Your diet is the most important part of getting in shape. You always hear of people being on diets, and you have probably been on a few. The only diet I have ever tried, is the diet I am currently on. The basic idea is to eat 6 meals a day 2.5-3 hours apart, each meal being around 300-400 calories. I like to use the analogy of a train, using coal as fuel. Your body is constantly using calories, so you only give it enough fuel to use for the next 2 –3 hours, then refill it. If you give yourself too much fuel at a time, your body will store it as fat. The whole “3 square meals a day” technique just doesn’t work for me.

Calories aren’t just calories. You need to split up your calorie sources. The three sources of Calories are Fat, Protein and Carbohydrates. The split that I use is 20-40-40. That means that I try to eat 20% Fats, 40% Proteins, and 40% Carbs. It’s really a lot easier if I lay it out in a picture:

The total calories in Fig.1 is 2200. Your daily calorie needs will vary from person to person. I recommend that you keep track of everything you eat, at least for the first few months, so that you have a true understanding of how many calories you are consuming. I used to think that as long as I wasn’t eating candy bars or chocolate cake, I was eating healthy. I really had no idea how many calories I had been eating. Now as I look back at my old eating habits, they were truly horrible. A full pack of Ritz crackers, with some peanut butter and Pepsi…it almost makes me sick thinking about it. To keep track of my calories and the times I ate them, I came up with a little Excel spreadsheet. I usually write down what I eat on PostIt notes, then whenever I get a chance, I add them to the spreadsheet. Here is a fairly standard day, and an example of the spreadsheet:

As you can see, I ate 7 different times throughout the day. Each meal was between 200-600 calories. On this particular day, I didn't eat enough for breakfast. You might think that eating only 200 calories for a meal will make you extremely hungry afterwards, but remember, you only need enough fuel for the next 2-3 hours, not the next 6 hours like on the standard 3 meals-a-day diet.

Feel free to click on Fig.2 to download a blank copy of the spreadsheet!

You can find the nutrition facts on the package of any retail bought food. For restaurant foods, and looks that you do not come in a package, I use a few websites that list the nutrition facts.

www.nutritiondata.com
www.dietfacts.com

If you would like to know how many calories you need, per day, to lose weight, use a simple BMR calculator. BMR is your Base Metabolic Rate, and is the total amount of calories you burn, in one day, resting, with no other exercise. Here is a simple BMR calculator (using the Harris-Benedict formula) you can use:

Esitmated Total Calories Burned per day:

If you consume less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. Adding exercise will allow your net calories to be lower as well. Let’s say that you consume 2000 calories in one day, and your BMR is 2400. That means you are at a 400 deficit. Add exercise, and burn another 250 calories that day, and your deficit becomes 650 calories! Where do these “negative” calories come from? Mostly from fat! As long as you are consuming enough protein (about 1g per pound of muscle you have), and are resistance training, almost all of the calories used will come from fat. Because one pound of Fat equals about 3500 calories, on the current 650 calorie a day deficit, you will lose over a pound of pure fat in a week.

You must be careful. There can be some serious physical risks if you continue a calorie deficit for too long. Most health experts agree that a calorie deficit of 1000 calories a day, or 2 pounds per week, is the healthy weight loss limit. You must also remember if you are losing weight, and not replacing that mass with muscle, you will in turn burn less calories while at rest. To combat this, you need weight training. Weight training will replace the burned fat with rock hard muscle. The more muscle you have, you more calories you burn, and the more you can eat and still lose weight!