CONGRATULATIONS!
You've decided to embark on your very own health and fitness journey, and in preparation of the process, you're doing your research. Sure, it's easy to say, "I want to lose weight." But, how does one go about doing it? Where does one even begin?
The first words that probably come to mind are "diet" and "exercise", as they should, but there is so much depth to these generalizations. We aren't just talking about swapping Snickers for sneakers; we're talking about SCIENCE, man. Math. Life. The human body! All fascinating subjects. And as any moderately experienced person can confirm, it is much easier to accomplish something when you understand fully how it all works, so that you can apply that knowledge to your own path.
In this first edition of my "What I Wish I Knew When I First Started" series, I am going to discuss an overview of the following topics:
- One Basic Definition: It's not a "DIET", it's a Destination Road Map
- Taking Measurements: How to do it, and why it's important
- Weighing Yourself, and why NOT to do it daily
- What is "BMI", "BMR" and "RMR"? And how do they impact my nutrition plan?
And lastly, a topic that people seem to be most concerned about....
5. Just tell me how many calories I should be eating!
As a quick aside, I should make it perfectly clear that I am NOT a health or fitness
professional. I have no certifications, and the only education I have
is from my own years of self-research, trial and error. Please consult a
health professional before starting any drastic nutrition or fitness
program, especially if you have special health considerations.
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One Basic Definition: It's not a diet, it's a road map
First of all, you need to ditch any preconceptions you have of the word "diet", and all the shame, misery, fear, loathing, anticipation, and unreasonable expectations that come along with it. For the record, the word "diet" is NOT a synonym for a food intake restriction program aimed at making you hate life and the whole process necessary for achieving the body of your dreams. According to
Webster's Dictionary, the word "diet" was first known to be used in the 13th century. The origin of the word is Middle English in the form of
diete, from the Latin
diaeta, and from Greek
diaita, which all, quite literally, mean the "manner of living"; and from
diaitasthai, meaning "to lead one's life". In the modern tongue, the word diet is simply "habitual nourishment; what one eats and drinks on a routine basis."
All of this is simply to understand the following point: When we use the term "diet" and "dieting", don't get your panties in a twist. It's not about restricting food; it's simply all about changing the foods and drinks you routinely consume. A former trainer of mine once said, "15% of your body is affected by the 2 hours you are in the gym; 85% is affected by the 22 hours you are out of the gym." While exercise is crucial to your fat loss and muscle gain pursuits, and tremendously improves the utility and overall health of your body, being completely intentional in how and what and when you fuel your body makes the biggest difference. So from here on out, when we use the term "diet", I want you to think of it less as a millstone around your neck, and more simply as a nutritional road map that is going to get you from Point A to Point B in the most efficient and effective manner possible.
It is inevitable that people will eventually give you shit for "being on a diet". You will learn to come up with different ways of putting it, therefore, to keep people from being a thorn in your side. To those who know me, I tell them I am training for [insert fitness goal] and am watching my macronutrients (big words deter people from asking more questions). To those who don't know me, I just tell them I have food allergies and have to be careful of what I eat. Done deal. Learn to be forgiving of people when they try to peer pressure you, or tell you that you don't need to be on a diet, or tell you that you have issues thinking you need to be on a diet; they just don't understand. And often times, people feel threatened by your healthy eating habits because deep down, they want to pursuit the same goals as you, but they don't have the strength to commit to it (yet). So don't try to convert them, and ask them to not try to convert you, and soon enough, people will learn to accept your lifestyle change.
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Taking Your Measurements: How to do it, and why it's important
I didn't take my measurements or a "before" photo when I first started, and it has been my only regret. I didn't do it because I couldn't bear to see the evidence that I was truly not in the shape I had imagined I was in, the shape I felt I deserved to be. I was already a competitive athlete when I embarked on this mission, so I couldn't bear to be honest with myself and see how truly far I had to go.
Measurements and "Before" photos are terribly useful when you need them most: When you get a month or two in and feel you have done SO much work, but you aren't yet Hulk Hogan or Pam Anderson (circa 1992). When you complete the first leg of your journey and find yourself realizing you will need to be patient and keep at it for the long haul, you'll come to a crossroads of needing to renew your vows, so to speak. This is when I wish I had 'before' photos and measurements. Had I compared my current stats and progress photos to where I first began, I would have had hard evidence that I was, indeed, progressing. And when I finished the 2nd leg of my journey and even self-doubt couldn't deny the changes in my appearance and clothing sizes, I would have loved to compare stats and pictures and swim in a moment of well-earned pride. I would have loved to have had a photo sequence to post on my Fan Page demonstrating that I was 'walking the walking'. But I think I waited about 3 months before I finally took an honest bikini progress photo, the kind that put it all out there with nothing to hide behind. By then, my results and my journey seemed far less dramatic than they actually were.
So I recommend you take your measurements as detailed below, and snap a couple before photos even if you don't actually look at them right away. Just download them onto a safe piece of media, and keep them for later. Consider it a time capsule you can't wait to crush open in 12 weeks.
How to Take Your Measurements:
Get a measuring tape. (If you don't have a measuring tape, use string or yarn and then measure the string or yarn against a ruler or yard stick).
It helps to have a friend assist you in your measurements, so grab a buddy you can trust, if possible. Grab a pen and paper, and list the following categories: Bust, Biceps, Waist, Hips, Thighs, Calves, Height and Weight
Now, it's time to measure these areas:
1. Bust: Wrap the measuring tape around your body across your nipple line. Your arms should be down when you are done measuring. The measuring tape should be pulled neither too tight, nor too lose. Just comfortably across the skin is sufficient. Record your measurement.
2. Biceps: The proper way to measure biceps is to bring your arms up in a traditional bicep curl flexing pose (see photo). Flex your bicep, and the measurement should be around the apex of your bicep, or else the midway point between the crease of your armpit and the crease of your elbow joint. Record the measurement.
3. Waist: Waistlines indeed vary amongst men and women, and can sometimes be tricky to determine where to measure. A good rule of thumb would be to measure the narrowest part of your belly area, which is most always simply the latitude of your belly button. Do not flex or suck in your stomach. Just stand regularly and comfortably, like you would if you were standing in line at the grocery store, for instance.
4. Hips: Your hips should be measured at, generally, the widest point, which is usually in line with your pubic region and is in line with the widest point of your booty. When you measure that area, stand up straight with your legs together so that your feet are touching. Do not flex anything while you are measuring. Just stand normally.
5. Thighs: Your thighs should be measured directly at the midway point between your knee and your "in seam" (your crotch). Stand with legs hip-width apart with your weight evenly distributed, and measure at this point. Flexing isn't necessary, as your quads will already be slightly flexed (you are standing up, after all!).
6. Calves: Calves are the only ambiguous region to be measured, in my opinion. People's calves apex at different points of there body, so basically what you'll want to do is stand up straight and have your buddy measure the circumference of your calf at the widest point. Again - no flexing. Just stand with feet hip-width apart and weight evenly distributed across both feet. If you do not have a buddy assisting you, stand up in front of a full length mirror, eyeball wear your calves are the greatest, then gingerly bend over (taking care not to flex unnaturally) and measure.
7. Height: Your height (just like age and gender, even!) is actually a very important variable to know. Your height affects various calculations which assist in determining body fat, caloric intake targets, BMI, etc. Your height is essentially a necessary reference point to help bring meaning to other measurements. If you say you are 200 pounds, it's impossible for one to know whether you are underweight or overweight. That assessment relies heavily on whether you are only 5 feet tall, or 7 feet tall. If you do not know your height, the best way to approach this is to take off your shoes, stand on a hard flat surface with your heels firmly on the floor and your back pressed against a hard, flat wall. Make a mark on the wall at the where the crest of your skull is. Then use your measuring tape to measure the height.
8. Weight: Please reference the following section.
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Measuring your Weight and why *not* to do it daily
Measuring your weight is a critical evaluation tool and tracking statistic for any person aspiring to change their body. But there are many considerations you must take into account before understanding your weight. At the end of the day, it is best to rely on your measurements and, more practically, how your clothes fit, as the best scientific assessment of body change. But, that said, let's dive into the key points:
1. Muscle weighs more than fat (well, relatively speaking).
Muscle is much more dense than fat and, in relative terms, it weighs more. Sure 1 pound of fat = 1 pound of muscle, but the sizes are much different. The average overweight person could thus technically weigh just the same as a fit competitive athlete, and many male body builders could assuredly weigh more than an obese person. What can we learn from this? Take your weight with a grain of salt. If you've done it right, you will eventually get to a point where you have lost all the fat and will start putting on muscle weight. Do not become one of those people who becomes maddeningly frustrated with the scale when it doesn't budge in 3 weeks. It could be that you are shedding fat and gaining muscle at a rate that causes your physical mass to net the same weight, even though your body is changing. Let how your clothes fit be the judge.
2. Weighing yourself can be the quickest way to develop an unhealthy obsession that is completely ineffective, in every single way imaginable.
Men and women alike are susceptible to this pretty dangerous obsession, although it's likely to be more damaging for women. As I stated before, people have a habit of using what the scale says as a definitive indication of progress, results, and what constitutes "perfection". And since most women are concerned more with losing fat than necessarily gaining muscle, they tend to pay more attention to the scale than men.
Regardless, the outcome is usually a daily ritual of weighing yourself and then being in a depression and beating yourself up if the scale doesn't reflect what you think it ought to be, or else applauding yourself if it does. Both situations can lead to the same thing, which is either quitting your diet and eating crap food (or rewarding yourself with crap food), or else it provokes more and more aggressive dieting tactics to combat some flaw, failure or misunderstood weight "gain".
Something you must understand now, which I will explain later: In order to lose weight, YOU MUST FEED YOURSELF. Starving yourself will only cause your body to retain fat (after all, your body only cares about survival; it doesn't know what a diet is. If you starve it, it will think there is a famine and will store all the energy reserves it possibly can). Further, prolonged abuse of your metabolism could caused irreversible metabolic damage which could really put you in a bad spot forever. More on that later, but for now, please do not pay so much attention to the scale as you do your measurements and clothes fittings. Becoming obsessive about your weight is pointless; it will make you feel desperate and hopeless when, as explained above, your weight is not 100% reflective of all the progress you're making. Be patient and the results will make themselves evident.
And all of this brings us to the final point:
3. DO NOT WEIGH YOURSELF DAILY.
....because (1), your weight will NOT change daily. If it does change daily, it's either water weight gain or loss, a bowel movement you have or haven't passed, the amount of food you have or haven't eaten before weighing yourself, or what clothes you are or aren't wearing. You may lose several pounds when you first start your diet and exercise program, but that will mostly be excess water weight, toxins, and GI tract waste being flushed from your body. Your weight loss will eventually level out, and weighing yourself daily is a surefire way to become discouraged. (2), as discussed above, you may become obsessed with the entirely wrong metric. Causing yourself worry and grief over weight gain will do you no good, especially if you are putting on muscle in place of fat, which weighs more. Check the before and after shot to the right -- she weighed less in her before photo than her after photo. But...which bod would you rather have??
My recommendation is to weight yourself once every week or two, until you get to the point where you don't need a scale to measure your progress anymore (or, frankly, you don't care.) I weigh myself once a month now. When I am pushing for real results (leaning out or building muscle) I will do it every week. Always weigh yourself at the same time of the day, preferably in the morning after you use the restroom, to achieve as consistent of results as possible.
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BMI, BMR and RMR: How do they impact my nutrition plan?
1. BMI
The acronym BMI stands for Body Mass Index. It is a general way of assessing whether someone is a healthy weight based on their age, gender and height. Because the composition of our bodies naturally changes overtime, age does become a rather significant factor in calculations such as these. Similarly, men and women have naturally different body compositions and distributions of fat and muscle, thus making gender important on the genetic level of body statistics.
English BMI Formula
BMI = [Weight in Pounds / (Height in Inches x Height in Inches)] x 703
Metric BMI Formula
BMI = [Weight in Kilograms / (Heigh in Meters x Height in Meters)]
There are countless BMI calculators online, a simple Google search will provide various results. Here is a link to one on WebMD which I find to be reputable and thorough. The website does a good job of explaining your results.
Bear in mind, however, that BMI is not an exact science; some women may
have larger breasts than others, or bigger or smaller bones, or more or
less muscle, which will affect the results. Most body builders will register as an unhealthy / obese BMI because the calculation does not take into account the difference of weight in terms of fat and muscle.
2. BMR and RMR
BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) and RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) are, confusingly, basically the same calculation. They both measure the approximate number of calories a person burns if they spend a full 24 hours completely at rest. Essentially, the caloric measurement indicates how many calories your body needs just simply to exist -- how many calories it needs to keep your heart beating,
your lungs breathing, your kidneys filtering, your cells repairing and
regenerating, etc. Your body burns hundreds of calories a day doing
simple tasks such as growing your hair and nails, replacing old skin cells, and metabolizing foods in your stomach. The main difference is that the BMR is a much stricter calculation. Most online calculators, despite being BMR or RMR, are usually done using the RMR formula. Here is a decent online RMR calculator: http://www.startlosingweighttoday.com/rmr/
My RMR is 1,440 calories. This means that if I were to not even so much as lift a finger all day long, I will still burn almost 1500 calories just by existing. Do you comprehend the importance of this? This does not take into account the times I get up, move around, walk to my car, vacuum the house, walk up the stairs to my apartment, or the 850 calories I burn on average at the gym each day. People who restrict themselves to less than 1500 calories a day are just flat out doing it wrong. Don't make that mistake!
Your RMR is a good tool to use as a starting point for calculating how many calories you should be consuming in order to meet your goals. Understanding your caloric needs, in conjunction with what your goals are (weight loss/gain) will be the ultimate guide for you in determining an initial nutritional plan. This plan will invariably change (as so too will your goals, eventually), but having an idea upon which to base your entire meal plan is incredibly important otherwise there is no real way to tell if you are eating too much or too little. And how infuriating can THAT be?
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So, just how many calories should I be eating?
To round out this article, determining your caloric intake is the best place to start when finally making concrete changes in your routine and really getting the ball rolling. Once you know how many calories you need to eat, you'll know how many calories you'll need to burn in order to start tackling your goals.
First of all, let's talk physics. A Calorie is not actually something you eat. A calorie is rather a unit of energy. In scientific terms, a calorie is the amount of energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. Calories do not apply just to food; it is a unit of ANY kind of energy. For example, according to Discovery Health's article entitled How Calories Work, a gallon of gasoline contains 31 MILLION calories. Check out these interesting factoids:
In terms of our diet, the food energy we derive from macronutrients (fat, protein and carbohydrates) is as follows: 4 calories for every gram of carbohydrate, 4 calories for every gram of protein, and 9 (yes, nine!) calories for every gram of fat. Thus, a 10 gram bar of fat would equate to 90 calories, whereas a 10 gram bar of protein (or carbs) would only be 40 calories worth of food energy.
It is important to note that calories are not bad! We need the energy we get from food calories to perform every bodily function, from breathing, to pumping blood, to growing new skin cells, to recovering from colds and injuries, to keeping our bodies warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We burn calories replacing
donated blood (approx. 650 calories per pint!), growing hair and nails,
digesting food, and of course just moving around. In short, energy is
required for all functions we perform. Calories should not be avoided, but they do need to be monitored. Calories only become an issue when you eat more than you burn, upon which they are stored as fat in your body (more about this in a future blog post).
One pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories. Therefore, in order to lose one pound a week, you would need to create a calorie deficit of 500 calories a day (500 cals/day x 7 days/week = 3500 calories). But this doesn't just mean decreasing the amount of food you're eating by 500 calories. In order to truly LOSE weight, you would need to eat 500 calories less, per day, than what you burn. Allow me to explain.
Remember your RMR calculation? Mine was 1,440. It's the number of calories (energy) I approximately need to perform basic bodily functions. In order to figure out how many calories I should eat just to break even (ie, calories eaten minus calories burned = 0), I would have to figure out where I fit on the following scale. Once I determine my "Activity Factor", I multiply it to my RMR calories to determine how many calories in total I burn each day (approximately):
| Activity Factor |
Category |
Definition |
|---|
| 1.2 |
Sedentary |
Little or no exercise and desk job |
| 1.375 |
Lightly Active |
Light exercise or sports 1-3 days a week |
| 1.55 |
Moderately Active |
Moderate exercise or sports 3-5 days a week |
| 1.725 |
Very Active |
Hard exercise or sports 6-7 days a week |
| 1.9 |
Extremely Active |
Hard daily exercise or sports and physical job |
I workout 2 hours a day, and my workouts are very rigorous. On the weekends I spend even more time being active. But I have a desk job 5 days a week, and so I tend to multiply my RMR by 1.6, which is in between moderately and very active. 1,440 * 1.6 = 2,304. What does this mean? This means that I should be eating 2,304 calories a day to neither gain nor lose any weight, but rather just to maintain my current weight. But I want to lose weight. If I wanted to drop a pound a week, I would want to aim to consume 500 calories less than what I currently burn: 2,304 - 500 = 1,804 calories of food a day.
And that is precisely my daily intake: 1,800 calories/day.
Now, these are just broad generalizations. Obviously every person is slightly different, and it will take some time and fine tuning in order to get your plan perfectly designed. But everybody needs a starting point, and this is good enough :) Most doctors agree that it is safe to aim to lose 2 pounds a week, but no more than that (unless under the direct supervision of a trained medical professional).
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In my next entry, I will discuss macro and micronutrients, body types, and how to design a good starting nutritional plan based on your general needs. I will also include a spreadsheet template (if I can figure out how to link it up) for a diet diary, otherwise I will discuss options for logging your daily food intake in an effort to learn what works best for you.
See you soon!
