If you are struggling to gain weight or lose weight I strongly, strongly suggest you read this post and follow the steps. As a general rule, people are appalling at estimating caloric intake. This has been documented in multiple studies. For example, one trial looked at obese people who repeatedly failed to lose weight even when consuming a tiny 1200 calories per day [1]. Despite their resistance to weight loss. Their metabolic rate was tested and fell within 5% of predicted values. So, there was no metabolic damage going on. How many people have you heard use a justification similar to this? You know, slow metabolism or I find it so easy to gain body fat? The problem actually was, they were under reporting their caloric intake by 47% and over reporting their caloric expenditure by 51%. They claimed to eat (on average) only 1028 calories per day. They actually ate 2081 calories per day. They reported to burn 1022 calories per day. They actually burned only 771 calories per day. So, they overestimated their caloric intake by 1053 calories and overestimated how many calories they burned by 251 calories. A total caloric miscalculation of a whopping 1304 calories! Like I said, people are appalling at estimating caloric intake. Anecdotally, here are a few of examples I have seen in real life; 1) Self confessed skinny guy with a belly cant build muscle or lose fat. Upon further evaluation he was barely consuming any protein and eating far more carbs than expected as he was under the impression bread was the best source of protein available. 2) Female who hit a weight loss plateau calculated the calories consumed from fruit and realised there were approximately 500 extra calories in her diet which she hadnt been accounting for. 3) Male who struggled to build muscle realised he had been hugely overestimating the protein he was consuming and in fact was only eating a fraction of what he thought. 4) Personal trainer who cant lose weight on low carb diet totals up their approximate caloric intake and finds out they are eating a whopping 300g of fat per day as well as massively overshooting their caloric target. 5) Female who is struggling to lose weight despite being strict on calories calculates her totals for her weekend blow outs (sounds familiar, cheat meals anyone?) and realises it raises her average daily caloric intake so much it takes her out of a caloric deficit and takes her into a caloric surplus. Chances are, one of these examples will be similar to what you, or someone you know, are experiencing. So, if you want to gain muscle and are weight training consistently (and progressively) it is quite probable you arent consuming enough calories. If you are struggling to lose weight it is quite probable you are consuming too many calories. So, what do you do? Use a calorie tracker. You dont have to do it daily for the rest of your life. You simply do it to gain familiarity with the calories you are eating. Once you have a level of caloric awareness it is quite probably you wont need to accurately track everything. Step 1: Go to myfitnesspal and input a few days worth of eating (make sure to include everything including beverages). Step 2: Input your absolute worst day of eating. For people who are on a diet, it is quite common to have the odd binge day now and again where you pretend the calories dont count. Unfortunately, they do and you will probably be surprised by how much you are eating. Step 3: Once you have an accurate idea of how much you are eating on a daily basis, use that as your starting point adjust it from there. Step 4: Upon making diet adjustments, evaluate your progress over the next 7-14 days and then repeat the process if necessary. This could be increasing your calories or protein if you are trying to gain muscle or decreasing your calories if you are aiming for weight loss. I see a huge number of people who come to me because they struggle to lose weight or struggle to gain weight. Once they go through this process do you know how many people were accurate with their caloric estimates? Zero. When we actually calculated their calories, the people who werent losing weight were always eating more than they thought and those who couldnt gain weight were always eating less than they thought. Once you follow the steps in the above post, comment below with your findings. I will go through the comments and help out where possible. If you know someone who could benefit from this advice please tag them in the comments or share this post. It is one of the most fundamental laws that everyone needs to be aware of when training for muscle gain or fat loss. References: [1] ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1454084
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 17:30:00 +0000
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