BPC’s Guide to Healthy Eating and Improved Performance – Step 2

Step 2: Determine your target calorie goals for the week

Big question for those continuing on….how were the last 7 days of recording your food? Hopefully you stayed consistent. Haven’t done Step 1 yet? Click here to review it.

For most people, it becomes a pretty big shock just HOW MUCH food is actually consumed. Your goal for today, if you haven’t done so already, is to add up the amount of calories you consumed each day. Since we logged for 7 days, now divide that number by 7 to get the average amount of calories you consumed each day.

The number you come up with will give you a pretty good feel for what you current calorie intake has been. This is a very important number as it has quite a bit to do with where you are going from a weight perspective.

Now here is something I want to make clear – our philosophy at BPC is to fuel for health and performance. Combining this with exercise, there is a good chance that people considering themselves “over-weight” will end up shedding some pounds. Maintaining a healthy weight is very important in overall fitness, performance, and well being, but this is not a “lose weight at all costs as fast as possible” approach. No diet pills, no appetite suppressors, none of that junk.

Next step in our nutrition equation is to get a feel for your “Basal Metabolic Rate” or BMR. This is essentially the amount of energy your body utilizes in order to just stay alive each day. Here is a link to “My Fitness Pal” which is an online calculator and food tracker that also has a BMR calculator. Open up a new page, paste in this link, and put in your stats to get a ballpark estimate of what your BMR equates to.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator

Now start factoring in how active you are on a daily basis. Average out the amount of exercise you do each week and then estimate the amount of calories burned each session. Again, we’re working on averages and estimates for the time being – we’re just looking for a baseline of where to begin our daily calorie goals. Add those calories to your BMR number.

Not sure on how many calories you’re burning? MyFitnessPal has an estimator for that as well – http://www.myfitnesspal.com/exercise/lookup

Here’s an example of what things should look like:

John calculates his BMR as 1500 calories. He exercises 7 hours each week and estimates he burns around 500 calories per hour.

1500 calories (BMR est.) + 500 calories of exercise each day = 2000 calories

For John to do the following:

• Maintain Weight – Consume roughly 2000 calories per day
• Lose Weight – Consume less than 2000 calories per day
• Gain Weight – Consume more than 2000 calories per day

Seems so simple, right? Here’s where it gets a little more challenging

For some people, it is as simple as calories in vs. calories burned.

For others, even running a calorie deficit does not equate to weight loss. Running too much of a calorie deficit can actually SLOW the metabolism and force your body to go into a preservation mode. That, combined with a lack of energy due to low calorie consumption, will negate weight loss and also decrease performance. DON’T FALL VICTIM TO THIS.

For those looking to lose weight:

Your task, for the next 7 days, is to shoot for  a 500 calorie deficit each day based on the numbers you came up with above. If you have a job that requires a lot of activity, estimate the additional calories burned – we recommend adding another 100 calories or so per hour.

For those looking to maintain weight:

Target a number in line with the one you calculated

For those looking to gain weight:

Add an additional 300-500 calories per day of nutrient dense food to your diet

In conjunction with that, we want you consuming plenty of water – a minimum of 1/2 ounce per 1 pound of body weight. If you weight 200 pounds, shoot for 100 ounces. In the summer, this number will increase.

Today we also want to make sure you weigh yourself and take tape measurements for the following (a lot of times the scale is the last to change, but body composition changes):

• Chest (relaxed with arms to side)
• Stomach (across belly button)
• Hips (widest spot)
• Right leg

And now to hold you accountable, we want you to email us the following to bryant@buildpeakcompete.com

1. Calorie average of what you consumed per day the last 7 days
2. Estimated BMR
3. Amount of “extra” calories burned per day with exercise
4. Goal calorie intake for the upcoming week

Step 3: Coming November 27th