STRATEGIES & MEASURING PROGRESS
Knowing how many calories to eat, and what how to split up macros is useful and everything.
But what about putting all that information into practice?
We're going to detail some of the most useful strategies you can apply to your nutrition to make sure that you're sticking to the plan for the longer term, and making continued progress towards your target.
We're going to introduce some of the strategies and kick things off with the 80/20 principle, which is relatively straightforward:
100% of the time we track our calories/macros as accurately as we can, but we can split that 100% into two distinct categories:
80% of the time we stick to traditionally 'healthier' foods, such as non processed meats, single ingredient foods, fruit and veg etc.
20% of the time we have beers, pizza, and the foods that are traditionally classified as 'junk' foods. These are the ones that aren't going to really provide us with a great deal of benefit, but are enjoyable, and help us to stave off boredom and binges.
Think;
80% - healthy
20% - junk
100% tracked
Adherence and Weekly Calorie Budgeting
Adherence is important.
If we don't stick to the plan, then we're not going to progress in the direction that we want to.
Combining adherence with a weekly budget will help us to stay on track, as it will allow us to adjust daily amounts according to our schedule.
The video below explains this further:
The Menstrual Cycle
Given that roughly half the planet is made up of females, therefore by the laws of probability would mean that women would make up a number of our members! It makes logical sense to cover something that effects them specifically, IE the Menstrual Cycle and figure out a strategy that could help us to work around common problems that may occur because of it.
Within the menstrual cycle there are times where appetite is heightened (more details are in the video), where an excess of calories has been estimated to be between 300 and 400 calories.
To negate this, it makes sense to keep the same consistent monthly calorie amount, which is the daily requirement multiplied by 365, the number of days in the year, then divided by 52, the number of weeks in the year.
And for the 10-14 days pre ovulation eat slightly less than the daily amount.
And for the 10-14 days post ovulation have the room to increase calories over the daily amount with the purpose of avoiding excess overconsumption, which can contribute towards unwanted weight gain.
Here's a simple example:
Lets say the Daily calculation comes to 2000 multiplied by 365 = 730,000 calories per year
We then take 730,000 and divide it by 52, which equals 14,038.
Pre ovulation it could be a good idea to stick to 1500 calories per day, when cravings are lower, and less calories are required.
Post ovulation, where more energy is required because of the hormonal processes your body is going through, but also where cravings may be much higher, it makes sense to bump calories up to 2500, while the harder work of sticking to the lower amount has already been done.
Therefore we've actively been dieting more aggressively for around two weeks, which leaves us the room to eat more, and to ensure further progress, without negatively effecting our results.
If we go back to the years worth of calories, which worked out as 730,000 across the whole year, and we work on that being our years worth of food based around our targets, we can then apply a fairly simple calculation.
Half the time we're eating under our daily target and half the time we're eating over our daily target.
If we divide 365 (days in the year) by 2 (representing half the time for each process), this gives us 182.5
182.5 multiplied by 1500 equals 273,750 calories from pre ovulation
182.5 multiplied by 2500 equals 465,250 calories from post ovulation
These two amounts added together equal 730,000.
The exact target that we'd be working from if we stuck to 2000 calories per day.
However this way, we've pre-determined that there may be a few bumps in the road, cravings etc, and planned for them accordingly.
This is just a simple example, you may not need as big of a reduction, this example gives a simple 25% reduction in calories, the video suggests a 10-20% reduction as a good starting point. Doing this can aid progress, and potentially negate cravings, and overconsumption.
In other words, its there not to stop you from giving in to your cravings, rather be able to give in to them guilt free!
*DISCLAIMER* This is a method that's been developed from working with female athletes over several years. Individual requirements differ, so please speak to a coach prior to implementing this, as we may be able to help and advise you on things that may benefit you.
Measuring Progress
Measuring strength levels is relatively simple, it can be measured by answering two questions:
1) Has my max weight gone up?
2) Are my working set weights increasing, and do they feel easier than last time?
If the answer to either of those questions is YES then you've adapted and gotten stronger.
Obviously, progress isn't linear, sometimes we need to figure out if there's an outside issue we need to address in order to see further progress, but questioning ourself and answering those 2 questions will give us a good idea of where we're at.
Measuring progress in terms of body composition is something that we can take care of at the gym.
We all have different targets, for example someone who's focus is performance may not necessarily concerned with their body fat percentage, however, it does become a useful measure the further we progress, as producing more useable muscle can aid performance.
Similarly, someone's who's goals are purely aesthetic, having some tangible numbers to work from, as well as towards, can mean that the once huge overwhelming goal is broken down into more manageable, achievable, and time friendly results.
For example, lets say we want to drop 3 jeans sizes in 6 months.
Which works out as 6 centimetres in total.
It might seem like a little overwhelming.
But if we break it down into monthly goals, it works out as losing 1 centimetre, every other month it works out as 2 centimetres to stay on track to drop the 6 centimetres we want to lose, and this can make it easier to stay on track.
The same works for building muscle.
If we wanted to go up a shirt size for example, we'd need to think about the amount of time we'd want to spend on building the required muscle, and set up a monthly target.
Lets say we're a medium (81-86cm chest) and we want to go up to a large (89-94cm) we'd need to put on between 3 and 13cm' to fit into the desired size.
Breaking it down into a monthly goal across 6 months would mean that we'd need to be putting on between 0.5 and 2cm every month on our chest.
These are just some basic examples and there are a number of factors that affect starting points for losing fat and building muscle.
The video a variety of different ways you can measure your progress.
However, some great guidelines are:
A good estimation of fat loss is losing around 1lbs of weight per week (0.4 of a kilo)
A good estimation of muscle growth is gaining around 1lbs of weight per month (0.4 of a kilo)
If you're unsure about what you should do, speak to a coach and we guide you through the processes, and figure out whats going to work best for you.