Love Thy Calories!

Juggernautpint

Welcome to weight loss… pretty easy eh?

Ok who am I kidding!

While it is true one pound of fat is equal to 3,500 calories, the quality of calories you consume are equally important to your overall progress. If you are restricting your diet by 500 calories per day, over the course of 7 days you should lose one pound of fat right? (7 days x 500 calories per day deficit = 3,500 calories).

Logically the answer is yes. If you have a calorie deficit, then unless you have an underlying medical condition or your body metabolism has grown accustom to eating the same amount of calories each day (which is why you should zig-zag your daily calories), you will lose weight.

There are countless diet solutions out there, some better than others all with the same promise…to lose weight. However, I think it goes without saying that not all calories are equal.

Suffice to say, if you were to do nothing but drink pop for your daily calories, aside from having really bad teeth among other things, your body would end up using the proteins from your muscles to feed your vital organs which would result in muscle loss.

No problem right? You lost some muscle, but you also lost some fat! If you didn’t already know this, I’ll tell you now. Muscle burns calories. Less muscle means the fewer calories you can eat each day.

To get to the point, by avoiding empty calories, such as simple carbohydrates (sugar) or ones with little or no nutritional value high in saturated fats, you will have quality calories available to build and fuel your muscles through exercise.

What I wanted to share with everyone a really handy feature here on Myfitnesspal that allows you to customize where you get your calories from which is important depending on your fitness goals.

Why would you want to change your goals?

Well, the MFP default ratios for me are: 55% Carbs / 15% Protein and 30% Fat, however I prefer the ”Zone Diet” ratios 40-30-30 which give me a boost of muscle building protein . Why do I want more protein? Because my goal is to maintain if not build muscle while I lose weight and I am strength training at the gym.

Here are some common diet ratios you can consider:
(Carbohydrate% / Protein% / Fat%)

Very Low Carb (or Ketogenic -Atkins type) = 10 / 45 / 45

Low Carb = 25 / 40 / 35

Low Fat = 60 / 25 / 15

The Zone Diet = 40 / 30 / 30 (My preference)

Moderate = 50 / 25 / 25

How do you change your ratios? Simple:

(1) Click the “My Home” Tab
(2) Click the “Goals” Tab
(3) “Change Goals” Button
(4) “Custom” and “Continue”

You may not have thought about where your calories come from but depending on your fitness goals, you may want to change where you get your quality calories from.

Basic Rule of Thumb:

Carbohydrates for Energy

Protein for Building Blocks

Fat for Function

Fat is part of every cell membrane in the body. It helps transport nutrients and metabolites across cell membranes.
Your body uses fat to make a variety of other building blocks needed for everything from hormones to immune function.

losinfat4good

Wow! I'm Going to change mine up for a week and see how it feels

EmilyAnn89

awesome awesome post! i've been wanting to find a good ratio for carbs, fats, and proteins.. but couldn't find anything on it. i am going to set mine to the "zone diet" because that is most realistic for me. THANK YOU!

reepobob

I got mine set at 50% protein, 35% carb, and 15% fat and I am shedding fat while building muscle while doing P90X. Although I am only 14 pounds from goal weight, I need to shed 24-25 pounds of fat and gain 10 pounds or so of lean muscle mass to get my fat % to my goal of 10%. The only way to do this is to lower my fat intake and up the protein.

I feel great! My workouts are hard core, I don't bonk, and I never really feel hungry throughout the day.

I used to be at 50/30/20, but I always went over on my carbs...so, I gave in and sacrificed some fat for more carbs and kept the protein static.

My two cents on macro goal changing...this is what works for me!

kalea_kane

Thank you so much for this post! I am definitely going to look into working this out. I am leaning toward Zone as well.