract 500-700 calories from our maintenance level, if you eat at most 700 below your maintenance you will be losing weight! Of course everyone will differ depending again on their activity level, which does change from day to day. So if you find yourself not losing weight then drop the calories by 100 and check again the next week.
As an example, if your maintenance calories were 2000 then you would be aiming to eat around 1300 to 1500 calories to lose weight. In fitness lingo this is referred to as “cutting”. A calorie deficit of 500-700 will usually lead to a gradual weight loss of around 1-2lbs per week which isn’t bad at all! Just remember to recalculate your calories every fortnight and adjust your intake accordingly.
Calories for gaining Muscle
Okay so next we want to gain some muscle, this requires us to be in a calorie surplus and in fitness lingo is referred to as “bulking”. We need a calorie surplus to deliver the energy to our muscles to grow, we will also need the building blocks aka protein!
If you are looking to bulk without gaining too much excess fat then you should add an extra 500 to 700 calories above your maintenance. Those who consider themselves hard-gainers probably have a really high physical activity level and so may need to up this by a couple of hundred calories. Again test it on yourself and if you don’t gain in a fortnight then bump the calories by a hundred or so until you notice your lifts going up and your weight following too! Remember that your body can only build so much muscle at a time, so don’t go overboard on the calories or you will end up putting on a lot of extra fat which will just take longer to cut off again.
The one thing that you should remember when it comes to your diet is to figure out your calorie intake. First work out your maintenance calories then go from there depending on your goals, if you want to lose weight, subtract calories, and if you want to gain weight, add calories. I will cover macro nutrients in a later post but in the mean time aim for around 1g of protein per lb of body weight!
Worked Example
200 pound man
- Maintenance: 200 x 16 = 3200 calories per day
- Cutting aka weight loss: 3200 – 500 = 2700 calories per day
- Bulking aka weight gain: 3200 + 500 = 3700 calories per day