Maximise your chances for fat loss or gain muscle

Last week I touched on quality, quantity, questioning and querying about your nutrition, these Q’s are important.  At the bottom of last weeks post I introduced you to the Base Metabolic Rate (BMR) and shared the Harris-Benedict equation to calculate BMR.  Remember that BMR is just the first step in calculating your body’s daily calorie intake requirements and is not the whole picture.

In order to maximise your chances for fat loss or gain muscle, you must know when and how to balance your calories and physical activity levels.  The next step, after calculation of your BMR, is to understand the demands of your individual physical activity levels.  Those of us who work in very active jobs will require more calories than those of us who sit at a desk all day.  On the days that we exercise our body requires more calories to maximise the training potential, boost metabolism, increase energy and recover effectively.   Before you jump the gun and start asking nutrition questions about weight loss or weight gain you need to understand how your daily calorie requirements change according to your activity levels.  Simply eating less is not the answer to build a lean body composition and having a six-pack.

Many people think that the statement “you just need to each less and move more” is gospel.  This is not exactly true as cutting too many calories (hypocaloric diet)  and increasing your activity levels will put your body into a state of starvation and cause it to store everything you eat as body fat.  If it was as simple as cutting calories and moving more, why does the world have an obesity problem?  Are we really that lazy?  I would argue that people do need to move more, but I would also argue that people are not eating enough nutrient dense food.  Increasing calories (hypercaloric diet) can also cause fat gain and not lean muscle building if done incorrectly. There is a fine balance needed to encourage the body to make a metabolic shift, and it’s not as simple as you may like to think.

In a future post I will talk more about the hypocaloric diet required to lose weight and the hypercaloric diet required to increase muscle mass.  This week the focus is physical activity levels and the impact on your daily calorie intake.

Physical Activity Levels

The more you move the more energy you burn and the more calories your body needs to function and stay healthy.  Simply getting our of bed and sitting on the couch all day does not require very much energy, whereas going to work and thinking all day requires slightly more energy.  Some people have very active jobs and are on their feet all day, this obviously requires more energy than those who sit on their backsides.  Some people are physically active and go to the gym before or after work, and others are super active and train multiple times per day.   The calorific demand is different for each activity level and this is why nutrition is not one size fits all.

As physical activity levels increase our bodies require more energy, if we fail to give our body what it needs to produce certain hormones, to keep our heart beating, to keep organs working and to maintain lean muscle mass, recovery and repair itself, we will end up sick and unhealthy.  I often see members increase their training volume only to end up sick because they failed to increase their food consumption and sleep.  You can not have one without the others.

After calculating your BMR, the physical activity level multiplier in the table below can be used to calculate your actual daily calorie requirements.  On the days you rest your calorie intake will be lower than on the days when you are more active.  This does not mean that you should eat no food on non-training days as you body is still burning a lot of calories to simply stay alive (read about BMR).  On the days when you perform light workouts, moderate workouts and hard workouts the calorie intake MUST increase to support the energy demands and to keep the body in homeostasis . 

Classes at momentum training (CrossFit Hackney) are generally moderate workout level, there are some days in the CrossFit hackney programming, the weapons programming and the heavy met-con program class as a heavy workout.  Try not to get confused with these terms and think that lifting heavy weights is a “hard workout,” as the categories are based more on the volume and not so much the intensity of the training session.  Lifting heavy weights is very taxing on the central nervous system (CNS) and less metabolic than performing high numbers of repetitions at a lower weight, the smart trainer can use this information to design a training program suited to their goals. 

BRM x Physical Activity Level

To continue with my example from last week, my BRM was 1740cals per day.

On a rest day: 1740 x 1.2 = 2088cals

One a light workout day: 1740 x 1.375 = 2392.5cals

On a moderate workout day: 1740 x 1.55 = 2697cals

On a Hard workout day: 1740 x 1.725 = 3001cals

This should give you a good idea of the physical demands placed on your body when you are active.  Hopefully you can see why your immune system takes a beating when you increase your training volume and fail to increase your calorie intake?  The body has ZERO chance of fighting off sickness as it’s struggling to recover from the overtraining and under eating ratio.  NOBODY can out-train a crappy diet, no matter who you think you are and how much you like to think starving yourself makes you lean…. bullsh**!!.  This is a oneway ticket to fucking up your hormones, lowering your metabolic drive, and impacting your health.

Most people struggle to eat enough calories and they come seeking advice about supplements or nutrition timing i.e. when is the best time to eat proteins, fats and carbs? Step one, eat real food, step 2 make sure you are getting the right amount of food.  If you can not eat the correct quantity of food, no nutrition timing, no amount of exercise, and no supplement or detox plan is going to make a scrap of difference to your body composition and health.  You may see some short term improvements, but the bigger picture is never going to end with the long term results you are after.  There are NO SHORTCUTS and the sooner you start paying attention to you nutrition the better.

Homework

How does your BMR + physical activity multiplier total compare with the actual amount of food you are eating on a daily basis?  Are you eating enough calories? Are you eating too many calories?  Do you increase calories on a training day and do you eat less on a rest day?   Do you know how many calories you eat and drink in a week?

Your homework this week is to calculate your daily intake for a rest day, a light day, a moderate day and a hard day of training.  You should then compare this to you actual intake of calories (again an application like  MyFitnessPal is an easy to use). 

Next week I will talk more about the importance of calories and why simply cutting calories will not make you leaner.   What is the best hypocaloric diet?  What is the best hyper caloricdiet?