0 
0 BASIC NUTRITIONAL KNOWLEDGE
One of the toughest things when it comes to seeing progress in your fitness journey is ensuring you have a healthy diet. You can workout every day for over an hour a day and still see no results if you have a bad one. When it comes to dieting, it is also important consider what your fitness goals are. Lose weight? Gain weight? Gain lean muscle? If you can understand the some basic nutritional knowledge, you can leverage results.
If you are trying to lose weight I will let you in on a little secret. CONSUME FEWER CALORIES THAN YOU BURN. With this little trick, you will see results, guaranteed (unless you have a legit health issue). There was a study done where a professor ate a diet made up of primarily junk food for 10 weeks and lost 27 pounds. The concept that he was trying to prove was that calorie intake has more of an impact on weight lose then the nutritional value of the food.
This is a pretty stunning study if you ask me. There is a small caveat to this study because I can guarantee you that if you only eat junk food, your overall health will take a hit. But if you replace the junk food with food high in nutritional value, and still consume less calories than you burn, you will lose weight and have a positive impact on your health.
If you are trying to gain weight, the same concept applies. You need to consume more calories than your burn. This seems to be the easier of the 2, which I think we can all relate to. It takes us 30 minutes to burn off a slice of pizza but takes us only 1 minute to consume one. This is what makes losing weight so tough.
One bound of body fat is about 3500 calories. The average person burns approximately 2000 calories a day naturally (this number is little less for women), which is why nutritional value labels are based on a 2000 calorie diet. So, if you are trying to lose 1 pound a week, eat about 500 fewer calories a day (-3500/7 = -500). And if you want to gain a pound a week, eat about 500 more calories a day (+3500/7= +500).
HOW CAN YOU TRACK THIS?
Trying to track calories or macros can be a real pain but luckily, we live in a society where there is an app for everything. MyFitnessPal is a great app (and free!) to track your calories. If you eat something prepackaged with a bar code, you can scan the bar code which automatically uploads the nutritional value from that food item. They have a food database where you can search for food, and they even have some restaurant menus on their app. To learn more on how to use MyFitnessPal, go here!
WHAT DOES A TYPICAL DAY LOOK LIKE FOR ME?
The screenshot below is what a typical day might look like for me, depending if I accurately record all of my food, don’t drink alcohol (Go here to see the real cost of alcohol), and go the gym. In this case, I worked out in the morning so it pulled in those stats. It also considers how much activity you do over all for the day, so like walking to your car, or to the office, etc. I have my Fitbit account synced to MyFitnessPal so it can pull in all of my stats.
BREAKDOWN OF EACH MEAL
The screenshot above shows all of the food I ate throughout the day.
Breakfast
I have been meal prepping by making an egg white casserole. In a Pyrex I put in about ¾ of a container of egg white, ½ a roll of cooked sausage, and 1 cup of kale,. Then I usually match it with some sort of fruit, in this case, strawberries and grapes.
Lunch
Is my Power Greek Bowl which I posted earlier this week. Go check out that recipe and the nutritional content!
Dinner
I usually try to stick with a fish, carb and veggie. Nothing too fancy here, but maybe one of these days I will post my homemade honey mustard salmon. Having a fish, carb and veggie for dinner makes it easy to eat a well balanced, low calorie, and high protein dinner. NOTE* My carb for dinner was Ramen, which is usually very rare. This explains why my sodium intake for the day was so high (along with the soy sauce).
Snacks
Controlling how many and what snacks you eat throughout the day is pretty crucial. I have 2 snack periods throughout the day, one in the mid-morning (9:30am – 10:00 am time frame) and one in the mid-afternoon (2:30pm – 3:00pm timeframe). Snack number one in the morning is a protein shake and a banana. Snack number 2 in the afternoon is tuna with a little bit of mayo and mustard. Both are low calorie and high in protein, which is exactly what I am going for. I also did have a little bit of popcorn when I got home right before dinner.
So looking at these stats, I am in a 884-calorie deficit, which is good if I am trying to lose weight. If I keep this up, all week I would be at a 6188-calorie deficit, losing almost 2 pounds. Now the catch is, am I going to keep it up or ruin all my progress by going out and drinking this weekend.
RECAP
Moral of the story, consume less than you burn if you want to lose weight and vice versa if you want to gain weight. MyFitnessPal is a great app to track all of this. Also, I laid out a pretty good blueprint for what a typical day of eating could look like for you.
