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11 Ways to Completely Revamp Your how many calories to eat when
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The question everybody asks is, should I eat 1000 calories less to lose weight? Or, Should I eat only 600 calories per day to lose a couple of pounds?
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Actually neither is true. To lose weight and feel good at the same time you should only do minor adjustments to your daily calorie intake. Ever met a person that's been living on less than 1000 calories per day for a week or two? Was it a charming personality? Everybody I have met are cranky, gets angry for nothing and so on. They have a hard time coping with the diet they are going through and that is way so many of them will have tormented them for nothing, they often quit the diet before they see any amazing results.
So why do they quit? Well, at the start of the diet it is easy to keep motivated, because you do lose weight the first three or four days. After that it gets harder, a lot harder. On the fourth day the body will have adjusted its metabolism to burn only a minimum of calories. The body does this adjustment to protect itself from dying. You know all through our history we have often starved and the people with the best saving metabolism survived, God knows what happened to the others. So today we have this heritage that we are greedy, especially when it comes to fat. Our body loves fat so much that it doesn't understand that the fat is deceiving (like being in love, you know) it. It wants to save all the fat for a rainy day but still the overweight makes us vulnerable to all sorts of diseases.
Ok, that was a lot of nothing above...back to business. Your future weight loss don't depend all that much from how much or little calories you eat. It depends more on the type of calories you eat. Our metabolism (our nice heritage) is reprogrammed every other day or so. This mean that we could actually fool it. We could give a type of calories that increase the fat burning process and switch calories for the next day, and for the next and so on. This means that our body will be burning fat like crazy!
Ok, what is this fat burning process? Well, it is kind of advanced (or at least it is to me). We have a number of fat cells that is pretty much constant. Each cell grows in size when it stores fat. Now if we eat the foods we call unhealthy, our insulin levels spike. High insulin levels is a kickstart for our fat cells. They get more and more fat to store and we grow bigger and bigger (or our fat cells are). To release this fat again we have to have low levels of fatty acids in our body. We get this from not eating that much fat but instead we consume calories from other food groups consisting of protein and carbohydrates. Although remember that a low fat diet is not a solution (we have been eating low to non-fat diets for the last decades, see the relation?).
Ok, if we eat carbs and proteins for a couple of days and then our metabolism will start using its resources (fat storages). If we eat fat on the fourth day our body will still be in fat burning mode. How cool is that?!
Another way to burn large amounts of fat is to...exercise! You didn't see that coming did you?
Exercising will increase your fat loss because the muscles will need more energy. And remember that the more lean muscle mass you have the bigger is the demand for fat. So if you have lots of muscles this will burn the fat!
The liver is another organ to target. This holds a unique ability to burn fat for...nothing! See, the liver could take fat from your fat cells and burn it for a little heat. Even when you sleep!
So, now you know that the calorie count isn't all that important. Instead, look at what type of calories you are eating. Then, if you add a few twists, you will supercharge your mitochondria and liver to use fat like fuel for a fire! By the way, a mitochondria is a kind of power plant for the cell. Each cell holds several motichondrias. You could also fool these little suckers into wanting more fat than they really need.
Ok, it was nice talking to you. I'll be putting up more revolutionary articles about different diets. This is pretty much the secrets that the weight loss industry is holding back from you. There are some weight loss supplements that are worth their name and it those that increase the rate that your liver burns fat in. Also the could help at the step of releasing the fat. But that is a completely different story.
Looking forward
Welcome to Intermittent Fasting 101. This is a primer, or guide for the setup that I personally use for Intermittent Fasting for Fat Loss.
Here is the extremely basic summary of how it works:
* On training days, eat 9 hours of the day and fast the remaining 15.
* On off or cardio days, eat 6 hours of the day and fast the remaining 18.
* Weight training 3 days per week
* Cardio 2-4 times per week
* Eat maintenance + 500 calories on weight training days
* Eat 50% of maintenance on other days
* Majority of carbohydrate intake is on weight training days
Again, this plan is specific to fat loss. Plans for mass gain (bulking) and maintenance will be coming soon. Now for the detailed explanation of:
How to set up an Intermittent Fasting Diet for Fat Loss
Establishing Eating / Fasting Times
The time of day in which you eat depends on if you are lifting weights that day, or not. On lifting days, your eating window is 9 hours and on off or cardio days, its 6 hours. You will need to be able to weight train and do cardio at how many calories should you eat during intermittent fasting the same time of day, as this will throw off the schedule.
Eating schedule for weight training days
The fast is broken by a pre-workout shake, 15-30 minutes before you being your workout and lasts for 9 hours. For example, since I workout at 1pm, my eating window begins at 12:30 pm and lasts until 9:30 pm. This can be inconvenient if you workout at say, 8pm, so I feel weightlifting at lunchtime or in the morning works best.
Next, we will look at setting up a schedule for off days or cardio days.
Eating schedule for off or cardio days
The fast is broken an hour after cardio is complete and lasts for 6 hours. In my case, I do cardio at 1pm, so my fast is broken at 3pm. It remains 3pm on off days.
Summary
Since I train Monday/Wednesday/Friday, the big picture looks like this:
Monday: Fast ends at 12:30pm and begins at 9:30pm
Tuesday: Fast ends at 3:00pm and begins at 9:00pm
Wednesday: Fast ends at 12:30pm and begins at 9:30pm
Thursday: Fast ends at 3:00pm and begins at 9:00pm
Friday: Fast ends at 12:30pm and begins at 9:30pm
Saturday: Fast ends at 3:00pm and begins at 9:00pm
Sunday: Fast ends at 3:00pm and begins at 9:00pm
Determining Calories / Macronutrient Amounts:
Now that you have set up your eating / fasting schedule, it's time to figure out how many calories, fat, carbohydrates and protein you will be eating. I realize that this might seem overwhelming at first, with all the math, but once you initially establish your requirements, it's really quite easy and routine.
Calories needed for Fat Loss
Caloric requirements depend if it is a weight training day or an off/cardio only day.
To determine calories needed for fat loss, you must first determine the calories needed for maintenance. The easiest way to get an estimate is to multiply your weight in pounds by 15. For example, if you weigh 200 lbs, the total calories needed for maintenance would be 3000 calories per day.
Calorie requirements for weight training days:
To determine calories on weight training days, take the amount of maintenance calories and add 500 to it. So for our 200 lb person, they would be eating 3500 calories on days that they lift.
Calorie requirements for off or cardio days:
To determine calories needed for off or cardio days, simply divide your maintenance calories in half. So for off or cardio days, our 200 lb person would be eating 1500 calories per day.
Macronutrient Breakdown:
Now that your calorie requirements for fat loss have been determined, it's time to figure out how much of each macronutrient you will be needing. The amounts will vary on if you are weight training that day or not.The macronutrients we will be using, will be the big three:
* Fat
* Protein
* Carbohydrates
(Be sure to remember that fat has 9 calories per gram and protein and carbs each have 4 calories per gram.)
Macronutrient breakdown for weight training days:
Fat:
The maximum amount of fat eaten per day is 30 Grams. It doesn't matter where the fat comes from, as long as 10 of these grams are in the form of Omega-3 Fish Oil.
Protein:
To determine the minimum amount of protein per day, you multiply your weight by 1.25. Our 200 lb person will need a minimum of 250g of protein to preserve muscle. Sources don't really matter, just be sure to be mindful that you don't exceed the fat limit. Chicken, very lean red meat, fat free cheese and protein powder (whey or casein) are excellent choices.
Carbohydrates:
Carbohydrates make up the remaining calories in your diet. Once again, sources don't matter, just be sure not to exceed the 30g fat limit and be you want to keep sugar below 100 grams. So in our sample person, he is getting 270 calories from fat and 1000 calories from protein. With the caloric goal on lifting days being 3500, that leaves him with 2230 calories left for carbs. Divide 2230 by 4 and you come up with a maximum carbohydrate amount of ~558 grams.
Macronutrient breakdown for non-lifting or cardio days:
As I mentioned earlier, calories needed for days that you don't weight train or do cardio are 1/2 of what your maintenance calories are. Here is the macronutrient breakdown:
Fat:
Again, the amount of fat is unchanged from training