Although I have some of the worst eating behaviours, I still managed to lose a lot of fat and gain some muscle in the same time. I studied this nutrition and fitness field for a lot in the last 1 and a half years, so let me give you a hand of help.
As I never like to speak without any background I will post some pics of my transformations and my current fitness shape. I'm not an example for you guys as in the last months I've literally BINGED on overeating all sort of crappy food from daily Kentucky Fried Kitchen to late night double icecream cakes.
this is a transformation in a timeframe of 9months
this is my current stage - I went full bear mode
Ok, before we jump up onto the main topic of this post, let me tell you a few things. In the last months I ve been eating huge, I had days with 5000-6000 calories or even more and mostly SHIT FOOD. It's interesting I still don't gain that much fat and it's almost impossible for me to get in the stage I ve been long time before.
So, tell us the secret.
Well, for every kg of muscle that you build your body will burn calories. It's incredible and actually helps a lot. Also, the difference from before and now is that I go to gym 2-3 times a week and I also burn calories there. I think after such a transformation is nearly impossible to ever get to a 25% body fat... that's just my 2 cents though.
LET'S JUMP TO THE DIEEEEEEEEEETS!!!
First thing you gotta know about diets is that everything summs up, more or less, to CALORIES IN 🍕 vs CALORIES OUT🔥. Basically, if you eat less calories than what you actually burn therefore your body will start burning fat. The human bodies burn calories average ~2000 calories just by maintaing our bodies and organs. These numbers differ a lot from person to person ( depending on how much we weight, how different our hormons and bodies are etc. )
So, that being said, first thing you gotta do is counting your calories. I know it hurts a lot but that's it. As a mark you should start with 11 * your desired weight ( in pounds ). Let me exemplify, if you weight 220 lbs and your goal weight is 180 lbs, therefore the calories you should set is 180 * 11 ≈ 2000 calories. You should find a convertor for your bodyweight from kg to pounds in 2 seconds on google, so you can setup your calories.
1 - KETOGENIC DIET
Ketogenic diet is a diet where you basically eat mostly fats. The macronutrients for this diet are 75-80% fats, 5% NET carbohydrates and 15-20% protein. This diet lowers your insulin levels by a lot and helps you to sustain a really easy lifestyle and diet because, once you've settled in and got into ketosis ( this is how the state that you will get into after eating like this for more days is called ), you will never be hungry again.
This diet is really good for more reasons. One of them is that you won't feel the hungryness anymore as most of the foods you are eating will be fats which are really really nourishing. The other advantage is that you won't crave carbohydrates, sweeets or any type of food anymore. Not that much that you won't be able to control it at least!
NET carbohydrates = Carbohydrates - Fiber // this is how you should make the math!
source
I will go in depth in a future post about Ketogenic diet, so stay tuned in! But, if you think this diet is unhealthy or stuff like that just check that photo! You will get to it foods like : spinach, brocolli, salmon, eggs ( which are really nutritive ) and a lot more!
2 - INTERMITTENT FASTING FLEXIBLE DIET
Although intermittent fasting is not a diet this is how I'd like to call it. Basically, the macronutrients for this diet are 30% fats, 30% protein and 40% carbohydrates. Basically, to one extent, you can ignore this macronutrients percents if you just hit 1g of protein / pound of weight. Feel free to be flexible with the fats and carbohydrates afterwards.
What I usually do in this diet is that I fast in the morning , drinking black coffee and water, while eating in 6-8 hours windows only 2 or 3 meals. Usually, I either have 1 really big meal and 1 smaller ones + some snacks, or just 2 decent semi-big meals.
Fasting has proven to decrease insulin levels and help the hormons, so while you fast basically your body is feeling really good and you actually burn a lot of fat. It will take a few days to accomodate, but in time you will be able to decrease your eating window time with small daily steps.
Although I call it flexible and you probably can eat more "messy" foods like french fries and still lose fat, I choose to stay healthy and equilibrated. I still eat healthy foods like vegetables, rice and fruits, but it feels good to know that you can fit your nutrition with some less quality junk food without deviating from the diet. We all know how hard is to keep ourselves engaged socially while dieting, Intermittent fasting helps a lot in this case.
Ok, now what you gotta do is choose one of the diets, document really well about them and then install an app like MyFitnessPal in order to track your progress. All you have to do is add the calories you've made the math for losing weight and the macronutrients specifics to the diet.
You will need a few months to educate yourself about which food has X amount of protein,carbs and fats but it will help you a lot in taking decisions in the future. You will discover a lot of nice foods to eat and the journey will become really enjoyable, I bet it will.
I will go in depth with both of these diets and approaches in the future. Tell me what you would want to hear from me next, I will keep you updated with my progress as I've also started my way onto a fat lossing journey. Join me and let's win this one, STEEMIANS!
