Best Nutrition Lessons
When looking for changes in our body composition, it doesn’t just apply to “I eat healthily,” “I already eat five meals a day” or “I already avoid these foods that make you fat.”
That’s not enough, and even things like the five meals are pretty much irrelevant in most cases. In this article, we’re going to walk you through five nutrition lessons you need to know to lose fat or weight.
Table of Contents
1. Calories are important
As I said, it’s not enough to eat what we think is good.
We do not doubt that you are on a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, high-quality protein, and healthy fats, but calories count when losing weight and fat.
This way, you need to know your maintenance calories (basal metabolic rate multiplied by an activity factor) and set a 15-20% deficit. To find out what calories you need in Vitónica, we have guides on how to do it. If you don’t apply this deficit, you won’t lose fat.
2. Distribute the three macronutrients well
Once we understand the importance of applying the first lesson on calories, it’s essential to break it down into the three macronutrients: protein, fat, and carbohydrate.
At this point, it is essential to remember that all the advice we give here requires daily monitoring of the foods we eat and their more or less precise amounts.
If you want to lose fat, the ideal is to start by setting the total daily amount of protein in grams, ranging from 2 to 2.5 grams per kilogram of weight, although it can go up to 3 grams in some contexts. And protocols. If you are overweight or obese, do these calculations based on your lean mass, not your total body weight.
Second, we need to fix fat, which can usually be anywhere between 0.7 and 1.5, although they can go over that higher range at the expense of carbs on low-carb or keto protocols.
Finally, the remaining calories are allocated to carbohydrates, taking into account that each gram of protein and carbohydrate provides 4 kcal. per gram and each gram of fat.
3. Don’t forget about micronutrients
Once the two previous lessons have been completed and internalized, we cannot ignore that diet is not a means to achieve its ends, such as fat loss. We must think long-term and healthily, and for that, the body has need micronutrients to function. These include vitamins, minerals, or fiber.
However, it is important that you eat fruits and vegetables daily, or at least if you don’t eat a lot of one of the two, the other is varied enough to make up for the lower intake of the other. A good recommendation is to consume as many different colors as possible when choosing fruits and vegetables. Food color says a lot about the color and appearance of food.
Remember, we are not talking about multivitamins. We are talking about fruits and vegetables.
4. Do not give more importance to time than to the other three factors
The time of day is the time of day when we ingest the nutrients. It is important? Yes, but not as much as calories, macros, and micronutrients.
An example of timing is when we eat more or fewer meals per day, eat more carbs for breakfast or dinner, or even eat the protein shake (in case we want to drink it) when we leave the gym. The decisions we make in these cases shape the moment.
I was drinking a protein shake after a workout is no more important than the daily amount of protein.
5. When you perfectly manage all of the above, think about nutritional supplements
The last lesson. Depending on the context, additions can be the icing on the cake. There are no mandatory supplements unless you are a vegetarian, vegan, or have a health condition that requires them.
There are all kinds of nutritional supplements: for general health, for performance, to meet dietary needs (proteins, carbohydrates …), and for fat loss.
But remember, the dietary supplement industry is subject to the same laws as any other industry: supply and demand. These laws provide the customer with a wide range of supplements of all kinds that do not always meet the purchaser’s expectations.
Keep the above in mind when buying nutritional supplements. Your expectations in this regard may never remain met, or you may even buy something that has no clues in humans or only occurs in sick people or very specific population groups. Of course, a dietary supplement will never ignore the fact that the rest of the diet must meet all of the above criteria.
Also read: The Five Finest Habits That Will Help You Take Care Of Your Metabolism
