Tracking Your Nutrition

I know you all have heard this before, but 80% of the results you see are going to be accomplished in the kitchen.  The other 20% would be the workouts.  Now this is not meant to minimize the importance of your workouts, but instead, to emphasize how important nutrition is.  You can workout all day long and push harder than you ever have, but if you are still putting the same old junk in your body that you used to, then you aren’t going to see the results you want.  This is probably the #1 cause of people’s frustrations when it comes to seeing results.  They push so hard in the work outs, but by the end of a week sweating it out, there is little to nothing to show for it.  The reason is most likely that this person is not monitoring what is going into their body.  The result is that these people lose the motivation to do the workouts all together and completely give up on the nutrition.

First off, before you start tracking your nutrition, you have to decide what type of results you want to establish a nutritional foundation to build upon.  Do you simply want to lose fat?  Do you want to build mass?  Do you want to build muscle while losing fat?  This is very important to decide as it will be the basis of your nutritional goals.  If you haven’t seen My 1900 Calorie Diet, its worth taking a look at.  You can see EXACTLY what I ate during the fat shredder phase of the P90X program.  If you don’t know where to start in developing a nutrition plan, you can email me directly at coachtodd@rippedclub.net, or you can reply in the comments section of this post and we can get you started!  But get familiar with what your body needs to meet the goals you have set for yourself.  Know what nutrition plan, and what supplements are going to maximize your results so that you get the best bang for your buck out of your workouts.  Make a plan…and commit to it!

Okay so what next?  You know your goals, you know the nutritional plan that will get you there.  Now you need to commit to tracking everything that goes into your body! I have been using My Fitness Pal on my phone now for six months and I continue to track every calorie.  Why so religious about it?  Lets set up an example.  Lets say I do great for breakfast and my morning snack, but at lunch, my boss takes us out and I have more carbs than I should have (this is an example…LOL).  If I am tracking my intake then I will know instantly that I cant have any additional carbs the rest of the day.  Knowledge is power and that is exactly what tracking your nutrition gives you.

So how do you begin to track your nutrition?  Well first you need to set up an account (usually free) with a program like www.myfitnesspal.com or Tap & Track.  Both have smart phone apps for your convenience. I prefer My Fitness Pal since they have an enormous library of foods that other users have already entered the nutrition facts for.  But pick a program with a user interface that you understand best and that you will use EVERY DAY to track calories, %protein, % carbs, % fats.  One thing though, don’t worry about tracking calories burned during your workouts…you are just trying to track your intake here.

Here are some rules of thumb to go by when developing your own meal plan to meat your goals:

Protein has 4 calories per gram.

Carbs have 4 calories per gram.

Fat has 9 calories per gram.

So on a 2,000 calorie diet in the fat shredder %, you will want 1000cals from protein, 600cals from carbs, and 4oocals from fat.  This would mean 250g protein, 150g carbs, and 45g fat.

Try to get as close as possible to your target calorie intake while matching the appropriate protein/carb/fat ratios for your goals.  By tracking these, you should be able to get it right on after having done it for a little while.  It gets easier, trust me.

Another good tip is to keep your calorie intake balanced throughout the day with 5-6 small meals (3 main/3 snacks).  This will keep your body fueled and your metabolism will go crazy!

I hope this helps you understand a little more how to track your nutrition.  I also hope that this will motivate you to put as much vigor, if not more, than you give your workouts.  If you get this part right, you will definitely enjoy the results of 100% dedication!