Learn about the 2 things that matter the most when it comes to fat loss or weight maintenance are and how to track your energy intake.
The concepts I’m about to teach are dead simple yet powerfully effective, and they will be by far the most important things for you to understand in order to get results with your program.
I know how overwhelming nutrition can be with all the different diets and information out there, but when you stick to the science, it becomes very simple.
The 2 things that matter the most when it comes to fat loss or weight maintenance are:
All other diet factors, like the specific types of foods you eat, the vitamins you consume, the timing of your meals, how many fats you eat, and the supplements you take, are also important for other reasons, but they don’t play nearly as big a role as these two factors.
Note: We focus on the role of carbohydrates in the Fuelling Performance lesson.
Your calorie intake determines whether you’re going to gain weight or lose weight. If you eat more calories than you burn every day, often termed a “calorie surplus,” you’ll gain weight. Eat fewer calories than you burn every day, termed a “calorie deficit," and you’ll lose weight. This is what’s known as the Law of Thermodynamics. You can disregard everything else, and this will still hold true.
It’s the number of calories you consume rather than the specific types of foods you eat that dictates whether you gain or lose weight. It doesn’t matter how “clean” your diet is; if you’re not in a calorie deficit, you won’t lose weight.
It’s important that you understand that you don’t just want to lose weight. Weight is made up of both fat and muscle. To avoid just ending up “skinny”, you want to lose fat while preserving as much muscle as you can in the process. This is where the next factor, protein intake, comes into play.
The amount of protein you consume will affect how much fat compared to the muscle you lose. If you aren’t eating enough protein every day, more of the weight you lose will be from muscle rather than fat.
So, how does all this apply to you? Well, the problem is that most people:
So, my main goal for you in terms of nutrition is to help you gradually eat the right number of calories and enough protein every day so you can start losing fat while keeping your muscle.
Once you can accomplish the above two objectives consistently, you’re going to experience incredible results. That said, getting to that point will take some time, and I’m going to provide you with information and tools to help get you there. But keep in mind that, at the end of the day, those two goals are all that we're aiming for.
Now, to reach these two objectives, it does mean that you’ll have to start tracking your calories. Not only that, you have to do so accurately; otherwise, it’ll be a waste of time! But trust me, as intimidating as it may sound, doing this will completely open your eyes and be the key to your success. It’s not something you have to do forever, and it’ll get to the point where it takes you just 5 minutes out of your day to do, but it’s going to make all the difference. I’ll show you how to accurately track your calories in an easy, quick, and flexible way.
The first step is downloading a calorie-counting app.
These apps are basically a really big database of different types of foods and food brands.
Within it, you can either search up or scan the barcode of pretty much any food item to see how many calories it has. It’s designed as a mobile food log so that every day you’re able to add in all the foods you’ve eaten to keep track of how many calories you’ve consumed.
The app that I recommend is “MyFitnessPal”.
It’s in my opinion the most complete and user-friendly calorie tracking app out there. Download this and familiarise yourself with it as it’s something you’ll start using on a daily basis starting tomorrow.
MyFitnessPal Download for Android Users
MyFitnessPal Download for IOS Users
You don’t need the paid version unless you want it, as the free version will be more than enough for what we’ll be using it for.
It will prompt you for information about your goals and body stats and you can put those in if you want, but we won’t be following the calorie or protein goals that it gives you so just ignore them and also ignore the “calories burned” and any exercise information it gives you.
Use this app simply to keep track of your calorie intake, and leave the rest to us.
Now, with that app downloaded, the next step is to learn how to weigh and log your food.
You’re going to track every single thing that you eat, and this is where your food scale comes in handy as it’s the most accurate way to do so. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how to also track meals without the food scale for when you’re out, but here’s how to track calories when you have it handy.
So let’s say you’re about to have a bowl of oatmeal with peanut butter and 3 eggs. Here are the steps that you would follow:
Now, you’ll notice that every time you log an item it will update your total calorie intake for the day.
If you tap the “more” tab and then hit “nutrition” you can also see a quick break of the grams of protein, fat, carbs, and other nutrients you’ve had. Don’t worry about all these numbers for now though, we’ll dive into them later on.
For now, just focus on learning how to track. Again, as overwhelming as this may seem at first, just trust me after a week or two you’ll find it becomes so easy and quick to do.
Quick searches using your tracking app
Let’s say you had 50g of oats in the bowl. You’d either search up the relevant keyword like “quick oats” into MyFitnessPal OR you’d just scan the bag and see if it had the exact same food item. For staple items like this, the calories are generally the same across all brands so it’s not a big deal if you can’t find the exact one.
Adjusting serving sizes
Once you have found the food item that you are searching for, you can adjust the serving size to 50 grams and it’ll adjust the calories accordingly.
Selecting your preferred units
If you prefer to weigh in other units like ounces, that’s perfectly fine but just make sure you adjust the units in the app to ounces when you enter that food item.
Calorie-dense foods
Foods like peanut butter will shock many of you with how many calories they contain relative to the actual serving size - and this is why counting your calories is such a valuable and eye-opening experience when starting your diet.
Don’t forget about all the other stuff you add to your breakfast!
Now, you’ll notice that everytime you log an item it will update your total calorie intake for the day. If you tap the “more” tab and then hit “nutrition” you can also see a quick break of the grams of protein, fat, carbs, and other nutrients you’ve had.
Don’t worry about all these numbers for now though, we’ll dive into them later on, for now just focus on learning how to track.
Again, as overwhelming as this may seem at first, just trust me after a week or two you’ll find it becomes so easy and quick to do.
The calories per weight (aka. caloric density) of the item you are eating will depend on whether the food item you are tracking loses or absorbs water in the cooking process.
To account for this, make sure that when you log your foods, you consider whether the food is cooked or raw when you’re weighing it.
When searching in the tracking app, you should add the word “raw” or “cooked” before the name of the food.
Generally, weighing your foods when they’re uncooked is more accurate, but it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re being consistent with how you’re tracking them.
How do you go about tracking foods when you don’t have a food scale or measuring tools handy?
Well, I’m most definitely not going to ask you to bring one out to dinner with you, but I will ask you to make an effort to start eating more home-cooked, tracked meals as it’s the easiest way to ensure you’re aware of your true calorie intake.
When you do eat out though, the approach is easy:
Before moving on to the next lesson, I want you to track your calories for the next 3 days. (I've left a note in TrainingPeaks to remind you)
Log this information into MyFitnessPal or whatever app you decide to use.
This will help you get a good sense as to roughly how many calories you’re currently eating day to day. I’d also suggest taking a look at how many grams of protein you’re intaking per day, which you can do in MyFitnessPal by tapping the “more” tab and then tapping the “nutrition” tab.
We’ll follow up with all of this in the next lesson, but for the next 3 days just focus on collecting data and reflecting on some of your food habits.
Give it your best shot and don’t worry if it’s not perfect. We’ll continue showing you how to make this process even easier and more accurate over time.
