Eat Your Way To Your Fitness Goals

Those of us who have fitness goals what to achieve something.  Whether it is gaining muscle, losing weight, or becoming better in the sport they play having a well structured diet is the key to improving in any of your goals!!

Why?

80% of whatever goal you have is reached through good nutrition.  Without a diet plan it will be very difficult, if not impossible to reach your goals. Your body needs fuel to function in everyday day life and food is that fuel.  If your putting the wrong kind into your body, then your body is going to be what you eat.

Basics of Weight loss

An easy way to break it down is knowing that it takes a cut of 3500 calories from your diet to lose 1 pound of fat.  Lets say for instance you are consuming 3000 calories a day you need to reduce you caloric intake down to 2650 which will result in a 1 pound loss in 10 days. That doesn’t mean you get to eat one pizza and now your daily limit is reached.  That is the complete opposite.  Calories in and Calories out.  This means you need to consume foods that are ready to be burned off through exercise rather quickly,  In weight loss, you would want to avoid foods that high in fats because well you want to lose fat.  Some fats though are beneficial as well because they carry the important vitamins your body needs.  Just remember that is a balance and keep your food intake in moderation.

Basics of Muscle Gain

There are great benefit to increasing muscle size for both men and women.
The more muscle you have on your body has the more energy (calories) is needed to function in everyday life. In essence it becomes easier to keep the fat off. Remember it’s not as simple as eating more calories. Sure you can get more calories from eating a cheeseburger but that doesn’t mean it’s helping you build muscle size. To gain a pound of muscle you need an increased caloric intake of about 2500 calories to your diet.  If you’re eating 2750 a day then you need to increase that to 3000 a day to gain a pound of muscle in 10 days. This can be accomplished by finding your out how many calories you need based on your age, weight and activity level and then creating a meal plan that fits your goals.

Tools

The best way of doing this is to track your caloric intake by using websites like the myfitnesspal and Calorie King apps for Android or iPhone will also help you track your calories. These tools will help keep you on track and achieve your goals more quickly than if you just guess how much you’re eating. While you do need to increase your caloric intake that doesn’t mean you can just eat whatever you want whenever. There has to be a balance of macronutrients and in appropriate portions.