Today I want to share with everyone some of the websites and tools that I have used to make achieving my fitness goals easier. Then I will walk you through some of the steps you should take when trying to determine what you want to get out of your fitness lifestyle and the mindset you need to adopt.
Helpful Fitness Resources and Tools
It is important to realize that when trying to eat healthier and maintain a diet it is actually a very hard and daunting task. It takes a lot of will power, determination, and the appropriate tools and guidance. It's safe to say that you probably have no idea what the hell you are doing when it comes to switching from your lax life style of eating whatever you want, whenever you want, to being on a strict diet where you monitor your calorie intake and how many of each of the important macronutrients you are getting. Here is where I will share with you the things that I learned trying to create the most optimal diet and nutrition.
1. Calorie Calculator - This is the first place you should start. You need to be able to determine your caloric intake for the day so you know how much you should eat to lose, maintain, or gain(muscle) weight. Below are a few sites you can use to try and find how many calories you need a day. I listed multiples because they all use slightly different formulas so use at least 3 sites to get the best "ballpark" idea of how many calories you need a day.
- http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html - 2900
- http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/calories-goal.php - 2900
- http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calorie-calculator/NU00598 - 2950
At the end of each link I put my results for maintenance for each link. As you can see they are all pretty close so any of them should be accurate for you. BE SURE TO TRACK YOUR WEIGHT EVERY 1-2 WEEKS SO THAT YOU CAN MONITOR GAINS OR LOSSES! To lose weight most calculators will recommend cutting 500 calories a week minimum. When I ate 2400 calories a week I still gained weight so be sure you track your results so you know if you should be eating more or less to achieve your goals. Everyone is different and it is important to remember to try lots of things till you find what actually works for you.
2. Calorie Counter - A Calorie Counter is something you can input all the food that you eat so that you can accurately track the amount of calories you eat a day, as well as monitor how much protein, carbs, and fats you get.
This is by far my favorite Calorie Counter website. It has a very simple interface to use, provides a lot of useful information in terms of calories and nutrients, and has a lot of personal customization. You can use the website as is and have it generate meals for you, or you can click the "Add Dish" button on the side and in the side menu you can go to "Custom Foods" and enter your own food labels nutrition's so that you can 100% accurately track your food stats. Now beware it is not going to whip up a ton of intricate and desirable dishes for you (i.e. Fish Chowder) but basically a lot of simple things to fit the nutrition perimeters that you set. Although sometimes it comes up with some pretty tasty and fun ideas (i.e. Breakfast Pita Pizza). Personally I recommend using the generator to come up with some ideas and then try adding some of your own favorite foods and snacks into the custom foods and trying to make things fit for you. You want to try and be happy when you are dieting so you don't go crazy or get tempted to cheat too often. Once you get an idea of what you like to eat that you can really micro manage everything and start optimizing to get closer and closer to your favorite diet and food combinations. Remember that this website does not track values for common fast food restaurants like McDonals so it is best to just cut fast food from your diet all together or it will be literally impossible to track your nutrition accurately. And yes I know you can look up fast food nutrition on McDonald's website, but do you really think its trustworthy and accurate? Its better to just not risk it.
3. Food Scale and Measuring Cups -Do you know what 4 ounces of Chicken, Salmon, or Ground Beef looks like? Did you know that a serving size of Gold Fish crackers is 1 ounce, and do you know how much that is exactly or what it looks like? Did you know the average serving size of breakfast cereal is 1/2 a cup and is 200+ calories and that the average bowl is designed to hold 2+ cups of food? Do you know what 1/2 a cup of Cheerios looks like? If you answered no to any of these questions, or even if you didn't you still need the proper measuring tools to accurately track how much you are eating every day. Dieting is a numbers game and accuracy is everything. Imagine if you are trying to eat 1800 calories a day and you start everyday how you normally do with a bowl of cereal. You never actually measure it so you pour yourself 2 cups worth. That's 800 calories for breakfast (not including milk). You have already limited your calories for the rest of the day to 1000.
- Taylor Digital Food Scale
- Measuring Cups
- Liquid Measuring Cup
- Units of Measurement Converter
That is the food scale I use. You don't need anything crazy because you aren't using it to measure your own fat ass, just the food you put in your mouth. The most you need to spend is $25, anything more is unnecessary. You can buy the measuring cups that best fit your personality (they have some pretty zaney ones), I am just including them so you realize how important it is to be able to measure all sizes of solids and liquids. The last thing I recommend is getting a measurement converter app on your phone or finding one online (preferably whatever is going to be most convenient when cooking) so that you can find ounces to grams, etc conversions. You can get everything at Target as you can see, for pretty cheap. So if you are reading this and thinking about starting today you have no good reason not to just take an hour to go there and buy them.
4. Supplements - Supplements in my opinion are a HUGE waste of money. When I first started Insanity I dropped over $500 on Protein powder and a bunch of other bogus pills like L-Argenine, Fish Oil, and BCAA's. I can honestly say that none of them made me feel stronger, more energized, or like I was losing more weight. The FDA does not regulate any of the supplements on the market so you are basically buying Snake Oil that is vouched for by Snake Oil Vendors. Pro Body Builders endorse supplements because it pays well not because they use them (they are all on steroids anyways). So I say save your money. I think the only supplements worth investing in if you are going to take them are:
- Pre-Workout like Jack3d
- Whey Protein Powder
- Creatine (for building muscle only).
- Testosterone Booster - ONLY if you are older or know you have low Testosterone.
ALSO DO NOT DRINK A PROTEIN SHAKE IMMEDIATELY AFTER YOUR WORKOUT! In the future I will write an article with video references that back up this claim but in short, your body produces Human Growth Hormone(HGH) after you workout which it sends to your muscles and if you drink protein to fuel your muscles it cuts off the HGH. For those of you that do not know HGH > Protein.
Protein Powder should optimally be used as a convenient and alternative whey(lol) to add protein to your diet. For example you can add a scoop to your cereal or oatmeal to increase the nutrition. Or if you are 30g of protein short for the day you can just drink a shake.
Determining and Achieving Your Fitness Goals
Ok so now that you know everything you need to get started and help you succeed in your healthy life style, it is time to determine the fitness goals you want to achieve.
1. Are you trying to GAIN weight or LOSE weight? - This is the first question you need to ask yourself and it is not always as black and white as it sounds. There are lots of variations of both gaining and losing weight. If you are trying to put on muscle are you looking to make lean muscle gains only or bulk up? Do you know what the difference is? If you are looking to lose weight is it because you are obese and so you are looking for just general weight loss or are you trying to lean out and cut in which you are only looking for fat loss while preserving your muscle? Figure out what you want to do and do some research before, during, and after you make changes to your life. It is important to be well educated on the type of weight gain/loss you are trying to do as well as being able to adapt to new information you learn.
2. Determine Your Diet and Nutrition - This is again something you are going to have to put some research into to better optimize your results but I will try and provide some tips if I have them. After you determine if you are trying to lose weight, gain muscle, eat healthier, or some combination of the 3. you then need to adapt your diet to meet your goals. If you want to just generally lose some weight all you need to do is cut your calories. If you are looking to lean out(cut) you will want to eat some healthy foods and make your nutrition intake something like 40% protein/40% carbs/20% fat, all while being in your calorie deficit. If you are looking to build muscle you may want to do something like 30% protein/50% carbs/20% fat, all while being in your caloric surplus. This is where the website EatThisMuch will really shine!
3. Do Research - As I have mentioned in almost every section YOU NEED TO DO RESEARCH to meet your goals! You are an average person. I am an average person. We both need to admit right now we DO NOT KNOW SHIT about health. I was actually thinking the other day that Nutrition should be taught in schools instead of History, but that is neither here nor there. Human beings do not know shit about basic nutrition. If you want to be healthier then you need to do research on how to be healthier! Also read between the lines because there is a lot of misinformation out there. Maybe you heard that Almonds are a healthy snack but did you know that 1 serving of almonds has about 150 calories of fat? Technically its "good" fat because it comes from nuts but too much "good" fat is still too much fat. So take tips like that with a grain of salt. It doesn't mean snack all day on nuts cuz they are "healthy." You can really mess up your calories by being ignorant of nutrition.
4. Consistency is Key - No one achieves their fitness goals by dieting one day a week. You have to be consistent with whatever Diet and Fitness plan you make for yourself. If you vow to go to the gym 5 times a day (Always make a solid number, none of this 3-5x a week bull shit) then you need to make sure you get to the gym 5 times a week. If you have shitty hours at your job get a membership to 24 hour fitness and go work out at 2am. DO NOT MAKE EXCUSES! The more excuses you make and the more times you allow yourself to slip up the worse your chances of actually making a change in your life. YOU CAN NOT GET USED TO ALLOWING YOURSELF TO SLIP! BE STRICT!. If it is hard for you to cook healthy every night of the week, then set aside 1 day of the week where you cook ALL your meals. If you make excuses and decide maybe tonight I will get Subway, chances are you will start to slip and fail. How many calories are in the subway sandwich? How much protein/carbs/fat? Do you think they are reporting honest numbers in their nutrition information? Now your whole diet is screwed up because on your day off you decided to sit around the house and do nothing instead of cooking all your meals in advance.Not only that, how many other times this week are you gonna forget about cooking and crutch on fast food?(Subway is fast food!) Remember this lifestyle isn't easy especially if you have a busy life. You need to find time to make it work for you if you really want it. If you don't really want it then don't try because you will just disappoint yourself.
5. Be Realistic - Something I learned while doing Insanity is that you can not COMPLETELY TRANSFORM your body in such a short amount of time as 60 days. Be realistic when you are preparing to go on a diet and incorporate more exercise into your life. It is going to take a lot of time, patience, and hard work to achieve your goals. Do not set up arbitrary dates on when you want to/think you should reach your goals. I got some good results from Insanity but I still don't look like any of the athletes in the video and it is unrealistic to think that you will too. If everyone could get SHREDDED in 90, 60, 30 days! Then there would be a lot of buff shredded mother fuckers walking around instead of all these fat mother fuckers. Realistically you should just be happy that you have the drive and will-power to make a positive change in your life that more than 50% of people in the country don't; then try as best as you can to incorporate these healthy habits you will be developing into your regular lifestyle so that they last with you forever.
Conclusion
These are the things I would recommend to a beginner to get started. I know it looks like a lot but I am being thorough for you and telling you as much truth as I can. I have had personal trainers in the past that didn't tell me shit and I trusted them because, well because they are trainers and got hired at a gym. Who am I? I am just some dumb skinny kid who grew more and more naive standing in the shadow of this dude's muscles. My point is that I am looking out for you and telling you the truth, where as a personal trainer is not looking out for you they are just looking to make money. They will keep you in the gym trying to reach those goals as long as they can cuz you will pay them for more sessions. They will also push pills and powders on you because they make a commission if they sell something in the gym. I am not here to sell you anything. I am here telling you this because fitness and nutrition is hard and it sucks and you don't deserve to be lied to.
It is going to be hard. It is going to take a lot of determination. It is going to take a lot of will power. There are no magic pills, powders, supplements, gels, liquids, exercises, or inventions that will help you get results any faster than the amount of sweat and time you put in at the gym or at home to work out videos. Do the research, buy the tools, set your goals, be consistent, be realistic, and you can achieve your fitness goals.
Love, Dcgreen
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