In this lesson, we'll be discussing how many calories you need to be eating for your goal, how to measure how much you eat without using annoying iphone apps or counting calories, and then dividing those calories up into the right proportions so that you are eating the right amount of the right foods for your body type!

Ready??

I am! Let's get Started!

When you want to figure out how many calories you need to eat throughout the day, you have to take a number of factors into consideration:

1. Your current body weight
2. Your activity level
3. Your goal

First, grab your pen and paper and write down your current body weight.

I'll use my weight, 185, as an example to help you along the way.

Once you have your weight written down, I want you to determine on average how active you are throughout the week. If you have a workout one day, that would be considered an active day. If you went to work, and didn't workout or do any extra activity, that would count as an inactive day. If you went swimming, hiking, walking for a long distance, etc, you can count that as an active day. However, these activities should atleast be 30-60 minutes to count them as an active day.

If you have 0-2 active days per week, you will want to multiply your bodyweight by one of the following numbers, depending on your goal.

0-2 Active Days / Week

If my goal is weight loss, and I workout 0-2x per week, I am going to multiply my bodyweight, 185, by 10-12. So 185x12 = 2,220 calories / day.

If my goal is maintenance, I will multiply my body weight by 12-14.

If my goal is weight gain, i will multiply by 16-18.

3-4 Active Days / Week

For Weight Loss, multiply by 12-14

For Maintenance, multiply by 14-16

For Weight Gain, multiply by 18-20

5-7 Active Days / Week

For Weight Loss, multiply by 14-16

For Maintenance, multiply by 16-18

For Weight Gain, multiply by 20-22

Go ahead and do the math out, and write your calorie amount down on paper.

I'll continue to use my goal as an example. So I weigh 185, and I workout 4x a week. My goal is to gain weight. So 185x18 is 3,330 calories per day.

Now we want to go back to what we learned in the previous body type lesson.

What was your ratio that you want to be eating at as far as your food?

For me, I am an ecto-mesomporh, but since my goal is to gain weight, I am going to eat an ectomorph diet. I am supposed to eat 25% protein, 55% carbohydrates, and 20% fat.

.25(protein percentage) x 3,330 calories / day = 832.5 calories from protein.

.55(carbohydrate percentage) x 3,330 calories / day = 1831.5 calories from carbohydrates

.2(fat percentage) x 3,330 calories / day = 666 calories from fat

Now here is the fun part. I know you may be thinking... "oh great, now i have to measure everything, type it into an annoying iphone app... that's just not going to happen."

And you're right, it's not 🙂

I'm about to show you how you can "count calories" without all of the annoying, repetitive, time consuming nonsense!

There are a few things you need to understand first though.

1 Gram of Protein = 4 Calories

1 Gram of Carbohydrate = 4 Calories

1 Gram of Fat = 9 Calories

The place where where I study my nutrition information from, Precision Nutrition, made this awesome graphic available for free, and I want to share them with you here.

Using these infographics, we are able to actually use our hand as a measurement tool for "Counting calories".

You'll see that one palm sized portion of meat for a women = 20-30g of protein, and for a male 40-60g. Estimate your hand and figure out if you are on the smaller size of hands for your gender, or the bigger side. Using that information, you can decide where in the given ranges you should be per palm size.

Let's say you're a women and you have a medium sized hand. That will mean that one palm size of meat will equal 25g of protein, which is also equal to 100 calories!

See how this will work?

We can do the same with the other types of foods. One Cupped hand of carbs is also equal to 20-30g.

A fist of vegetables is very low calories, so you can almost eat as much as you'd like!

Finally, a thumb sized portion of fat is generally between 7-12g of fat, or 63-108 calories.

How can we simplify this?

If your goal calorie intake is 2000 calories a day, and I am going to eat 3 meals a day, that means that each meal will be 666 calories a day.

If your eating in a ratio of an endomorph because we want to lose weight, that means each meal we will want to eat 233 calories of protein (58g of protein), 166 calories of carbs (42 grams of carbs), and 266 calories from fat (29.6g of fat).

What does that translate to?

About 2 palm sizes of meat, about 2 cupped handfuls of carbs, and about three thumb lengths of fat, and unlimited veggies.

You only have to calculate that once!

If you want to eat four or five meals a day, then you can simply go through that same process, but divide your total calories by 5 instead of 3!

Now this is a great starting point, and in the upcoming lessons, I'm going to show you how to make adjustments along the way!

Make sure you answer the questions below, and I'll see you in the next lesson!