How to make your own diet plan

As we all know, diet is a very vital part of your fitness regime. Many people think of dieting and say, START STARVING or I’LL SKIP MY LUNCH FROM NOW ON. In an actual fact, that is a very wrong way of going about it. You need to give your body enough calories to keep your energy levels high for your workouts. If you don’t eat enough, you will probably stop in your workouts way before you should.

Today, I intend to show you how you can:

-          -  Calculate the amount of calories you need to ensure your body runs efficiently

-          -  Calculate how many calories you need in one day

-          -  How many grams of each macronutrient do you need

-          - What to eat and how to eat it.

Things you will need.

-          Microsoft Excel (or any spreadsheet tool) or Fatless Formula calorie intake calculator

-         Calorie Count

Start off with calculating your Basel Metabolic Rate (BMR) – i.e. the calories you require just to keep you systems going. 

Option 1: Use the following formulas

Option 2: Use the calorie intake calculator in the right hand bar.

English BMR Formula

Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years ) Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) - ( 6.8 x age in year )

Metric BMR Formula

Women: BMR = 655 + ( 9.6 x weight in kilos ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) - ( 4.7 x age in years ) Men: BMR = 66 + ( 13.7 x weight in kilos ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) - ( 6.8 x age in years )

Now calculate your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). 

Option 1: Use the following factors

Option 2: Use the calorie intake calculator in the right hand bar.

Sedentary - BMR x 1.2 (little exercise)

Lightly active - BMR x 1.375 (light exercise)

Moderately active - BMR x 1.55 (moderate exercise)

Very active - BMR x 1.725 (hard exercise)

Extremely active - BMR x 1.9 (hard exercise daily)

Now you have the amount of calories that you need on a daily basis.

There are different schools of thought about what ratio your macronutrients should be. Some day 60/30/10, then you also see a 40/40/20 and there is also a 20/30/50 – (Carbs/Proteins/Fats).

Quick tip: If you want to gain muscle then 60/30/10 is great. If you want to get fit then 40/40/20 will do very well and if you want to lower fat with very little exercise then 20/30/50 is fine. Mind you, don’t do the 20/30/50 for long, it might be damaging.

Once you decide which one you want to go for, distribute your calories over the three macronutrients.

Carbs – 60%

Protein – 30%

Fats – 10%

If your TDEE is 2000 calories, then here you what you should get

Carbs – 1200 calories

Proteins – 600 calories

Fats – 200 calories

Now divide the carbs and proteins by 4 and the fats by 9, which will give us

Carbs – 300 grams

Proteins – 150 grams

Fats – 22 grams

This is how many grams of each you require every day. Now create a plan with 5 – 6 meals in the day. Take most of your carbs in your breakfast and around your workout. Protein should be equally distributed throughout the day. The fats should also be distributed, but avoid them right after your workout. Try to choose healthy carbs (Low GI, complex and non-simple carbohydrates). Go to Calorie Count read about your food choices.

There’s not much too it. Oh and consult a doctor before you have some health issues.

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Fatless Zig Zag Diet Formula

Zig Zag is a fairly new concept of dieting which emerged within the last decade. The idea is to alternate between high calorie and low calorie days so that you can create serious calorie deficits without damaging your metabolism.

You will find many different methods of doing this, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. Being a huge fan of Zig Zag diets, I have devised a zig zag diet of my own and it is very easy to design and follow by anyone. Here are the three steps of the fatless zig zag diet formula. (Please note that step 1 is to be done only once, when the diet starts).

Step 1: So, you might have tried lots of different diets, might not have been taking care of yourself or just weren’t bother about weight control. Your metabolism would be out of WHACK by now, so the first step is to fix that. First of all you need to calculate your calorie requirement. If you haven’t already subscribed to the Fatless Formula e-mail feed, I suggest you do so now and you can claim a FREE calorie requirements calculator. Let’s say your calorie requirement is 1800 calories per day. So you need to create a diet plan for yourself which is 1800 – 2000 calories. The idea is for your body to get used to taking in approximately 1800 calories. If you feel like you are gaining weight at this point, don’t worry. You will lose it in the weeks to come. Try to keep the macro nutrient ratio to 50/30/20 i.e. 50% carbs (avoid them at night), 30% protein and 20% unsaturated fats. Here is the fun part. If you are committed and feel like you can lose the weight when on the actual zig zag diet, you can eat anything. Just try to keep the calories less than 2000 per day (this is in case your calorie requirements are 1800 per day). Now stay on this diet for 2 weeks. In two weeks, your body would have gotten used to eating the amount of calories that your were eating, if not then it would be quite close.

Step 2: Now comes the real part. Your body is now used to taking 1800 to 2000 calories per day, so you will create a calorie deficit of about 800 calories i.e. taking 1000 – 1200 calories in that day (try for a ratio of 30/30/40. You can take nuts to get to the 40% fat target). Do you have any idea how long it would take you to burn 800 calories on a treadmill? Brisk walk would be about 4 hours and jogging would be about 2 – 3hours, so this is a pretty easy method in comparison. However make sure that you eat something ever 2 - 3 hours so that you keep on giving you body the message that you are not starving and it should not store more energy as fat.

Step 3: Come back to the 1800 calorie diet, only this time, it needs to be the healthy one. You know the option I gave you about eating anything you want, you can’t do that here. 50/30/20 ratio should be good enough. So what we’re doing here is ensuring that we do not damage out metabolism. If we stay on the 1000 – 1200 calorie diet for more than a few days, our overall calorie requirement will fall and we will hit a plateau therefore stopping further fat loss.

Repeat step 2 and 3 for about a month. After the month is over, treat yourself to an entire day of eating anything and everything. This completes the Fatless Zig Zag Diet Concept. I will shortly post an exercise routine to go with this sort of a diet.

Try this diet and tell me what you think. Tell your friends and family who want to be FATLESS. 

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Review of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle

There are so many e-books on the internet written by anyone who think they know a thing or two about losing weight and getting fit. Well, ‘Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle’ is not one of them. Tom Venuto has written this book after a lot of research, experience and experimentation. Here is a quick summary.

The book starts off with giving you a bit of introduction to our body’s physiology and how exactly it works. He talks about food, their types, hormones, what to eat, when to eat and how much to eat. Once you have enough knowledge about the misconceptions and the dos and don’ts, he then starts discussing the ‘Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle’ program. He talks about different techniques of how to diet e.g. carbohydrate cycling, zig zag, portion control etc. He also tells us how to calculate calorie requirements, distributions, fat measurement etc. in great detail. After he completes the theoretical area, he moves on to explaining the program with examples.

‘Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle’ is actually a three phased plan (one month per phase). In the first phase, your aim is to build muscle. Here you eat a high carbohydrates, high protein and low fat diet. The purpose is to build muscle, which uses more calories than fat. So in the later phases, you will get fast results. After a month, when you have developed enough muscle, you then lower your carbohydrate levels and increase you fat intake. At this point, you start introducing a bit of cardio to your program. Finally, the last phase, where most of your diet consists of fat, then protein and the left over is a very low amount of carbohydrates.

There is a sample diet and exercise plan and if you are an aver 175 lbs. man how stands at 5 feet 10 inches, then you can just follow the sample plan and you will get great results.

Now comes the dirty part. I pointed out, that this is a great program and you will get great results, but as far as the reading goes. If you just want to be told what to do, then you will lose interest very quickly, as Tom goes into a lot of detail behind the science of everything, things can get a bit boring. It’s best to read it when you are on the toilet and have nothing better to do…*wink*.

-- Highly recommended by Fatless Formula.

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