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My first blog post is going to be about arguably the most important part of your fitness journey, your nutrition/diet. There are a ton of different diets, tips and tricks out there to “hack” the whole process of building proper nutrition. Anytime you try to take a shortcut in the fitness game you are shortchanging yourself. Becoming fit is a marathon, not a sprint. So do me (and yourself) a favor and if you see “7 day diets” or “30 day fixes” take them with a grain of salt (literally…they may need some salt). “Temporary” diets produce temporary changes, which is the ONLY agreeable point I have toward them. If you see a positive change in your body composition you are more likely to stick with something or at least take some good from that program. These diets work (when they work) because they get people to engage their mind and focus more on what they are putting in their mouths. Which is the biggest problem we face on our fitness journey, not knowing what we are putting in our mouths.
Learn to read nutrition labels. If you don’t know what’s in the food your cooking (I hope you’re cooking it at least) then you can’t accurately track your progress. In the long run you can’t just “guess and hope for the best” or just say “I hear salmon is healthy, so this is on my diet plan”. Any long term fitness and nutrition plan is just that…a PLAN. When you wing it with nutrition, you tend to fail. If you talk to most of the fit people you meet and ask them what they are having for lunch I can almost promise you that you won’t hear “I’m not sure yet, may hit up Jimmy John’s…idk”. Those successful in their fitness journey have a PLAN. They most likely know what they are going to eat for at least the day. This makes it easier to stay on track and makes it less likely for you to indulge in those free office donuts.
In my opinion (and many others as well as many well done studies) losing weight or building muscle comes down to one thing; Calories-in vs Calories-out”. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and the Law of Conservation of energy essentially state this as fact. These are physical LAWS. Arguing with these is like arguing gravity doesn’t exist. This being said, not all calories are created equal and there are a few ways to “hack” the system, but ultimately produce negligible results. I can practically hear people reading this right now and screaming “oh yeah? well what about X diet? My brothers best friend Tina did it and lost a ton of weight!”. I will go into more details about why specific diets such as ketogenic, Atkins, intermittent fasting (IF) and other diets work in future posts, but I will give you a little teaser and tell you that there have been many studies done that show these diets don’t specifically offer a metabolic advantage in weight loss or muscle gains, but they do work for some (quite a few people). Once again, what it really comes down to is feasibility. Can you see yourself sticking with this diet for 1, 5, 20 years?
I challenge those of you trying to lose weight or build muscle to start with one simple step. Keep track of your calories and macros for a week or a month and weigh yourself regularly to see how you’re doing. A ton of studies show those who simply keep track of their food/calories/macros tend to have better results. In order to do this accurately you will NEED to invest in a food scale of some sort and can get them fairly cheap. Talk to most people who are relatively fit and you will discover that at least at some point they were using a scale to get a handle on their food intake. After quite awhile it becomes easier to eyeball things and say “that’s about an ounce of rice, etc.” It’s easy to look at a chicken breast and say “well thats probably X ounces” and then put it in your tracker (by the way, get yourself a free macro/calorie/nutrient tracker for your phone, makes things a lot easier) but you are most times going to be wrong.
“OK AJ, I’m tracking my calories and food intake, but what am I aiming for”. I would also suggest you try to find your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). There are many free calculators online, I recommend using a few different ones and also estimating your “daily activity” higher and lower than what you think it is and see how much of a difference it makes. Estimate your daily activity and then take it a notch lower if you are trying to lose weight and take the average of those numbers. Estimate your daily activity and then take it a notch higher if you are trying to add lean mass and take the average of these numbers. Take the average of all these different measurements to get your rough TDEE. This is your starting point.
Back to the principle of calories-in vs calories-out. This is also why anyone out there claiming to get you to “build muscle and lose fat” at the same time is generally full of crap (see below in this paragraph for a disclaimer). Building muscle requires a positive nitrogen and calorie balance and losing fat requires a calorie deficit pure and simple (don’t try to argue against gravity people). You can either increase your calories-out by increasing your exercise or cardio or eat less food to lessen your calories-in. There are only a handful of instances where you can actually gain lean mass and lose fat at the same time (the most notable being the very obese population, those new to working out or detrained or pregnant/post-partum mothers – hormones work in your favor in this one). All of these scenarios have a narrow window to which this can continue so if you fit any of these categories try to maximize your progress in this narrow window because once you miss it you’ll be stuck with the rest of us.
Well folks, thats a very brief introduction to the basics of nutrition for Summerville Fitness and Nutrition’s (SFN’s) first blog post. As noted in the about me section, post will get more specific as time goes on and I can retouch on these MASSIVE subjects again. I encourage all of you to comment or email (once I have it set up) with questions or ideas for more details or other subjects you would like me to touch on. Please keep your comments civil and constructive, trolls will not be tolerated. I encourage you to have your own opinion and if those happen to differ from mine you’re welcome to share in a constructive and civil manner.
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