Perhaps you missed my post series in Instagram regarding how to start changing your body composition by yourself, without necessarily consulting a dietitian or nutritionist like me. No worries, I would like to summarize everything in few articles so that you have the chance to try it out!
Did you decide that this year you are going to lose weight, to increase lean mass, or simply to maintain your weight and your shape? Well then you should follow the coming Blog articles because I’m going to guide you in defining your nutrition plan based on your goal adding some fitness tips and general life style changes you might want to try out. In order to start you will need: a lot of motivation and patience! The first month will be exclusively dedicated to prepare yourself, your tracking file and the tools you need. In the first month you will also set your starting point screening your body, your calories intake and consumption. By the way, everything you can do alone with a bit of help! So, I hope you will be motivated to start this adventure!
I recently started to redefine my nutrition plan in order to keep up with my more and more intense life, workouts, mom’s life, soon office, and my personal goal to develop in calisthenic, as well as to get a bit more lean mass. As nutritionist, I can easily plan everything on my own and so I did. I would like to help you in evaluating and eventually improving your nutrition: all stuff you can do alone with a little help from my side! What you need to make sure before to start is your level of motivation!! Without a strong motivation and determination, don’t even bother yourself!
First step is to evaluate your status and define a starting point!
Where to start?
First thing to do, after you decided what is your final goal (increasing lean mass, reducing fats, maintaining, body definition, better nutrition, higher strength or endurance, get back in my Levis jeans etc..), is to take pictures of yourself, measure your weight and possibly your circumferences. Those data are only for you and you will monitor them on a monthly basis!
What do you need?
· Notebook
· Scale
· Camera
· Tailor’s tape measure
· Optional: someone to measure you but you can manage alone as well!
How?
➡Prepare a table in your notebook where you will be recording every months your above mentioned data and a folder where to save pictures.
➡Take pictures of yourself, in underwear (front, side and back). Do it always in the same room, same positions, possibly same time and with same light intensity. It will be easier to see differences.
➡Start measuring circumstances of waist, hips, arms, thighs, calves. See pictures attached explaining how to do it!
Waist: measure between the last rib and iliac spine; Hips: measure the maximum circumstances of the gluteus; Arms: straight arm, measure in the middle point between the shoulder and elbow; Thighs: straight leg, measure in the middle point between groin and kneecap; Calves: straight leg, 20 cm space between feet, measure the maximum circumstance of your calf
Basal Metabolism
Sometime we forget that we need to consider basal metabolism in counting the total calories intake. It represents 60-75% of total calories burnt daily. Basal metabolism is the amount of calories burnt to maintain hearth bit, breathing, body temperature, build tissues and other basic functions of our body. It is different from women to men and usually men have higher basal metabolic rate.
Here two ways how to calculate.
1 – First way
Women
BM= weight in kg x 22;
Men
BM=weight in kg x 24
2 – Second way
Women
age 10-18 (weight in kg x 12,2)+746
age 18-30 (weight in kg x 14,7)+496
age 31-60 (weight in kg x 8,7)+829
Men
age 10-18 (weight in kg x 17,5)+651
age 18-30 (weight in kg x 15,3)+678
age 31-60 (weight in kg x 11,6)+879
I recommend to use the second option for a more precise calculation. Take note of your result in your notebook. We will then add your level of physical activity to calculate the daily energy.
Level of Physical activity
Now that you know your basic metabolism, it’s time to identify your level of physical activity. Physical activity includes any type of activity from housekeeping to walking to exercising. The number of calories burnt for every activity, depends on your weight, type of activity and duration. So here I am going to give you values of different level of activities. Take note of which one suits best for you; we will need it in the calculation of your total daily calories.
Inactive (mostly sitting): 1.2
Moderately active (walking and exercising 1 or 2 times a week): 1.3
Rather Active (exercising 2-3 times a week): 1.4
Active (training for more than 3 times a week): 1.5
Very active (heavy training every day): 1.7
A more precise method allows you to calculate the level of activity separating exercising and regular daily movement.
For the regular daily movement, take note of following values:
⭐️If you work mainly sitting or standing 1.4
⭐️If you are moderately moving during your day 1.7
⭐️If you are very active during your day 2.0
Regarding physical activity, you might want to measure it instead of estimating it. So if you have a heartbeat watch , take the values of one week training and calculate an average daily calories consumption for the type of sport/training you practice.
Otherwise you can use the table here below which refers to an adult weighting 65 kg. If you weigh more, increase the calories and vice versa if you weigh less. That might be anyway quite general value. Take note of all your data!!
Sport
Kcal/ h (ref. to 65kg adult)
Cardio High Intensity
520
Cardio Low Intensity
400
Cycling 16 km / h
385
Cycling 9 km/h
250
Rowing
445
Running 3,8 min/km
1000
Running 5,6 min/km
750
Swimming
630
Tennis
415
Weight Lifting
270-450
Right now you should know: how many calories you need in order to maintain your basic metabolism and your level of physical activity.
Daily calories need
We only need to calculate your daily calories need. In order to do that, you should multiply your basal metabolism and your level of physical activity (regular daily activities + fitness/ sport/ workouts).
The value you obtain is the total daily calories you should introduce to maintain your basal metabolism, your weight and your current status.
We will see later, if your target for example is to reduce weight , you will need to modify the calories intake or expenditure concerning only physical activity. Basal metabolism remains constant!
Food recording
Next step will be to assess your diet! 10 days of food recording will be required: prepare your diary or download one of the hundreds nutrition app (my recommendation is MyFitnessPal)!
What we are going to do now is to check if in practice you are getting enough food or perhaps too much comparing to that value we have calculated previously! Based on your final goal, you will need to adjust that value by increasing it or reducing it. Later on we will also see what is the optimal intake divided per macronutrients meanings how much of carbohydrate, proteins and fats you need, always referring to your final goal.
So what do you have to do right now is to decide whether you are going to use: paper an Excel file or an app like for example MyFitnessPal. The last case is actually easier, because many products are already recorded with nutrients values (even though perhaps not 100% precise but closed to be), quicker in the moment you need to record what you are consuming. You will also have a split between macro nutrients intake and that is actually quite useful. In the first two cases obviously you have to enter everything manually and get calories value reading nutrition label on the packages.
In any case the principle is that you have to list everything you are consuming, from when you wake up until you go to sleep for about 10 days (minimum one week) and related quantities. In doing that please do not change your habits because you want to access the reality of your current nutrition! Also please do not perform such a process while you are on vacation ! Remember: you are doing it for yourself not for anyone else!
You will then compare the average daily calories intake with the value you previously have calculated. As an example, I just went through that process and I found a gap of 300 kcal with an excess in carbs and lack in proteins and fat! This way I could re-align my diet based on my daily needs. It is a good practice to do it once in a while, like every 4 months for example.
Next article, we start focusing on one specific target : increasing lean mass!
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