eating clean/healthy is not enough... have to do a deficit

dylan1965

In terms of what foods you should and should not eat, remember that calories matter more than specific foods. Adequate macro- and micro-nutrition are indeed part of a healthy diet, but appropriate caloric intake is by far the most important rule regardless of the source and whether or not the food is "natural", "whole", "clean", or "dirty".

In terms of the hormonal response to a single meal, a fast-food meal has been shown to elicit a similar response to an equivilent organic one.

"Fixing your diet" means being conscious of what you eat, and how much you eat. The best way to do this is to track the calories of everything you eat during the course of the day. Use a calorie tracking application or pen and paper. A food scale makes for much more accurate assessments. To get an estimate on how much you should be eating, you need to figure out your Total Daily Energy Expenditure, or TDEE (http://iifym.com/iifym-calculator/). Adjust your calorie intake to match your goal, whether that is muscle gain or fat loss. If you wish to gain muscle, eat over your TDEE. If you want to lose fat, eat under your TDEE. The better idea is to remain conservative and stay within 500 calories above or below, respectively.

Important Note: The value returned from a TDEE calculator is only an estimate of your daily caloric needs. You still need to track your daily calorie intake and compare that to your weight loss/gain to determine a more personalized approach. For example, if you are accurately tracking your calorie intake and are consistently eating at a "500 calorie deficit" (i.e. 500 calories under your calculated TDEE) but still not losing weight, your actual TDEE is probably lower than the value returned from the calculator. Adjust your daily intake downward by 100-200 calores and reassess for a few more weeks. Repeat this process until you are losing weight at the speed predicted by your daily deficit. Also, consider that regular adjustments in calorie intake will needed along the way, as losing (or gaining weight) means you will be burning less (or more) calories each day due to the changes in your body weight.

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