Since some of my friends and fellow fitness enthusiasts were aware that I was writing my fat loss book, I want to create this blog because I don't think I can finish the book anytime soon. It's not that I'm lazy but it's just due to the fact that I am currently backed up with too many things as of the moment, I'm restless ya' know :)
Let's first define diet -- diet simply means the way of eating, not necessarily mean cutting back. It could be fat loss, maintenance or muscle/ weight gain diet. There are two types of dieting around: Linear and non-linear variation. Today, I will only discuss linear dieting because a lot of people may find the non-linear variation too complicated hence I like saving this method once plateau has reached using the linear approach. Anyway, most people will likely to see their desired results using this method. Individuals seeking greater leanness may have to do the non-linear approach, it just depends.
Fat loss and maintenance
The goal of a fat loss diet is to create a calorie deficit, meaning you need to eat less calories than what you use a day/ weekly basis. In contrary, a pound of fat has 3,500 calories in it. I don't want to get into deep details about it so let's just leave it that way. Some people like creating a daily 500 kcal deficit once they determine their daily average calorie expenditure. There is a formula in computing the daily energy needs but for simplicity's sake, I like using the quick and dirty method for determining the maintenance calorie needs -- that is somewhere between 13-16 kcal/ lb of body weight meaning if you're a 150 lb man with moderate amount of physical activities may get away with 14-15 kcal/ lb of body weight just being himself. The amount, volume and frequency and type of training will also have an impact on the calorie expenditure.
Once the person figures out the average calories he/ she needs, adjustments can now be done if the calories has to go up or down. Trial and error is needed to establish a solid baseline. I suggest that you try figuring out your maintenance calorie in a week or two, if you're gaining weight then decrease the multiplier by one. Women may need to use the lower numbers because women carry more fat cells than men(they need higher body fat % for reproduction) and women carry less muscle mass. It's not that muscles burn tremendous amount of calories because a lb of muscle only burns additional 6 kcal/ lb, overtime, it will still add up.
To figure out the calories needed to create a fat/ weight loss, once you figure out your maintenance calorie budget, you may deduct 500 kcal daily so if you need 2,000 kcal/ day, you may need to eat 1,500 daily, at the end of the week, that's 3,500 kcal deficit. Another approach is once figuring your maintenance calorie budget, multiply your current body weight by 10-12 depending on your metabolism/ amount of physical activities. People who has very light activities may need to use the lower limit of 8-9 kcal/ lb of body weight. These people are often the ones who has desk jockey jobs whose only activities are their exercise.
There's another fat loss method which is more complicated where you track your average body fat prediction using a caliper or a BIA scale for a week or so then from there you can have a baseline of predicting the body fat then from there you calculate the target body weight at target body fat % but I will not discuss the method here, I will include that in the book that I am writing.
Muscle gain
From the baseline above, once you get the maintenance calorie budget, you can either add 500 kcal/ day on top of your daily maintenance or by simply multiplying your current body weight by 16-18. Again, a lot of people's mistakes is hitting the higher end without realizing that muscle takes time to develop. Lyle Mcdonald and other fitness gurus established a muscle gain chart based on realistic gains that can be found here:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-genetic-muscular-potential.html
In my personal experience, I get pretty good gains using my current body weight x 18 during gaining phase. My maintenance is only x 14 of body weight. The heavier a person, the calorie requirements may even go up. It is simply due to the fact that a heavier body requires more energy to fuel than a lean ones. Once a person lean down, their BMR may also go down because it is part of the decrease in mass.(Fat cells also contribute in resting energy expenditure, about 3 kcal/ day per lb of fat). A lot of people who personally know me via facebook or in person may wonder that how come I know so much about fitness and nutrition while I'm still very lean and seem not putting bigger muscles well the answer is, I could put a lot of muscle if I wanted to but I will put on a lot of body fat along with it. The big part of it is the p-ratio or partion ratio. This is the reason why we often see people whose training is sub optimal, with little dieting effort yet get big and get ripped at the same time, they are genetic freaks. That's the reason why I take the culking approach -- which is going to be another topic in the future post.
You may even hear people doing "clean bulk" whatever that means. I think what they meant is these people were trying to minimize any fat gain while trying to gain muscle by eating only "clean foods." This type of ideology I think is developed by bodybuilding sub-culture that if you base your foods among lean meats, healthy fats, non-refined processed foods, no junk foods (you get the picture right?), they will not gain fat. This is simply not true because muscle gain will always have a tag along body fat gain unless you have a very good p-ratio and optimal skeletal insulin sensitivity where all the excess calories you eat get shuttled in the muscle tissue.
So there you go, my advice is if your goal is fat loss, eat the foods that you like that will likely to make you eat less calories and will keep you satiated. If muscle gain is your goal, make sure to eat enough protein and a little extra to support growth and feel free to eat the foods that you like. Take note that muscle building is a marathon, not a sprint. Muscle gaining diet should also never be an excuse to gat extremely fat.
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