Are You Eating and Training Right For Your Goals?
With so many diets, training styles, fitness influencers, etc. out there, it can sometimes seem confusing to know what approach to take in order to reach your fitness and nutrition goals. Personally, I prefer a simple approach and I’m hoping to convince you of the same! We don’t need to do a detox, cut out specific food groups, do hours of cardio or take other drastic measures. But there is an actual science to the human body and how you can expect it to respond to certain stimuli. If you are confused about how to eat and/or train to gain muscle, lose fat, or maintain your current physique, let me help!
First of all, you’ll need to be a bit specific with your goals. Most of the time, you can only expect to achieve one at a time. This means you’ll want to either focus on muscle building, maintenance, or fat loss, but not all of them at once. Take some time to think about your own goals and also take into account your current capacity. You can expect to focus on the same goal for several weeks to months at a time before you’ll likely see significant changes. Consider what other commitments you have upcoming and whether it’s realistic for you to take on a muscle building or fat loss phase as both of these will require a bit more time and effort on your part.
Be realistic in the goals you want to achieve and the timeline you set for yourself. We’ll talk about that more under each category as well.
I know my goals. Now what?
Now that you have your specific goals defined, let’s get into a little more detail about how to achieve them. There are some small differences you’ll need to make with either nutrition and/or exercise depending on the specific goal you would like to attain. Keep in mind this is a high-level overview, and each person’s body is unique. If you need help with your personal nutrition, I highly recommend reaching out to a nutrition coach or a Registered Dietitian in your area. They can help you determine your personal needs in much greater detail. There are so many different factors to account for when setting a specific calorie/macronutrient goal for a client. It would be impossible to do so without getting a good history of past/current health conditions, lifestyle, current body weight, etc.
The information below is not meant to be medical advice. Always consult with your doctor/Registered Dietitian for personalized medical advice.
I want to build muscle:
If you are wanting to build muscle, you need to be including resistance training in your workouts on a consistent basis. In order to create muscle hypertrophy (growth), you need to be taxing your muscles and lifting heavy weights. When you incorporate resistance training, your muscle fibers actually break down and you create small tears in them. Through rest and recovery, you are able to repair your muscles and in turn create muscle hypertrophy (or muscle growth). You’ll also need to implement progressive overload into your program as well in order to see muscle growth. This essentially means increasing the resistance/intensity over time. You can do this a number of ways, such as progressively increasing the amount of weight for a specific exercise, performing an exercise with better technique and range of motion, requiring less rest, adding more reps and/or sets per week, etc.
Your sets/rep ranges will vary based on your current routine and what equipment you have available to you. However, typically you would want to train in the range of 5-30 reps, and the current research indicates that 10 sets per muscle group per week is ideal for muscular growth. That means 10 sets for shoulders, 10 set for glutes, 10 for quads, 10 for back, 10 for biceps, etc… You can break that down however you like throughout your week and within your individual workouts.
In terms of your nutrition, you cannot build muscle unless you’re properly fueling your body with enough carbs, protein, and fats. This means eating more calories than you’re burning each day (eating in a calorie surplus). Protein is the building blocks of muscle, so you will need to ensure you are consuming a high protein diet. Aim to eat on the higher end of the range, or about 1.6-2.2 g/kg of your body weight. Some people prefer to use ideal body weight for this, and I think that can work as well for individuals who may have a large amount of body fat to lose. Play around with numbers and see what works for you and is sustainable in your lifestyle.
Muscle takes a very long time to build. If this is your goal, you can likely expect to spend a minimum of several months to several years accomplishing this. Don’t let that discourage you! Be patient and consistent!
I want to lose fat:
This tends to be where a lot of people are wanting to spend the majority of their time. But I’m here to tell you that a fat loss phase should actually be where you spend the LEAST amount of your time.
Dieting puts a strain on your body for a number of reasons. You cannot sustain a fat loss phase for long term (think anything longer than about 12-16 weeks, depending on your own personal biofeedback). We ideally want to get in and get out as quickly as possible.
There are plenty of free calorie or macronutrient calculators out there that can help you determine a starting point for your deficit. However, keep in mind that quite a bit goes into appropriately choosing your deficit (as mentioned at the beginning of this post). You will get the best results and the most accurate macros when working directly with a nutrition coach or Registered Dietitian who can go in-depth with you.
If you are not interested in having a one-on-one coach, what I recommend is to choose a calorie/macro target that allows you to consume the HIGHEST number of calories while still seeing changes. I think where a lot of people tend to go wrong when trying to lose fat is that they want to slash a bunch of calories immediately and lose as much as possible in the shortest amount of time. They’ll drastically cut carbs & fats and undereat calories significantly so they can see quicker changes. While yes, this will allow a faster weight loss (note weight loss, not necessarily fat loss), you will be much more likely to gain it all back when you add those foods and calories back in. A better approach would be to start in about a 5-15% caloric deficit to allow yourself some time to adjust to the deficit and start to make consistent progress. Stay at these numbers for multiple weeks at a time to ensure you can accurately track progress and know what changes you need to make.
Keep in mind that a deficit does mean you can expect to experience some level of hunger. You are literally eating less calories than your body needs in order to maintain its current physical state. Hunger is a given. However, you should not be starving every day. You want a good balance that allows you to have a sustainable approach.
Exercise will surprisingly not change much. Maintaining muscle will be key in a fat loss phase. Strength training several times a week will be a great addition to a fat loss phase to help preserve muscle mass. Muscle is also more metabolically active than fat. Meaning that your body needs to burn more calories in order to maintain muscle than it would need to burn in order to maintain the same amount of fat.
If you like to add cardio, you certainly can. However, cardio alone is not the key to fat loss. Nutrition will determine your overall progress. Cardio is an important tool for cardiovascular health and should absolutely be performed. But just remember that nutrition is king for fat loss!
I also recommend upping your NEAT (or Non-Energy Activity Thermogenesis: any type of movement that is not specific exercise, such as walking to your car, putting away groceries, pacing the room, cleaning, etc.). A lot of coaches will tell you to make sure you are hitting 10k steps a day. While this is a great goal, for some it may not be realistic. Aim for greater than 5k, but as close to 10k as you can. Anything below 5k is considered sedentary. Choose a goal that is a little outside your comfort zone and will be an increase for you.
I want to maintain or focus on overall health:
Maintenance is when you are consuming about the same number of calories as you typically burn on a daily basis. Think of this as more of a range, considering that on any given day you are likely to change your activity level. For example, maybe you’re walking around the zoo chasing after your kids all day on top of your typical workouts and steps, while later in the week you’re sick and doing your best to rest as much as possible and not able to work out. Your caloric needs will be different in both of those scenarios, however the average (or range) of calories is generally the same.
While eating at maintenance, you are able to have a little bit more wiggle room in your diet. This is a great time to enjoy treats and maybe some untracked days. Some people may even opt to not track macros/calories at all at this point. You may choose to eat intuitively instead (eat when you are hungry, stop when you are full/listen to normal hunger cues). Keep in mind, that it can be very easy to overeat with this method, so you may want to occasionally check in with yourself. Another great method in this phase of nutrition is to simply track only calories or only calories and hit your protein goals. If you haven’t noticed yet, protein is always KING. No matter your goals, protein remains crucial to health and optimal functioning of your body. Keep your protein at about 0.6-1.2 g/lb or your body weight in this phase (minimum).
In terms of activity levels and exercise, do what you love! I still recommend resistance training of some type at least a few times a week to ensure you are preserving muscle mass. If you are brand new to lifting, you may be able to make some body composition changes here (think building muscle while also losing fat at the same time). However, for those of you who may be more experienced in the gym, only slight changes will be expected, and they may take longer to achieve.
In general, the exercise program that will be the most successful for you is the one you can stick to! Doing workouts you hate or using them as a form of punishment to your body won’t get you the results you are looking for. Use this time to focus on the activity you enjoy!