Dieting, the basics

I get alot of stick from some people (james ;)) about my idea of dieting and nutrition, but i do take it seriously, its christmas now and like everyone else i intend to chill out, eat and drink lots and generally grow fat on my own lazyness. however the trick is not to let things get out of hand, and i've written this little piece to help you guys stay in control of your eating over xmas:


Diet Basics-

1. your weight.

The easiest way to work out your weight for dieting is the american system of LBS. This is easy, get a calculator and some scales. set your scales to kilograms. Now multiply your weight in kilograms by 2.2. this will get you your weight in Lbs.

2. Your daily intake of calories;

Multiply your weight by 13 to get your average needed intake of calories.

3. Gain/Loose weight;

add or subtract 500 calories to gain or loose weight respectively.

4. The nutrients:

It breaks down like this:


CALORIES: IMPORTANT DEFINITION FROM WIKIPEDIA:

# cal- this is the small calorie or gram calorie, and approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C. This is about 4.184 Joules.

# kcal, this is the large calorie or kilogram calorie, and approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 °C. This is about 4.184 kJ, and exactly 1000 small calories


calories are usually represented in kcal, so try and work from those to keep things simple.

Carbs, fat and protien:

50% of your daily intake of calories should come from carbs. (fruits, vegetables, whole grain products etc)

25% of your daily intake of calories should come from, ideally, low fat, o protein sources (chicken, fish, eggs, soy products etc)

25% of your daily intake of calories should come from quality (unsaturated) fat sources (nuts, seeds, avocados, flax seed oil, olive oil etc).

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

* 1 gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories
* 1 gram of protein = 4 calories
* 1 gram of fat = 9 calories
* 1 gram of alcohol = 7 calories

so when you know your daily intake of calories simply multiply by .50 or .25, then divide by 4 or 9 to get the weight of your carbs, fats and protien in grams.
thought id put alcohol up just so you know. i dont drink it much, just over holiday periods like xmas. but if you do, add it in.

here is an example copied directly from an internet fitness site, to give you an idea of what you should be aiming at:


If you weigh 180 lb. you would need approximately 2400 calories a day. A little more if you are very active. 180 x 13 = 2,350 calories

Carbohydrates: 2,400 x .50 = 1,200 calories from carbohydrates or 300 grams of carbohydrates.

Protein: 2,400 x .25 = 600 calories from protein or 150 grams of protein.

Fat: 2,400 x .25 = 600 calories from fat or 66 grams of fat.

5. Working it out:

Take a notepad, record everything you eat in a standard day.

DO NOT change your diet in this day, eg, if you normally eat junk food for lunch, eat junk food, drink coke, etc etc. dont start eating healthy becuase you are thinking healthy...yet.

ok in the course of your day record what you eat, when you eat it and the basic nutritional values, the carbs, the fat and the protien. total it all up at the end of the day. if you are unsure of the vaules of things like bananas and chicken pieces, or the amount of oatmeal you have in the morning, weigh it and use

this

site, which has a pretty extensive range of the quality and nutritional value of food products.

So work out where your basic big three are coming from, and adjust your diet accordingly

7.

Some tips:

Water: i could go so in depth about it, but chances are you already know, if you dont, read

this

article on tricks tutorials. In fact, read everything about nutrition on tricks tutorials, it goes a lot more in depth than i have,. im just giving you the basic idea.

Multivitamins: A must for any university student, but also i would reccomend starting to take them around the age of 16, i say 16 just to be on the safe side. They give your immune system a boost and get you at least a basic supply of essential vitmains, as long as you remember that they are not a substitute for eating fruit and veg

Get eggy: Nicked this one of Tricks Tutorials, if you eat oatmeal in the morning, mix an egg in, for protieny goodness! Also when dealing with Oatmeal, remember you can have it with water, not just milk. Milk is a bit of a touchy subject, no other mammal drinks milk past the basic stages of infancy, so why are you still drinking it? Answer, its a habit but human bone growth and general body change can last a long time, up until the ages of about 25. so milk is probably ok as long as its farm fresh and skimmed/semi skimmed. Factory produced milk contains traces of steriod whihc they pump into the cows to increase milk production...not cool at all.

Have a banana: or any other fruit, with breakfast and at least one other time during the day. Also cut up a few bananas and stick them in a ziplock bag and chuck em in the freezer. there's nothing worse than going to get a banana for your day and finding it all black and mushy, so make sure you have a supply of chopped ones in your freezer which you can add to your lunch or smoothie.

Tired of sandwhiches and crisps?: Remember that sandwhihces and crisps as lunch is only a habit. work on this priciple.theres nothing better than meat and veg, so for example. i take a bell pepper (hehehehe..bell) and hollow it out, fill it full of tuna and mayo salad and eat it like an apple. or take a can of tuna, add a bit of hot sauce straight to the can, mix it up and eat it from the tin and munch on a couple of tomatoes on the side, theres nothing better than a mouth full of meat and veg for lunch :)
Also, throw fruit into EVERYTHING, breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, you can add fruits and berrys to them all, maybe have an omlette with chopped strawvberries in it, bananas, apples, grapefruit, with your cereal blah blah blah EAT FRUIT DAMMIT!

Weetabix and Marmalade: An great snack and source of energy for revision or a general pick up during the day, easy and quick to make, get a couple of dry weetabix biscuits and spread jam/ marmalade on them. you get huge carbs, sugar and more protien than you might think. probably should mention here that if you havnt switched to wholegrain products DO IT NOW! i'll wait......

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how's it feel? more energy, concentrating on what im saying now...i thought so.


Eat: roughly 5-6 meals a day, that the 3 main ones, with mid morning and mid afternoon snacks (ideally fruit or nuts) to keep you on yuor toes at work or school. If your looking at bodybuilding or something similar then 7-8 small meals a day is another option.

Protein Supplements: if your going to take protien supplements, keep it simple, a simple workout shake, with water or with milk, is probably all you need to boost you daily protien levels. just rember to take the milk into account if you have it with that!

So thats basically it for an introduction to your diet. If you spend a week recording everything you eat and its values you will find that youve built up a handy database of pretty much everything you usally eat, because most households follow a routine for evening meals. Then just build your diet around a foundation, for example if you know on tuesdays your eveing meal is pasta with sauce and cheese, or you have rugby training, martial arts or other sports on that day, you can look at your notebook to see what else you eat that will plug the protien gap in that day, or give you the energy to train. Before you know it youll be eating the right foods on the right days for the right reasons, and trust me, results will follow,

resources: Tricks Tutorials.com and abc bodybuilding.