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You are what you eat.  How many times have you heard this phase?  But it is true.  Literally, you are what you eat.  You see, what you eat is turned into the life-sustaining substances that your body needs to live.  Thus, what you eat (or more accurately, how you have eaten) will partly determine how your body performs when you ask it to.

I have chosen to start with nutrition and supplementation on purpose.  The kinds of food that you eat, the amount and nutritional quality of the food that you eat, and how often and when you eat them can be the difference between giving your self a chance to win and continuing to lose despite doing everything else right.

The Importance of a Good Diet

I can not stress to you enough the importance of this area.  Lack of a well thought out and designed individualized diet is counter-productive to your goals.  You might as well say, "Hey, I can live with giving myself half a chance to succeed."  If you plan to bust your ass running around town and punishing yourself on the track and in the weight room, then at least make the effort to give you body a chance to respond to these stresses by giving it the fuel and nutrients it needs.  Otherwise, you will be wasting your time.

The Variables

The first thing that your diet does is meet you nutritional requirements.  This means determining these variables:

  How you determine a suitable diet is subjective to an individual's personal goals.  For example, a runner would need a diet that covers the BMR plus the amount of calories burned for the training activity of that day. That same runner would want a diet that is high is carbos, moderate in protein and low in fat (i.e., a ratio of 60% C/25% P/15%F).  However, a bodybuilder would want to design a diet that cover the caloric needs of the body, the calories burned during exercise, and additional calories for muscle building.  That body builder might want a ratio of 50% carbos, 35% protein and 15 percent fat.  A suitable diet will consider these variables plus any other food-related needs.

Determining BMR and Daily Caloric Intake

There are numerous ways to determine your BMR and Daily Caloric Intake and they range from the simple to the complex.  I have a couple of methods for you. Take your pick.

Method 1

1. Lets start with the BMR. I prefer the following formulas:

This will give you the number of calories that you need to eat each day if you just existed to sustain your present body.  This number will vary depending on how much you weight.  It is an important number to know because it gives you a point from which to add or subtract from.

2. To calculate your caloric intake, you must determine the goal(s) of your diet.  After the goals are determined you can then ascertain how many calories you need to eat.  After you have determined your BMR you need to  figure in the number of calories need for exercise this can be determined by multiplying the BMR by the on of the following values:

This is a crude assessment.  It does not account for low or high metabolisms. You will want to watch you weight to see if you are gaining or losing weight (assuming that gaining or losing weight is not what you want to do) over a weekly period. If you are gaining or losing undesired weight then you will need to add (if you are losing weight) or subtract (if you are gaining weight) to find the right number, but the calculations above should put you in the neighborhood.

 

Method 2

  1. To determine your resting metabolic rate (RMR) multiply your bodyweight by 10. For example, if you weighed 150 lbs. Then your RMR is 1500 (150x10).
  2. Next, determine the amount of calories needed for your exercise. To get this number you need to calculate the following factors:
    1. Multiply your pace for your aerobic runs by .7 (i.e., if you run 6:00 mile pace as your training pace for runs, thats 10 miles per hour, thus 10x.7=7). This will determine your calories per hour factor.
    2. Next multiply this number by your body weight (i.e., if you weigh 150 lbs. then you will need 1050 calories per hour of running at 6:00 mile pace).
    3. Now calculate the decimal fraction of your run per hour

      If you ran 7.3 miles today in 43:48 (6:00 mile pace),

      Convert that into seconds (43x60=2580+48=2648),

      Then divide by 3600 (60 minutes=3600 seconds, 43:48=2648, thus 2648/3600=. 73).

    4. Multiply decimal fraction by calories per hour
    1. Multiply your body weight by 1.9

      If you weigh 150 lbs., then you will burn 285 calories per hour of weight lifting

    2. Multiply time spent weight lifting (in decimal fraction) by the calories per hour number.

      If you spent an 1 hour and 15 minutes lifting, then 75/60=1.25, 1.25x285=357 calories.

       

    3. Determine how many calories you need apart from exercise. Use the following guide lines
  1. Add steps 1,2, and 3 and you have you daily caloric intake.
  1. 1500
  2. 767+357=1124
  3. 1500x.2=300
  4. 1500+1124+300=2924

 

No one said that calculating this would be easy, but knowing this number it is an essential part of determining your dietary goals.

Now that you have your daily caloric intake number, you can manipulate it.

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