Whether your goal is bodybuilding and getting ripped, or something else (such as losing weight and just getting more fit), you need to constantly assess your progress and evaluate the regimen of diet and exercise you're following.
How to Check Your Body Fat Percentage and Fat-Free Mass - The scale and mirror are a good place to start, just as I did, but if you're a serious bodybuilder you'll want to take that a bit further.
The best way to do that is with a set of body fat callipers.
If you don't own a set, most good gyms have a set, as well as a person who knows how to use them (and, for consistency sake, try to have the same person perform the measurement each time, usually every week or two).
Essentially, what callipers do is to measure your body fat in millimetres and convert that into a percentage, based upon the chart that typically accompanies the callipers.
The best way to illustrate what I'm talking about is by example, so I'll use myself.
Based on the calliper measurements and the chart at my gym, my body fat percentage came out to about 20%.
So, for my body weight of 205 pounds...
205 x body fat percentage (20%) = 41 pounds of total body fat And thus...
205 pounds total weight - 41 pounds of total body fat = 164 pounds of what's called "fat-free mass" Okay, so what? Well, those are important numbers because we want to track them on a consistent basis to see which ones are changing, either for better or worse.
For example, if fat-free mass is rising, while body fat is staying the same (or even declining), that's typically a good thing.
It means you're adding lean muscle mass without adding body fat, which is typically the goal for bodybuilders.
If, however, you're adding body fat/weight without adding lean muscle mass (or, even worse, the lean muscle is decreasing), then you know that you have to alter your diet accordingly.
And by measuring and tracking these numbers on a consistent, week-by-week basis, you can see exactly what's happening both outside and inside your body.
Determining the Proper Diet - First, let's start with the basics and go from there.
As I mentioned earlier, every diet plan contains three essential components: 1.
Protein (which contains 4 calories per gram) 2.
Carbohydrates (same for carbs, 4 calories per gram) 3.
Fats (typically contain more than twice the calories at 9 per gram) Next, we need to decide not only the suggested total calorie intake per day, but the percentage of each of the three components (protein, carbs and fats) we should be eating on a daily basis.
To determine what your total calorie intake should be, there are a number of formulas you can use.
A Web search will turn them up, usually along with the corresponding calculators where you can just plug in your numbers.
For example: The BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) Formula takes into account variables such as weight, height, age and gender to make calorie-intake determinations.
And some formulas/calculators (such as the Harris Benedict Formula) will also add in the variable of how much physical activity/exercise you do, which is ideal for people like us who work out quite a bit.
So, for example, based upon my own numbers (weight, height, age and gender) and level of physical activity (heavy exercise for 6 days per week), a calculator which uses the above formulas determined that my suggested calorie needs are 3,556 calories per day.
That's a good starting point, but what the formulas don't take into account is your ratio of muscle to body fat.
So, just keep in mind that leaner bodies need more calories than less-lean bodies.
That means that for the very fit/very muscular, the formulas will be an underestimate of needed calories, and for the unfit/overweight, the formula will provide an over-estimate of calorie needs.
The point being that they're just a starting point, and we need to track, assess and adjust accordingly, which is the point of this article.
Okay, next we need to break that daily calorie intake down further.
If, for example, we want to consume 30% protein, 50% carbohydrates and 20% fats, it would look something like this.
Again, I'll use my own daily calorie needs of 3,556, as determined earlier: 3,556 x 30% protein = 1,066.
5 calories from protein/day Next, we divide those 1,066.
5 calories by 4 (remember, protein and carbs both produce 4 calories per gram) = 266 grams of protein per day.
And, for carbohydrates, it looks like this: 3,556 x 50% = 1,778 calories/4 = 444.
5 grams of carbohydrates per day And, for fat: 3,556 x 20% =711 calories/4 = 178 grams of fat per day Next, we need to divide all that over the course of several meals.
If you're following the "frequent feeding" approach, spreading your calories over 5-8 smaller meals, rather than 3 large ones, simply pick the number of meals you're eating.
If that number is 5 meals, for example, then divide your daily grams for protein, carbs and fat by 5 and that gives you the grams for each meal.
Just remember that, in the meal immediately after your training/workout, fat is typically omitted from this meal to help nutrients digest more quickly and, thus, aid in recovery.
Assessing and Adjusting Your Diet - Okay, now that we've looked at the basics of a diet plan, that brings us to the final point, which is assessing and adjusting it.
In my case, I wasn't off by much, but I was seeing a bit more fat in my weight gain than I wanted.
The solution was to try eliminating the carbs from the last two meals of the day, (not the post-workout meal, however).
If, on the other hand, you're not gaining any weight, try increasing your protein intake by 1.
5 and doubling the amount of carbohydrates for two of your daily meals.
And, if you're gaining lean muscle mass while maintaining/losing body fat (and that's your goal), then stay the course, but continue to monitor, assess and adjust as needed on an ongoing basis.
If you do make changes, just remember to allow your body about two weeks to acclimate to any new diet to see how well the changes you've implemented are working.