Busy Broke
Lazy Diet
by Ty Ferrell
This article
is for those guys and gals too busy, too lazy or too broke to put
together a sustainable whole food diet plan. I have no malice for
any of these groups. In fact, I have been a member of each of them
at some point in time. What I plan to do is show you three different
avenues for handling a decent diet plan while you are at these stages
in your life. On side note, marketing campaigns by useless diet corporations
(i.e. Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and Alli), have attempted to change
the term “diet” to mean a stringent, not easily followed
method for weight loss. This is simply not true. A diet simply means
the way a person consumes food and drink. If a person eats at McDonald’s
all day and drinks beer at night, well that is his diet. Once again
diet simply means the way a person eats and drinks.
I am going
to lay down the basic routes you can take depending on which category
you fit in. First, you need to figure out what your basic fitness
goal is. Second, you need to know how many calories it is going to
take to keep your metabolism up and preserve muscle, bone and other
connective tissue (RMR). Third, you need to know your activity level
and figure out how many calories you burn per day. Finally, you need
to stick with it. Even if you consider yourself a lazy individual,
know there is a point when you go from being lazy to just being an
ass clown. So let’s get to it.
Now, fitness
goals come in three categories for the purposes of this article. Choose
one:
1. I want to maintain my low body fat and increase
muscle mass.
2. I want to maintain my current muscle mass and lower my body fat.
3. I’m already looking awesome naked. I just want to maintain
my current body composition.
Now that
you have chosen a route the next thing is to get a current snap shot
of your RMR. I personally like using a hybrid of Dr. John Berardi’s
method for getting a solid RMR number. If you want to use Berardi’s
full method for handling calories, I suggest you check out his website
Precision Nutrition here.
Follow these next steps:
1. Get
your bodyweight. Write it down.
2. Change your bodyweight into kilos by dividing by 2.2. Write it
down.
Now we
need to get an estimate of your current body fat. Many scales have
built in bioelectrical impedance devices for doing this, and there
are handheld models as well. Also you can get a skinfold caliper check
or any other body fat check from a professional if you want to. I
would highly suggest you purchase a scale with a feature to check
body fat. They are generally cheap and make frequent body fat check
easy.
3. Get your estimated body fat percentage. Write
that down.
4. Multiply your bodyfat in decimal form (i.e. 12% = .12) with your
kg weight. Write it down.
5. Subtract that number from your kg weight. Write it down.
6. Multiply the “subtracted kg” weight amount by 22. Write
it down.
7. If you are a man add 500 to the new number. If you are a woman
add 250 to the new number. This number is your estimated RMR. Write
it down.
Okay, you
now have your RMR. This number represents the floor of your diet.
DO NOT go below this number.
The next
step we will get your cost of activity (COA). Cost of activity is
figured out as follows:
1. How active are you on a day without fitness
training. (1.3) Comatose for most of the day and only need energy
to update you’re my Space page. (1.4) Active but most activities
are sedentary or standing in one position for many hours. (1.5) You
are on the go all the time. Either you are a competitive athlete or
a competitive business type always running about here and there (literally).
very lazy to extremely active
2. Figure out which group you believe you are
in. It’s best to error on the side of being less active. Take
the corresponding number above (1.3 – 1.5) and multiply it by
your RMR. This number represents your COA. It is the ceiling of your
diet. Only go above this number to gain muscle mass. On active training
days you will be closer to your ceiling and on days not training you
will be closer to your floor. Trust me it’s easier than it sounds.
Alrighty, the hardest part is over. You will need to redo that step
every two to four weeks when you re-check weight and body fat (depending
on how important your goals are to you). Do not check daily, that’s
just is a big waste and quite frustrating.
In this
next segment you will choose which category you belong. Also, you
need to follow this list of habits
consistently and as close as possible.
You can
hybrid the groups if you need to.
Now for
more help, either contact me for advice. Consultations are not free.
I do have a business to run. If you want free advice, post
your questions, concerns, and comments in the forum.
Here are
some great articles to get you on target with training:
Beginners
regardless of training goal: Proving Ground
Training for fat loss and maintaining muscle: Boot
camp article or AA
article.
Training
for muscle mass and maintaining your low body fat: Hypertrophy
article
Your are
just here to maintain your perfection: keeping on doing whatever you’re
doing. Share with us in the
forum.
That’s it. I leave a lot of openings for translation, but it
is unnecessary to get anymore specific than the info I gave you unless
you are looking to be more stringent with your nutrition. Follow the
guidelines and you will go far.
