New Year New You
New Year, New You
So it’s the New Year. A time when everyone makes New Years resolutions with ambitions to get in the best shape of their life. Unfortunately this is also when people set too high of goals and end up abandoning that goal. So I’m here to give you simple guidelines to follow to achieve that goal. There are 5 things you need to follow that over time will help you reach any goal:
1) Find your TDEE
TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure. It’s a fancy name for how many calories you burn in a day. It can be found very easily and gives you a rough goal on how many calories you should be eating. What you’ll need to know are:
- Height
- Weight
- Age
- Body fat %
- Activity level
- Gender
By knowing this, you simply go to the website https://tdeecalculator.net and input all that. It’ll spit back a number telling you how many calories you burn just by being alive and doing nothing, and calories burned throughout the average day.
Just remember, this isn’t a definitive number. It’s a close enough number that you can follow as a general guideline. Once you know how many calories you need to eat to lose weight, you have a game plan. Now, all you need to do is roughly track your calories and follow the rest of these steps and you’ll lose weight and reach your goal in no time!
2) Get 10,000 Steps A Day
This is one you always here. There’s no magic number of steps, and there’s no special benefit it provides. The fact of the matter is you simply need to move more to lose weight. ON AVERAGE and I cannot stress that enough, you will burn about 500 calories by walking 10,000 steps a day. I always recommend people get a smart watch and wear it throughout the day and see how much you get on the average day.
10,000 steps is about 6 miles. So to make it easier, just break it up. Go for a 1-2 mile walk in the morning and evening. Then rely on walking throughout the day to reach your 10,000 goal.
It’s important to know that 10,000 is just a number. If you get above 6,000 you’re doing good. If you hit 8,000 steps you’re doing great, and if you hit 10,000 you’re amazing.
3) Strength training 2-3x per week
This is the hard part for most people. Most get off to a good start and then quickly burn out. Most people often think that working out is the reason for burning calories. This is not true, in fact you will only burn 200-400 calories in a workout. It’s not meant to burn calories. It’s meant to build muscle so in the long term your metabolism is higher thus burning more calories.
Now why do I say 2-3x a week? Based on the scientific literature, working out each muscle group twice per week will produce the most muscle. So for most people 2 or 3 full body workouts a week is manageable and will provide great results.
Here’s a helpful tip for your workouts:
- Focus on machines at first, since there’s little chance of injury with the fixed range of motion.
- Focus on compound lifts like chest press, back row, squat, and planks. These all recruit a lot of muscle and will burn more calories.
- Aim for 15 reps and 4 sets. Aim for light weight at first and just get comfortable with the machine and proper form.
If you want more help with this I created a 12 week workout plan that gives you detailed workouts and tons of nutrition info! Basically just a summary of what I’m putting here.
4) Diet
This is the hardest part for those who have a New Year Resolution. Eating healthy is manageable in the short term, but becomes a pain in the long term. So while the best way to lose weight would be to track all the calories you eat, that is simply not practical. So what I am going to do is give you guidelines to follow throughout the day that will reduce excess calories. Here’s what they are:
- Eliminate fast food - This is easier said than done. Fast food is jammed with incredibly excessive calories. Processed food also is digested faster and won’t hold you over for as long.
- Eliminate liquid calories - this is probably the easiest one to accomplish. We all love sweet drinks, or smoothies, or juice. They’re usually all over 100-200 calories per serving. So as much as you like sweet drinks, they’re the easiest way to cut out calories from your diet.
- Eat protein rich foods - Protein rich foods require the most effort by your body to break down. So you will burn more calories simply by digesting these foods. Protein also fills you up the longest. Leaving you to feel fuller for longer and prevent hunger.
5) Fasting
Intermittent fasting has a lot of bold claims. It has no secrete benefits other than controlling your hunger levels. To make it easy, try eating within an 8 hour window of being awake. Your first meal will be around 10am and your last will be 6pm. Or 12pm and 8pm. Your stomach sends signals to your brain telling you when it’s empty and when it wants more food. When you begin fasting the first couple of days will be challenging, due to your stomach used to being on a schedule. After a couple of days your stomach will adjust to your new schedule and send hunger signals within this time frame. Fasting will help you eat less by reducing the time in a day you have to eat.
THATS IT! These rules are simple guidelines to follow. By doing so, you will:
- Eliminate excessive calories
- Increase muscle and metabolism in body
- Burn extra calories by walking more
For most people, these guidelines will help you achieve your goals in no time! I will always be here for guidance though. Enjoy the New Year!