Calories, we hear everyone talking about them. To what extent should you be taking them seriously? This blog post will discuss what calories are and to a certain extent discuss how serious you should take ‘watching your calories’.
Calories are another word for the energy your body takes from the food and drinks you put in your body, of course. The most important thing you should know about calories is the amount of energy you get from fat, carbs, and proteins. 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories. This is more than twice as many calories compared to carbs and proteins since 1 gram of carbohydrates or proteins contains 4 calories (only). That is why a standard chocolate bar contains many more calories than a standard sugary treat (per 100 grams) since a chocolate bar contains a lot of fat.
Normal calories v. Fitness calories
When watching your calories I think a subtle distinction should be made. When you are not into fitness or sports; as long as your diet is still containing a lot of variance in what you eat, and you get enough vitamins, I generally would say you should care less about the exact amount of fats or carbs you get in. just make sure your life is healthy in general, and do not worry too much. However, when doing fitness, the degree to which you will take your diet serious will influence your progress more than you can ever imagine. The moment you start slacking in your diet, your progress will slack as well. Your physique is only as good as the lesser of the building stones.1 Just remember this. It is okay to take your food less serious, but then do not ask yourself later on why you are not progressing as much as you would want. Know that food is just as important as exercising is.
Diets
There are in general four different kinds of diets, calorie-wise: Losing weight, Maintaining, Lean-bulking, and Dirty-bulking. I will explain these four different types one by one very briefly.
Losing Weight – For losing weight, all you basically have to do is having a calorie deficit. Your daily calorie burn has to be higher than your daily calorie intake. The amount of the deficit will determine how much weight you will lose. A whole article will be devoted to losing weight later on, but I will say this: it is better to have a small deficit and be consistent for a long time than try to apply a huge deficit for just a few weeks. Up to 500kcal deficits are considered to fall in the ‘healthy’ spectrum.
Maintaining – For maintaining your current physique, you need to make sure your calorie burn rate is exactly the same as your calorie intake.
Lean Bulking – For lean bulking, your calorie intake needs to be higher than your calorie burn rate. So, your body needs to have a calorie surplus at the end of the day. This extra energy will be used to grow muscle. Generally, the spectrum is about +1/300 calories per day.
Dirty Bulking – For dirty bulking, a diet I would never recommend, your calorie intake needs to be a lot higher than your calorie burn rate. It is basically the same as lean bulking, but then with a much higher calorie surplus. What a lot of people here do is eat unhealthily, and just train massively to become extremely big (but also fat). For dirty bulking the spectrum is about + 301/600 extra calories per day.
It is completely up to you which diet you prefer. You can also switch between them. What I did when I started was: First doing some lean bulking for a month. Afterward, I lost weight for 5/6 weeks (while maintaining muscles), I just got in a steady lean bulk for about two months. Right now I am somewhere between maintaining and lean bulking, gradually slowing it down to just maintaining. I am happy where I currently am and I am planning to keep it that way. This also allows me to cheat here and there while I am in LA without changing my physique. Choose whatever way you prefer, and you can always contact me if you have any questions regarding this topic.
In conclusion, I want to end up saying that you should take calories as serious as you take your training. Do not sweat too much about it if you are just ‘trying to get around’. But, if you do really want to get everything out of your day, make sure you do that for your diet as well.
1 In a lot of my previous blog posts, I have talked about the building stones of building your physique: Food, Exercise, and Sleep. You need to put all three in good shape in order to get the most out of your progress.
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