Diet Plans - free information about diets, protein, carbs, fat and calories

part II

The Diet Plan

The diet plan my site recommends has no name. The reason for that is because well, it's not being sold to you. It's free. It's all based on fact, not gimmicks and generating sales. Right now we can just call it "The simple free diet that works every time." Catchy, isn't it? I can't take credit for inventing it though. If anyone can take credit for inventing this diet plan, it would be the human body itself. So, thank you human body... thank you for losing weight or gaining weight when simple diet adjustments are made to you. Ok, let's get down to business...

Basically this diet simply revolves around calories and eating either above or below your calorie maintenance level depending on whether you are looking to lose or gain weight. And then, just making sure that those calories are coming from good sources of protein, carbs and fat, as well as good amounts of each. But, for the most part... it all comes down to calories. Here's how to figure it all out...

How many calories?

First, the most important of all the numbers you will need to figure out... your daily calorie intake. The number of calories you need to eat each day is different depending on whether you're looking to lose weight or gain weight. If you want to lose weight, you have to eat less calories than your maintenance level. If you want to gain weight, you have to eat more. So, the first thing you need to figure out is what your daily calorie maintenance level is. To figure this out, follow these steps:

The first thing you should do is weigh yourself. Do it first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.

The second thing you need to do is eat exactly like you normally would for a few days. Whatever and however you normally ate and drank during the course of a usual day, keep doing it like you usually would.

The only difference is you will be paying attention to what you are eating and drinking. More specifically, you will be keeping track of the number of calories in everything you consume.

Unless you have a really good memory, I'd suggest keeping a list of it all.

If you are eating something that has it's nutritional info on the package, be sure to take notice of how many calories are in it and write it down. If what you are eating/drinking doesn't give the nutritional info, you can buy a cheap pocket size calorie counter book (which is easy to carry around during the day). These books give a huge list of foods along with how many calories (and carbs, fat, etc.) are in them. This one even lists foods from fast food chains and restaurants. It can be extremely useful.

Once you've done this every day for a few days, it will be time to figure out the average amount of calories you consume in a day. So, go and look at your totals for the few days you've been counting calories, and then take the average. For the sake of explaining the rest of this, we will pretend the average came out to be 2500 calories a day.

Now that you figured out how many calories you are eating in a day (2500), you now need to decide what you want your weight to do. Do you want to lose weight or gain weight? If your goal is to lose weight, you should now start eating 500 LESS calories a day. So, sticking with this example, you would now start eating 2000 calories a day. If your goal is to gain weight, you would ADD 500 calories. In this example, you would now start eating 3000 calories a day.

All you have to do after that is wait a week and then weigh yourself again (first thing in the morning on an empty stomach) and notice what your weight did. If you wanted to lose weight, did you? If so, continue to eat those same number of calories every day. If you wanted to gain weight, did you? If so, continue to eat those same number of calories every day.

If your weight did NOT do what you wanted it to do, then make an adjustment. If you wanted to lose and you didn't, subtract an additional 250 calories from your daily total for another week. If you wanted to gain but didn't, add an additional 250 calories to your daily total for another week. Then weigh yourself at the end of the week and see what happened.

Once you finally have your weight doing what you want it to do (it usually will after the first 500 calorie adjustment), continue to keep track of it all and keep weighing yourself once a week. Eventually (could be weeks, could be months, could be never) it is possible that you will reach a stopping point where your weight stops doing what you want it to do. This is perfectly normal and just means it's time to add/subtract another 250 calories. I would say that if your weight stays exactly the same for 2-3 weeks, it's likely time to make another calorie adjustment.

The reason all of the calorie adjustments are always done is small increments is because removing or adding too many calories too fast will have a negative effect causing you to lose or gain too much too fast. This is unsafe and unhealthy. You should be losing or gaining typically 1 or 2 pounds a week at most. Even a half of a pound counts as a change. In the beginning it is normal (especially for weight loss) to lose a little more than these numbers a week. However, this shouldn't last longer than a few weeks before you reach the usual 1-2 pounds a week numbers.

So now you know how many calories to eat each day. All that's left to figure out now is where those calories should come from...

How much protein?

It is usually recommended that a person looking to increase muscle should be eating at least 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. So if you weigh 180lbs, you should try to eat 180 grams of protein a day. That might sound impossible at first, but it is VERY doable and quite simple once you get used to it. This is also why they invented protein supplements. While the majority of my daily protein intake comes from actual foods that are high in protein, I use protein shakes and protein bars to supplement the rest. They are very helpful, and I recommend them.

Some high protein foods include:

Meat
Chicken
Turkey
Fish
Eggs (egg whites)
Nuts

How much fat?

For fat, I can't give you an exact number of grams. Instead I can give you a percent. Approximately 25% of you daily calorie intake should come from fat. It doesn't have to be EXACTLY 25%, but something in that range seems to be the ideal amount. And by fat of course, I mean GOOD fat.

Some foods containing "good" fat include:

Fish
Fish oil supplements
Nuts and seeds
Olive oil
Flax seed oil

How many carbs?

And that leaves carbs. You factored in that you need to eat 1 gram of protein per pound. So now do the math. Sticking with the 180lbs example, that means you are eating 180 grams of protein a day. 180x4 = 720 calories. So in this example, 720 calories of the daily calorie intake is accounted for from protein alone. You can now also factor in the 25% of your daily calorie total coming from fat. Once you factored in both the protein and fat, whatever number of calories you are left with... those will come from carbs. Got that? 1 gram per pound for protein, 25% of the total calorie intake is fat, and everything else should come from GOOD carbs.

Some foods containing "good" carbs include:

Oatmeal
100% whole wheat bread
Whole wheat pasta
Brown rice
Yams
Sweet potatoes
Beans
Green leafy vegetables

Organize It And Do It

Now that you have all of the diet information figured out, try to spread the calories out evenly over 4-6 smaller meals rather than 3 really big meals. Then, spread the 4-6 smaller meals out by eating once every 3 hours or so. That pretty much sums it all up. Be sure to drink plenty of water, get enough sleep, and of course... workout correctly. Oh, and one final math equation for you:

Everything you just read + dedication + consistency = results

Source: intense-workout.com