Nutrition

Our bodies are complex and capable. We eat--and our bodies create energy for us to move, breathe, think, talk and create. Our bodies, as the American diet has proven, can take pretty much whatever food we throw at it and turn it into the energy needed to live life--yet, this diet will break us down quickly and leave us with diseases and bodies that not many dream of inhabiting.

Something needs to change, and it starts with nutrition. We only have one body for this life, and it is important that we enjoy it--and to properly enjoy it, for as long as we’re able, we need to respectfully feed it good fuel so it can operate cleanly and efficiently.

If you are interested in becoming healthier and get your nutrition under control--whatever that looks like for you--I’d like to propose the following steps as a starting point. It takes some commitment and time, but health, when invested in properly, will pay back dividends every single day for the rest of your life.

Step 1: Understand your current situation (1 week)

In order to understand your current nutritional situation, we need to gather some data. Commit a week's worth of tracking to this step. This really isn't too difficult, it just takes a bit of commitment and a little inconvenience around meals.

We need two bits of information, every day, for a week:

• Calories consumed
• Weight

No shame, no blame. As we work through this step, if you’re having trouble or guilt with the numbers you are seeing remember that we are simply gathering information. This is not to make you feel bad, we just want a picture of what life looks like right now. You can decide if you want to change it, later, but for now--you’re a scientist gathering data.

A. Track calories consumed

The easiest way to track calories consumed is through any number of calorie-counting apps. I recommend FatSecret for iOS or Android, it’s free, easy to use, and doesn't bother you to upgrade and is really easy to quickly see your macros. Track every single meal and snack for a week. Don't do anything different, we're just trying to observe what you're doing.

To be more accurate, a kitchen scale to weigh out portions helps a lot--and helps avoid under-estimating how much food you are actually eating.

B. Track weight, daily

Your weight is needed, every day, for tracking and to calculate some numbers we need down the road. Make it a habit to step on the scale every morning. Know that your weight will fluctuate due to water retention and other factors, so don’t freak out if your numbers go up or down throughout the week.

After you weigh in every day, track this number in your calorie-counting app.

Step 2: Estimate your calories burned each day (30 minutes)

After you have a week’s worth of data, it’s time to estimate your calories burned each day. This is known as estimating your TDEE (total daily estimated expenditure). There are a number of sites that do this, but the easiest is through a spreadsheet created by a generous Reddit user. Grab the spreadsheet by clicking here, click Open with Google Sheets (assuming you have a Gmail account).

Filling out your TDEE sheet

Begin at the top, under Initial Inputs.

• Set your Start Date as the first day you began tracking calories/weight in Step 1.
• Working your way down (assuming US readers), set weight to Lb using the dropdown menu.
• Select Calories for Calories or KiloJoules.
• For your Starting Weight, enter in your first weigh-in at the beginning of Step 1.
• For your Goal Weight, just put in your current weight again. Note: If you choose a lower goal weight than your starting weight, the sheet will ask you how much weight you want to lose. We’re going to calculate that out differently later, so you can ignore that for now.

Once all your information is filled out, you should have a number in the TDEE of the average calories you burn each day. This is crazy useful information, as it allows us to see approximately what your body needs and how much you need to fuel it.

Here's what it should look like:



Remember, this is an estimation, and is not exact. Major dietary changes, life events, and the natural fluctuation of your body are all things that may throw these numbers off--so be cautious before making any huge changes based off this data. Moving forward, continue to use this spreadsheet to track your weight and calories burned. The more information you input, the more accurate it will be.

Step 3: Analyze and adjust. Maintain, increase, or decrease your caloric intake.

Once you have collected your data and estimated your TDEE, it’s time to figure out where you want to go from here. If you’re happy with where you’re at--great! Continue doing what you’re doing. However, if you’re interested in losing some weight, we need to do a bit more work.

Lose weight and gain muscle

I am a runner, who recently realized that I needed to get my nutrition under control and actually follow through with this thing called ‘cross training’ that happened to be on all my training plans. I wanted to gain some muscle (within reason), am fairly active, and want to pursue an active lifestyle. From that perspective, I am in the category of wanting to lose weight, yet gain muscle at the same time if at all possible.

This is important, because the logic behind how to lose weight is straight-forward, now that you’ve collected some key data. The simple formula is no secret, although most dieting plans make it seem so: take in less calories than you burn. This is known as creating a calorie deficit. This means that you can pretty much eat whatever you want and, as long as the number of calories you eat each day is less than your TDEE, you will likely lose weight.

However, this is not the best approach to gaining muscle and losing weight. We need to be a bit more nuanced than that.

Calculate your Macros

Knowing that your calorie intake is very important to losing weight, let’s add another bit to the mix: your macros. ‘Macros’ is short for macronutrients, and it refers to protein, fat, and carbohydrates. Your protein intake is very important to your body composition, and is second to your calorie intake. Based off of common recommendations, your protein intake should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.45-1g/lb of bodyweight per day, your fat intake should be somewhere around 0.4-0.5g/lb of bodyweight, and carbohydrates should fill in the rest of your calories for the day. We’re able to calculate this based off the fact that protein and carbohydrates have about 4 calories per gram, and fat has about 7 calories per gram.

So, how many calories should I be eating each day? What should those calories be made up of?

I’ve made it easy for you to do the math: click here to make a copy of my Macro Calculator spreadsheet. In the white boxes, enter in:

• The TDEE (from the Your current TDEE is box) you calculated in Step 2
• Your current weight
• Your per-lb protein intake. (A good place to start might be 0.7, if you are a highly active person wanting to lose body fat. Check this out for more detailed information.)
• Your per-lb fat intake. (A good place to start might be 0.4)

Once you’ve filled out the numbers, you will see several results:

• Your Goal Daily Calorie Intake: This is your upper limit for how many calories you should be taking in each day, while still being able to have enough energy and nutrients to gain muscle.
• Daily Grams of Protein: This is how many grams of protein you should try to eat each day.
• Daily Grams of Fat: How many grams of fat you should try to eat each day.
• Daily Grams of Carbs: How many grams of carbs you should eat each day.

Moving forward with your macros

Now that you know what you should be eating, it’s time to put it into practice.

Continue tracking what you eat. The most important thing to lose weight, if that is your goal, is to keep the calories you intake at or below the number calculated as Your Goal Daily Calorie Intake calculated above. Use your calorie-tracking app to do this.

In that context--to track your macros, if you’re using the FatSecret app, we can easily see what your macros are looking like each day: in Diary view, scroll down to Options, then tap Detailed View. This will give you a summary of the macros you are ingesting each day, as well as specifically for each meal. We want to make the macros we intake each day fall as close as we can to our targets, calculated above. Depending on what you are already eating, this likely means you need to eat more foods rich in protein.

What’s next?

The next step? Stick with it.

Keep tracking the food you take in, every day.
Keep tracking your weight, every day.
Do your best to keep your calorie intake within your goal.
Try to eat foods that align with your macro intake.
Exercise, run, do whatever you enjoy that is active.
Enjoy your food, and don’t get too uptight about it. It’s ok to get frozen yogurt. Just don’t do it every day.
Be patient, record data. Results will not be immediate--but like most things in life, the things worth doing are rarely easy or immediate.

One of the best ways that I’ve found to help me reach my calorie/macro goal is to meal prep, which is really what this site is all about. It’s my hope that the recipes and ideas here will help you reach your goals of becoming a healthier version of you.