Counting Calories: A No-BS Guide
September 1, 2011 By 36 Comments

Counting Calories: A No-BS Guide

Counting calories, tracking your intake, watching portions and serving sizes… while it’s something we talk about a lot in the health and fitness realm, it’s not easily understood as some may believe.

As someone working in the industry, I sometimes forget that many of the concepts and ideas that seem simple to me are often foreign to others.  For instance, I’ve gotten emails with basic questions such as “should I use a kitchen scale or measuring cups?” or “Should I count macros, calories, or both?”  I’ve even gotten the “do calories even matter as long as I’m eating clean?” That one always gives me the lol’s.

Before we go any further, I figure I’d better explain why I’m writing this piece.

This is strictly for those who have questions about counting calories, or about how to track their intake.  There are some very strong beliefs about whether or not you should track your intake.

I realize that the majority of my work is based around making this fitness lifestyle easier and more laid-back than the average, frustrated bro who thinks he has to eat nothing but chicken and brown rice 10 times per day.

I also realize tracking your calorie intake can seem cumbersome and that it has potential to become an obsession (for those who have extreme personalities).  I used to be that extreme person, but I woke up and wrote my No-BS Approach.

Also, I’m writing this to serve as a resource for my clients and for those who email with questions about tracking their intake.

Let’s dive in. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Diet Tagged With:
May 31, 2011 By 21 Comments

Behavioral Aspects and the Effects of Different Diets

Today’s article is a guest post from the editors (Dan, Jonny, and Yusef)  of Propane Fitness.  Read on and enjoy.

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Behavior and diet. It’s a funny thing – even the most rational and controlled of people can be blown over by our basic desires. What is the best diet for gaining muscle? What is the best diet for losing fat? The one that you stick to.

When you read about an optimal diet approach, that’s fine and well. But we are human, some of us have a bottomless stomach, have a weakness for cheesecake, can’t stand vegetables, and so on. Equally, often a diet consisting of 6 small meals a day can simply encourage, rather than eliminate hunger, making those hair-line fractures in your will-power become a gaping crevice, only to be filled with kilo upon kilo of as much Ben&Jerry’s as you can afford.

Lets examine some different approaches as they relate to our quirks from a behavioral perspective

Intermittent Fasting

This approach has been getting a lot of attention recently. Lots of supporting research and dramatic results, including some of our own transformations.

Advantage

Great for the hedonist: those who enjoy big, satisfying meals, makes dieting much more tolerable. Great results in fat loss and lean mass gain, optimising your growth hormone and insulin sensitivity. What’s more, eating during the late afternoon and evening can really help with staying alert and productive during the early hours while encouraging relaxation in the evening. If we said to you that you can eat large meals (>1000kcal), a good amount of carbs and even the odd dessert all while getting/staying lean and being more productive for most of the day would say no? – that’s IF in a nutshell.

Disadvantage

Due to the nature of intermittent fasting there is the potential for bringing out latent eating disorders if not kept under control. We’ve experienced some people getting into a binge-fast pattern. Note we’re not saying that this could create an eating disorder, but could potentially exacerbate any tendencies towards bingeing. A good measure against this that we’ve found is preparing food ahead of time, if you’re set to break the fast at midday, rather than raiding your fridge and cupboards, gorging on anything you lay eyes on prepare a substantial meal earlier in the day consisting mainly of lean protein and vegetables, once you’ve eaten a satisfying meal the temptation to binge will be greatly reduced. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Diet
April 7, 2011 By 35 Comments

Fast Food – It’s Easy and I Love It

A few weeks ago, my roommate walked in on me eating a stack of pancakes, McDonald’s burgers or something equally dense in calories.

He asked “How do you get away with eating like this and is it what you’d recommend to your clients?”

And it made me really think about it for a second. So here is my response, in article form.

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Lately, with work, school, playing web designer, fitness consulting and my own personal tri-weekly training, I am finding it rather difficult to get the kcals I need on a daily basis. Before the end of the year, I was eating just about everything I could get my hands on to get my squat, bench and row numbers to go up.

Nowadays, I am lucky to just get enough food to hit my maintenance requirements. And the funny thing is, most food just doesn’t seem appetizing anymore.

Okay, so it’s not like eating is hard. It’s really not, at all. But for me, when I get real busy and stress levels soar, unlike many who resort to eating, I just don’t. Then, the extra busyness cuts into my regular meal times and I forget to eat altogether.

So, when I think to myself “oh, I haven’t eaten anything in the last 14 hours,” I’m grabbing something quick and easy so I don’t have to cook. I know this may sound awful and like I suck at planning. But I have my priorities – and cooking a meal that a chef would be proud of every night is just not one of them.

Now enters my infatuation with fast food.

So, in my world we have two forms of the stuff.

Those are it’s really easy to insert into my pie-hole food choices and the typical fast food burger joints.

So, to give you an idea of how I’ve been doing it lately, let me give you an example of my typical meals on a training day and an off day. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Diet
March 14, 2011 By 20 Comments

Body Recomposition Without Counting Calories?

So you wish to alter your body composition, for the better, without counting calories?

It’s impossible, most people say. I beg to differ.

But first let me preface by saying this approach is not going to be for everyone. In fact, it’s probably not for the majority, at least not at first.

It’s something I’ve messed with on and off for the last year while hardly even realizing what I was doing.

I suppose it started last fall – I’d just moved into a new apartment right off campus. The walk to my first class took about 10 minutes and then I spent the majority of my day walking around from class to class. The only time I drove was to the grocery store or back to Nashville for the weekend.

For the first few weeks, I had to make some major adjustments to my intake. Expenditure was through the roof as I clocked some of my walking to be anywhere from 4-6 miles per day depending on how often I went back to my apartment. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Build Muscle, Diet, Motivation Tagged With: ,
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