Vigor Nutrition Part 2: What’s the Deal With Calories

As promised, here is Part 2 of the 4 Part Nutrition Series I will be covering here on the Vigor Ground Fitness and Performance blog!

Calories...

What exactly is a calorie? And why are they so important when it comes to fat loss and gaining lean muscle?Well technically the definition would be, “The energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water through 1 °C”.But really, it’s just a way we measure food and that’s all you should be concerned with!Now why is it so important? Well because this give us gage or system to be aware of how much we are putting into our body’s and also how much energy we are expending on daily basis through normal activity, exercise and even just living. Yes, even the simple functions our body’s make such as breathing, eating, digesting and small amounts of movement will burn calories.This is hugely important...just “eating clean” is not enough. People forget that you can still overeat chicken, brown rice and broccoli, which will lead to weight/fat gain. No matter what the food is, if you overeat you will be in a caloric surplus and your body will store the extra calories.Being able to gage how much we put into our body versus how much we expend out of our body allows us to accomplish our fitness goals by either creating a caloric (energy) deficit to lose fat/weight or a caloric surplus allowing us to gain weight/muscle. Without that number to gage, we will not know if we’re heading in the right direction.So as you can see, this is an extremely useful system to use after you have successfully gotten the 10 rules we spoke of in part one of this series down as daily habits.The first step in applying calories to your dietary lifestyle is by tracking your current diet in an app, like myfitnesspal.com, or some kind of diet journal so you can first realize how many calories you’re currently taking in.

The reason this is so important is because we have to take our metabolism into play.For instance if we calculate our calories and they end up needing to be much higher then where they’re currently at, we cannot just jump right up as our metabolism will not be able to handle the fast increase. So the key is to slowly implement calories weekly or bi-weekly until we reach that limit, but that is a topic that deserves an entirely different article.For now, we will simply work on tracking the calories we are currently taking in and figuring out where they should be.So after you’ve accomplished the first step, tracking your diet for at least 2-4 days, its time to figure out your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate).This is essentially the calories you would burn if you did absolutely nothing but stay alive.And to save you time Google searching, here’s a link that provides the calculations needed.

Get it done? Awesome, lets move on.

Now, lets put activity into play because I will assume that if you’re reading this, concerned with calories and actually interested in getting in better shape, you’re doing some kind of activity!

For this, we will use the Harris Benedict method. Yes I know, that means nothing to you… so just do the math!Take your BMR and use the appropriate calculation for it.

• If you are sedentary (little or no exercise): Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
• If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week): Calorie- Calculation = BMR x 1.375
• 
If you are moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week): Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
• If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week): Calorie- Calculation = BMR x 1.725
• If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training): Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9

Before you do all the calculations, be honest with this! Don’t use the numbers for 1-3 days of training per week if you’re in the gym 6 days a week, assuming it will give you less calories leading to more weight loss.And don’t put you train 6 days per week if you train 2, just so you can get away with eating more because “Boom-Boom from Vigor Ground told you too”. I don’t need a bad rep, plus that will truly come back to bite you in the ass down the road.So now you have what is called your “maintenance” calories. This is the daily caloric intake you need to maintain the weight you’re currently at.But why would you want to stay where you’re at?! You don’t! You want to lose weight or gain muscle right?! Thought so!

So the next step is creating the deficit or the surplus so you can reach that goal of yours.Because it’s much easier to explain, we’ll start with gaining muscle mass. Take you’re maintenance number and add 500 calories. Boom! You’re done!Now if you’re concerned with staying lean, want to keep that aesthetic look while getting bigger or building size, just do it more slowly. Add 50-100 calories per week until you reach that 500, this will allow your body and metabolism to adapt accordingly.Now for weight loss, there’s some science to this one so be ready!It technically takes 3,500 calories to burn one pound of fat… think about that and consider what you’re doing now...Ever been on a treadmill or stair stepper while it’s calculating your caloric burn for you? I’m going to assume you’ve never burned even close to that in a session.

So how can we get this job done efficiently?

Simple! Take away 500 calories form your daily maintenance intake. That will lead to 3,500 in one week, which should result in a one-pound weight loss per week.This is a very healthy weight loss pattern, which will be comfortable, not over whelming and keep your hormones in a good functioning state as well. But train your ass off and you may lose an extra pound per week!Ok, now you’ve got your previous/current caloric intake and also the caloric intake you should be using going forward… Now how do you adjust?Well let’s use two easy numbers as examples. Let’s say you were currently taking in 1,500 calories and you should be taking in 2,000 calories. That’s a big jump if you’re trying to lose weight and it may scare you a bit thinking, “I’m going to eat more to lose weight?!”So here’s my suggestion in this case, slowly add them in. You will do this by adding 50 calories per week, or every other week, until you hit your calorie goal. Keep your eye on the scale, you may gain a pound the first couple days doing this so don’t be freaked out by it. It will go back down quick.The key is to keep watching it until you reach your intake level. If you add 50 calories and you go up a pound, don’t add another 50 until your weight drops back down to where it was or lower. This is how you determine if you will be adding them in weekly or bi-weekly.Now the hardest part will be determining your macros. You may have your calories locked down and feeling good, but how do you split it up between protein, fats and carbs?

For now I will tell you two things:

First, do not stress. This is a lifestyle approach and you do not want to crash diet. So the key is to ease into it and keep some control over your dietary lifestyle. It may take a little time to adjust, play with things and figure out where you should be at and that is totally ok!Second, eat your bodyweight in protein. Most people do not consume enough protein to sustain the recovery your muscles demand from all the training. On top of that there are a ton of reasons why protein should usually be the biggest percentage of your diet if burning fat and building lean muscle are your goals.So now I’m leaving you with the homework and math equations so you can start to get your diet on the right track!Next, in Episode 3, will be all about macros and how to adjust them to reach your goals!