Kitchener Personal Trainer

We always talk about our workouts. How much time to spend in the gym. How many sets and reps and rest are we doing and takin in. But nutrition always seems to take a back seat. It’s not very exciting, not as exciting as getting stronger and more agile in the gym, much less the aesthetics you get from your workouts. Plus the nutrition part is probably the most difficult and takes the most discipline.

But how important is nutrition when it comes to your fitness goals? Many people will either over inflate the importance or downplay it. In my opinion, albeit an educated one its fifty percent of the fitness goal equation. It is equally important to focus on your nutrition as well as your workouts.

So how do you go from here? You know nutrition is important but what do I eat? How many calories should I eat in a day? Is it down to calories only or should I macro count. All of these are very important questions. The first thing I would advise doing is writing all your food down in a food journal for a week and then calculating how many calories and macros you are taking in and go from there. To lose weight decrease your calories by 200-300 calories daily and to gain weight increase by the same amount.

What do you mean by Macros? Let’s assume you don’t know what they are. They’re simply macronutrients and those are: Protein, Fats and Carbohydrates. You will need to know how much of each you are taking in daily. The percentage that I go by and this is personal, is 30% Protein, 20% Fats and 50% Carbohydrates. This is a good percentage breakdown for a fitness goal focusing on being lean, yet muscular. Macros also are related to calories in and calories out as each macro has a certain amount of calories contained within it. For example Protein has 4 calories in a gram, same with Carbohydrates and then Fats have the highest at 9 calories per gram. To calculate your macro percentage for each food, you will take the grams and multiply it by calories per gram and then divide by total calories. Example is for fats, say it has 3 grams of fat. You will find this information on the nutrition label on the back. You will multiply 3 grams X 9 calories and then divide it by the total amount of calories in the food product.

I can guarantee if you do all of this and follow it, you will get results along with your workout program which should have you in the gym at least twice per week. Three times per week is better. I would also suggest journaling everything including your workouts and nutrition the entire time or when you automatically know how many macros you’re taking in and how many calories.

I hope this wasn’t information overload! And if you have any questions regarding your nutrition or workouts, please let me know! And I wish you well on your fitness journey!