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Over the first few weeks, pay close attention to how much weight you are losing. Subtract anywhere from 200-600 calories per day from your maintenance calories to set your deficit.In addition to that, slower weight loss is typically more maintainable, and is longer lasting than crash dieting. The smaller the deficit, the slower you lose weight, but - and this is key - that weight is less likely to be muscle and more likely to be fat loss. The larger the deficit, the faster you lose weight, which is an attractive concept for many people - but faster doesn’t always mean better. Losing body fat means you will need to create a caloric deficit. Now that we have determined maintenance calories, it is time for Step 2: Find your deficit for a leaning out phase. If you really want to get started right away, you can use a calculator to get an estimate of your maintenance calories, but bear in mind, that this will be far less accurate. This is far more accurate than any calculator on the planet.īut… if tracking is out of the question, you could always use a calculator. This is the most accurate way to find out where you currently are, calorically and metabolically speaking. Do this for 7 days and get the average number of calories (add up all of the numbers and divide them by 7).Just eat whatever you normally eat and keep track of it. Don’t tweak the numbers, don’t sneak unrecorded food, and don’t try to be “good” just because you’re keeping track.Record the amounts, the food itself, and the calories.Use an Excel spreadsheet, a notepad on your phone, an app, or even just a pen and paper. Start recording everything you eat and drink.Seriously, if your weight is relatively stable (within a couple-pound range on any given day), whatever you are eating right now is your maintenance caloric level.Īnd figuring out what that is rather simple: Simply track what you’re eating right now for one week. This is where maintenance calories come into handy: Your maintenance level of calories is the number of calories you need in order to maintain your weight right now.Īnd figuring out that number is more simple than you might think: No online calculator will take all of that into account. You have your own unique lifestyle, sleeping patterns, body fat percentage, age, hormone levels, energy patterns, metabolism, eating habits, etc. Step 1: Find Your Maintenance CaloriesĪlthough humans have the same basic physiology, we’re all unique. Let’s get started with step one, finding your starting point. That’s right, there’s a little math involved - but don’t let that frighten you away just yet. With a little bit of tracking, focus, and honesty, it can work for you too. Flexible dieting isn’t about removing certain foods or limiting what you can eat, but instead is focused on the macronutrients above all else.Īnd it’s a concept we’ve seen work time and time again with clients, and most importantly, as award winning bodybuilders ourselves. Conversely, you can definitely gain weight by eating a surplus of calories, but without a plan of where they are coming from, and without strength training of some kind, you can easily gain more fat than you intended. For example, you can lose 20 pounds by restricting calories alone, but without planning your macronutrients, and weight training appropriately, the weight lost could easily be coming from muscle.
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Which macronutrients your calories come from will determine what kind of tissue you gain or lose (in conjunction with your training, of course). So it’s no surprise that in the world of body transformations - losing weight, gaining weight, gaining muscle, converting fat into muscle - calories do matter. (This is why focusing on caloric density is so important for weight loss.) When we eat more calories than we burn, we gain weight, and when we eat fewer calories than we burn, we lose weight.īut what that means - and this is so important - is that no matter how clean, whole, or unprocessed a food is, if you eat over your caloric maintenance, no matter the source, your weight will increase. And it’s this: No matter what you’re eating or when you eat it, weight loss and weight gain are both determined by caloric balance. It starts with one basic fact, despite all the gimmicks surrounding weight loss. We understand what it takes to make real change to your body, and want to share that with you in this post.
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And we’ve helped thousands of clients transform their bodies by building muscle and shedding fat on a plant-based diet. Well, we’re 15-plus-year vegans, champion bodybuilders, and the co-founders of PlantBuilt, the largest team of vegan strength athletes in the world. Tens of billions of dollars are spent each year on dieting programs that claim to have found the answer, and yet so few people find success at losing weight and keeping it off. To most people, weight loss is a mystery.