Calories: The Basics

We are going to start with the most basic aspect of any diet and nutrition plan, which is calories. What exactly is a calorie? The food calorie is defined as the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. In layman’s terms it just refers to a measurement of energy. I am sure you have heard the term “calories in, calories out”? That is the most basic measurement of any diet plan, and I want you to remember that. Calories are used by the body for three main purposes; basic metabolism, which is your basal metabolic rate (BMR), digestion and physical activity. Everyone’s BMR is different and there are many calculators available online to get a good estimate based on height, weight, and gender. This will give you a good starting point to figure out how many calories you need to eat to either lose, maintain, or gain weight. Another small portion of your calories (10-15%) are used for digestion of the food you eat. The “thermal effect of food” or TEF, is how much energy it requires to digest. The impact of this on metabolism is still being debated, so just to keep things simple, do not try to factor this into your calculation. The rest of the calories that you take in are used for physical activity. This varies from person to person, and of course if you are trying to lose weight, more physical activity will result in a larger calorie deficit.

Caloric Balance and Weight Change

What does this all mean? It means that if you take in less calories than you burn, you lose weight. To maintain your current weight, your calorie intake and calorie expenditure must match. To gain weight, you must be in a caloric surplus.

There is one simple rule that I feel is one of the most important things you can take away from this entire article:

— Total daily calories control body weight. The calorie sources (your macros) determine body composition, or how you look.

How Much of a Deficit is Needed?

Expanding on the guidelines for calorie intake and expenditure, how much of a caloric deficit do we need to be in to lose a certain amount of weight? To lose 1 pound of fat, we need to burn 3,500 calories more than we consume. So, if you are in a 500-calorie daily deficit, you would lose about 1 pound a week. In 1,000 calorie a day deficit, you would lose about 2 pounds a week. In my opinion, 1 pound a week is a safe place to start without starving yourself and feeling run down all the time, as well as not risking slowing down your overall metabolism.

Approaches to Creating a Deficit

There are two different ways to approach this; one way is to just eat less food throughout the day, which means less calories are being taken in. The other way is to increase physical activity. The optimum way is to combine both, and I will explain why.

Preserving Muscle During Fat Loss

It is a fact that if you keep yourself in a caloric deficit only through diet, you will lose weight. The problem that we run into is what the body burns to provide energy. We want to avoid losing muscle, while at the same time forcing the body to burn fat. The best way to do this is by resistance training or lifting weights. Put simply, when you are regularly working out and exposing your muscles to a stimulus, the body knows to preserve muscle mass and use fat stores for energy. We don’t need to get into the science behind it, but this will be your best method to keep the muscle you have and even gain more, while losing weight.

For your workouts, the best way to stimulate the muscles is to keep your repetition ranges heavy (5-10 reps), or you can use lighter weight and go to failure. The minimum should be 3 total-body workouts a week, or 4-5 days if you split things up.

The Role of Cardio

What about cardio? Despite what you might think, cardio is not going to be your go-to method to losing weight. It has been proven that resistance training is way more effective at preserving muscle and promoting fat loss. What I suggest is some low to moderate intensity cardio after your workout to burn some extra calories, or some high intensity interval training (HIIT) once or twice a week if you desire. Long cardio sessions are known to increase appetite and the metabolism boost from resistance training pays off better in the long run. I will cover this area more in the workout section.

Tracking Calories

How do you track your calories? The problem with most people and dieting is that they grossly underestimate the number of calories they are eating. The easiest way I have found to track how many calories I am taking in is with the app MyFitnessPal or something similar. This gives you a diary where you can very accurately enter all the foods you eat throughout the day. It has an extensive database where you can search for the foods you eat, and you can even scan bar codes on the package and enter the serving size. On that note, make sure you pay attention to serving size! Companies have tried to make the labels look healthier than they actually are, by changing the serving size. For example, I have a protein cookie that I like to eat. When you look at the label on the back, it does not look that bad. But if you look at the serving size, it is half a cookie! Who eats half a cookie? So that 200 calories that it lists in bold letters at the top of the label is actually 400 when you read the fine print below it. Make sure you examine the whole label for this very reason. The app also allows you to enter your bodyweight and target calories for the day, based on the amount of weight you want to lose in a given amount of time. This app is great for accountability and most people are surprised by the number of calories they thought they were eating vs reality.

Beyond the Scale

One other piece of advice I want to give you is to not pay too much attention to the scale. If you are following what I am teaching you, your body will be going through a recomposition phase. You can lose inches off your waist and have very little or no change on the scale. This is because you are gaining muscle, which is denser, and losing fat. My suggestion is to weigh yourself once a week but also take measurements to get an accurate picture of what is going on. Believe in the process and you will notice change!