HOW TO CREATE LEAN HEALTHY MEALS THAT TASTE GREAT.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Counting your calories can be a chore. But like many other worthwhile activities, accounting for your food intake can yield great health benefits. When it comes down to it, your nutrition will either help you achieve your fitness goals or prevent you from ever reaching them. So how do we accurately measure our food intake? Let’s pick something easy to make, like a turkey sandwich. We have to account for all the components of the sandwich: The bread, the tomatoes, the lettuce, the mustard and the turkey.
Know exact amounts! Human nutrition is a quantitative science, so you must know the quantities of what you eat. A food scale and a set of measuring cups will be of great help, especially if you have never done this before.
Your ingredients:
Two slices of whole wheat bread, 2 oz lettuce, 3 oz tomatoes, 2 teaspoons of mustard and 4 oz of turkey.
Keep your numbers in mind. Your target caloric intake will vary based on your goals and needs. If you are already a SCULPT client, you can find all your nutrition targets by logging in to your SCULPT online account. If you are not a client yet, consult your nutritionist or health care provider to determine what your caloric intake should be.
If your goal is weight loss, you want a negative caloric intake at the end of the day. If your goal is to gain muscle weight then your net caloric value has to be positive. So either less calories then what your body uses per day to lose weight and more calories then it needs to build more lean muscle mass. Off course, this is a very simplified model, and many other factors come into play but basically this is true.
Calculate once and repeat. Once you record this sandwich’s caloric value on paper or using our website, all you have to do is use the same ingredients and amounts every time you prepare it. That way you don’t have to recalculate the sandwich’s caloric value every time you make it. The last point I want to make is to be proactive, not reactive. Counting calories only helps if you know the caloric value of your meals before you eat them. How is counting calories after you eat a 980 Kcals sandwich with 42 grams of fat going to help you? The damage is already done.
