Setting Up Baseline Nutrition..

I’d like to preface this article by saying that I am not a registered dietitian, nor am I formally trained to give nutritional advice. However nutrition has always been an area of interest for me and I find myself forever fascinated by it. Throughout this article I will endeavour to reference where appropriate should you wish to do any further reading.

The more I work with people the more I see similar trends and attitudes towards “dieting”. First off the word “diet” is ugly, has almost nothing but negative connotations, and makes people feel unnecessarily guilty before they even begin. It is also usually attached to some sort of “challenge” or “trial by fire” that has a definitive beginning and end date in which you “must” accomplish something extraordinary, ultimately setting you up for failure. The attitude towards “dieting” should be one of long term sustainability. It is for this reason I prefer to refer to the “dieting” process as a meal plan. People enjoy meals. They usually enjoy them in the company of loved ones, and rarely feel bad about eating a meal. These are all good things and should be kept in mind when setting yourself up on your journey to a better you (ie – getting leaner, bigger, more toned…or however you refer to your physique goals).

As I mentioned above, I am no expert, nor do I claim to be. I have however developed a system that has proven to yield good (not to mention sustainable) results without starving people or endangering their health, wellbeing, and social life. I will break down below how I go about setting up a base line diet in four steps.

Step 1: Set realistic goals

Nearly everyone I’ve met has a grand goal of losing “x” amount of weight and fitting into the same pants/dress they used to fit in when they were in their twenties. Which is great! However if your twenties were say; ten years ago…getting back to that isn’t going to happen overnight. So I start with a grand goal and work backwards from that. Having smaller goals allows you to stay on track, stay accountable and motivated over the short term to keep you on the right track towards your grand goal.

Lets say your grand goal is to lose 20kg. Initially; try losing a little under half of that in say 12 weeks (that’s a little over half a kilo drop a week on average). Then maintain that new weight for a month or two. Once your body is used to hovering at this new weight, lets try losing another 4 or 5 kilos in a slightly shorter period of time to your last drop. Which, if you’ve set yourself up for success, should happen quiet readily. Then maybe let your body adapt for a little longer and try and get those last few kilos off. Over this amount of time you should not only have gained confidence to adhere to the new meal plans (not diet; meal plans) but have seen some enormous changes in your appearance, performance, and possibly attitude towards food and the gym.

Step 2: Understand what and when you like eating

A sure fire way to set yourself up for failure is to eat nothing but foods you hate, but perceive as being “healthy”. So I ask my clients to make a short list of breakfast options they like, some cuisines they like, and snack foods they like. A good example would be as follows –

Breakfast – cereal, yoghurt, muesli, toast, fruit, coffee

Cuisines – Italian, Mexican

Snacks – fruit, yoghurt, crackers

From here it can get a little tricky…which is where a good coach will prove to be invaluable.

Step 3: Maths

Now I know you’re reading this thinking; “shit, I thought I’d be able to do it all myself and not have to worry about hiring someone to do it for me”. And that could very well be the case! However there are plenty of studies to show that investing in coaching and invariably in your health will yield far better results in both the short and long term. Accountability is key, and having someone with a wealth of experience looking over what you do and pointing you in the right direction will get you the results you want far more effectively than going it alone.

The formula I use to determine base level calories for any individual is as follows:

BW(kg) x 22 x PAL

So that’s bodyweight in kilos times 22 times the individuals physical activity level (source: Eric Helms - Nutrition Pyramid)

From here we need to roughly work out the individuals’ macronutrient (MACRO) targets, knowing that protein and carbohydrates both yield 4 calories per gram, and fat 9 calories per gram.

Protein = 1 to 1.4g per kilo.

Fat = 0.6g to 1g per kilo.

Carbohydrates = the remaining calories from the above calculation.

(source: Eric Helms - Nutrition Pyramid)

Lets use a 100kg male that exercises three times a week (with a trainer…duh) and works in an office as our working example.

Calories = 100 x 22 x 1.3 = 2860

P = 1.4 x 100 = 140g = 140 x 4 = 560 calories

F = 0.8 x 100 = 80g = 80 x 9 = 720 calories

C = 2860 - (560 + 720) = 1580 calories remaining from carbohydrates = 1580/4 = 395g

To summaries; our 100kg male needs approximately 140g of protein, 80g of fat, and 395g of carbohydrates daily to maintain his current weight. And taking into consideration step 2, he would prefer to get these calories from cereal, Mexican food, fruit, and yoghurt.

Now I can completely appreciate that these numbers may be kinda scary for those of you reading this thinking; "man I can't eat anywhere near that much carbs, I'll just get super fat". My answer to this would be, "maybe, but unlikely", as with anything we do context is super important. This 100kg male is looking at establishing a base level of nutrition from which to diet down. So if we start with a lot, it is easy to make adjustments. If that many carbs scares you, you can always swap it out for some extra protein as they yield the same calories gram for gram, just bear in mind that the body doesn't use protein overly efficiently as a source of energy.

You can see now why it would be invaluable to hire a coach to do this for you…

Step 4: Cooking and Eating

Possibly the most tedious step as cooking isn’t for everyone and can be very overwhelming and time consuming. This very much doesn’t have to be the case though. Pick foods that fit your MACRO’s (determined earlier) and keep them simple. For example:

5 days worth of chicken breast or thigh, for two meals a day (meals eaten at work) would equate to approximately 1kg of raw chicken. Once diced and seasoned (Old el Paso is my go to); baking in the oven at around 160*C takes about 25 minutes. When these are in the oven I throw my rice (again about a kilo) in the rice cooker, which will have the rice perfectly cooked in a similar amount of time.

If you so choose you can weigh out the cooked amount of each in a large tub, divide by the amount of meals you need them for (in this case 10) and divide it into smaller Tupperware containers. However the necessity for each meal to be to the exact gram amount is pretty small so you could just eyeball it. The reason why this is completely fine is because over the course of the week the amount of protein, carbohydrates and fat consumed will average out to be what you need to consume anyway. Add a tablespoon of salsa mixed in with each meal and you’re good to go.

I hope this was of some help. I will be writing an article in the future that delves more into how you go about working out MACRO yields of individual food sources, how you can modify this base diet to suit your specific goals, as well as how to time weight loss and weight gain with your training cycle.

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