nutrition 101

Calories and protein are all we care about...

The question everyone wants the answer to is, how any calories can I eat and lose weight? Unfortunately this is not a one size fits all answer. There is a wide range of variables that go into answer but to keep it simple we can say the average person should consume 10-12 calories per pound of body weight to be in a deficit. For an example, I weight on average 160lbs. and for me to be in a deficit and lose weight, a good starting calorie range for me is 1600-1920 calories. From personal experience I would like to be as close to that 1920 as possible, maybe a little over even. Well how could I eat more to remain in a deficit? This is where the wonders of exercise come into play, or maybe you have a really active job that you work at so you need a little more fuel for the fire. Anyways, any time spent doing any type of exercise that is intentional, like at a gym or fitness center can help increase the caloric deficit range.


But Kevin, I\"m going to lose muscle mass if I start cutting. Yes and no. A way to prevent losing too much muscle while in a cut is to make sure you\"re consuming enough protein everyday that way we can maximize fat loss and not using energy from our muscles. We don\"t believe in fad diets, crash diets, cutting out food groups, OMAD, etc. So how much protein does one need to consume to not lose too much muscle and maximize fat loss? Glad you asked. There\"s a bunch of science out there that will give you like .8g to 1.2g of protein per pound of body weight. This is all fine and dandy but we don\"t know what .8g of 160 is off the top of our heads so we like to keep things simple and use 1. If you consume one gram of protein per pound of body weight, that will be an adequate amount of protein to prevent too much muscles loss and maximize fat loss. On average, I consume just over 1g of protein per pound of body weight because thats where I find myself feeling the best and not having ridiculous cravings.


So let\"s say you\"ve been cutting for awhile and are content with your body weight and want to stay where you are at, this is where we begin to maintain or eating at a maintenance caloric intake. For example, if I was cutting at 1920 calories a day but I reach my goal weight of 160 and am content with where I\"m at, I can increase my calories and just maintain my 160 weight. Well how does one go about figuring this out? Personally, I increases my caloric intake by about 300 calories and weighed myself regularly and increased it over time till I stayed relatively the same weight each week. I think for me, I ended up averaging 2400 to 2500 calories a day to maintain my 160lbs. Its a trial and error kind of process but it doesn\"t take too long to figure out, just increase slowly until you level off and aren\"t going up and down in weight over a period of time. General rule for maintaining weight is 14-16 calories per pound, so for me that is 2240-2560 but I felt best at around 2400 calories.


Now you\"ve been on your fitness journey for awhile and are beyond pleased with your progress, you look great, you feel amazing and you\"ve been eating at a maintenance caloric intake for a little while but now you want to put on some lean muscle mass. The goal here is to put on some mass with as little fat as possible and it is possible because we don\"t dirty bulk. What\"s a dirty bulk you ask? It is the see food diet, you see food and you eat it. We don\"t do that. We keep track of our caloric intake and protein intake because thats what matters, remember? To lean bulk, we want to increase our calories but we don\"t want to go absolutely bonkers and start choking down 5,000 calories a day. We increase our calories within reason, about 18-22 calories per pound of weight. For me, that would look like 2880-3520. Currently, I am hitting about 2800, gives me a little wiggle room if I want another snack or something but this also allows me to put on weight as slow as possible and minimize fat gain and maximize muscle gain. Also, eating a little more than 1g of protein per pound of body weight is sufficient in these times to support muscle growth. So for me, I may consume closer to 200g of protein on a day to day basis. 


Some key take aways from this section are:

a caloric deficit is 10-12 calories per pound of body weight

a maintenance caloric range is 14-16 calories per pound of body weight

to put on lean muscle mass we want to consume 18-22 calories per pound of body weight

and last but certainly not least...

eat your protein! (roughly one gram per pound of body weight is sufficient.)

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