Below are the three most important nutritional tips to help lose or maintain body fat while achieving your macronutrient needs to support a strong mind and body:
1. Don't over eat
This may seem obvious but losing and gaining weight is simple math. Take in more calories than you burn and your going to gain weight, take in less calories than you burn and you'll lose weight, take in and expend an equal amount of calories and you'll maintain weight. If you take the first path and consume more calories than you burn, you're going to put on weight. Now, if you workout and want to add muscle (remember muscle helps increase our metabolism and burn body fat) it is not necessarily a bad thing to eat a little more than you expend. However, if you don't workout or significantly over eat, you'll put on the other type of weight--body fat.
2. Eat six small meals throughout the day
By eating frequently throughout the day, you'll keep your metabolism cranking. In this manner, you'll actually be able to eat more in a day than if you ate three large meals because you are burning more calories through increased metabolism.
3. Eat a clean diet.
- Eat whole grains rather than refined grains--they contain more fiber and less sugar.
- Eat healthy fats (monounsaturated and omega-3 fatty acids), which can be found in fish and nuts, rather than saturated and trans fats--they help prevent heart disease, cancer, and support brain development.
- Eat fruits and vegetables.--they provide vitamins and minerals (antioxidents used to ward off disease).
- Last but not least, eat enough protein to support your muscles--if your working out hard, that's one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day.
To help you figure out how much you should be consuming each day, use the calculator below. It will give two benchmarks for caloric intake. One if you workout, the other if you don't. It also divides your daily intake into six separate meals. Enjoy!
