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Basics of Nutrition – What you NEED to Know

-Clark Hibbs

Note: the following message and philosophy is a basic outline of how we have helped thousands of people lose thousands of pounds, keep it off, and be the healthiest versions of themselves. We are not trying to preach to you or convince you to be “one way.” There are plenty of ways that work, but this way works extremely well for busy humans, and for folks who think they’ve tried everything and still haven’t seen success.

Fret not, my friends. By the end of this, you’ll have the tools to begin this journey with confidence.

*Disclosure: Before starting any sort of diet or nutritional change, consult with your doctor to make sure it’s OK for you.*

For the majority of the American population, weight loss is the goal. For this reason, weight loss/body fat reduction is going to be the focus of this post. Before we get into the how of weight loss, we need to understand the basic principles that we’re going to need to follow on this journey. These are not groundbreaking or revolutionary by nature, and the might even come across as suspiciously simple…

That’s because they are … kind of.

They’re so simple that it makes them seem hard and complex. And worse yet, marketing companies and supplement companies (and a bunch of “wellness” influencers” are very, VERY good at making us believe that losing weight is next to impossible without *insert miracle supplement here* or *insert fad diet here.*

Ugh. Wellness influencers. Gross.

The truth is, losing weight is as easy (in theory) as increasing your energy expenditure (move more), and decreasing your energy intake (eat less).

You don’t need to worry about what food for your blood type (yes, some influencers actually try to push this).
You don’t need to demonize certain foods or food groups.
You don’t even need to overly restrict yourself.

But you DO need to pat attention to how many calories you are eating and your movement habits, and that’s going to require a fair amount of effort. Remember when I said “in theory?” The theory is easy. The practical application can be difficult!

Quick sidebar: It is important to recognize that different cultures, how you were raised, and socioeconomic levels can play a huge part in ease of adherence with these simple theories. The single Mom working 2 jobs is going to have a harder time than most finding a sustainable calorie deficit. Anyway. Just felt like I should put that out there. Onto our regularly scheduled slashing of your calories.

Let’s get into it.

In order to lose weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit for an extended amount of time.

Your body needs fuel, obviously. If we don’t eat, we die, and dying isn’t exactly what we’re trying to do here.

Instead of going to the pump for some petrol, we go to the kitchen for some grub. Our bodies then convert that fuel into energy through thermogenesis and a bunch of other fancy biological things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things (because we don’t need to over-complicate things).

But the following is something that we definitely need to know!

Your body has a basal metabolic rate. This is the rate of energy expenditure per unit of time by endothermic animals (us humans) while at rest. In not-so-sciency speak… you have a certain amount of calories that you need to eat in order to maintain the exact weight you are right now. Our bodies are constantly burning calories to sustain life… so we need to make sure we’re fueled at the appropriate levels.

There are many highly specific ways for us to find the basal metabolic rate (wayyyyy too much math if you ask me), but an easy way is this:

Multiply your bodyweight x 13 to 15. That’s your approximate basal metabolic rate, or BMR for short.

So a 200 pound person needs to eat ~2,800 calories a day to stay the same weight (I got that by multiplying 200 x 14).

A calorie deficit is any level of calories that are below your BMR… and this is the first thing you need to be trying to accomplish when trying to lose weight, because this truly, truly is the most important part of the equation.

If you are not in a calorie deficit, you will not lose weight. Period. Look. I get it. At some point in your life you probably got really frustrated and discouraged because you thought you were doing everything right just for the scale to go nowhere, or even up. It felt so hopelessly frustrating because you were hungry all the time, but you still just couldn’t lose the weight.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the journey you were consuming more calories than your BMR, so you didn’t lose weight. Don’t be mad at me! Be mad at the laws of physics!

OK, back to the show.

We need to find a sustainable calorie deficit that we can maintain from day to day in order to see success. Technically, you *could* starve yourself and lose a ton of weight… right? Absolutely! If that 200 pound person only eats 1,000 calories a day, they will lose a ton of weight very quickly.

But there’s obviously problems with this.

As soon as that person no longer restricts themselves to 1,000 calories a day, they’ll gain all of that weight back because they’ll call Pinks, Papa. Johns, AND Dominos to send ALL OF THE PIZZA to their house immediately. After miserable bouts of over-restriction, what’s the human thing to do? Go buck wild and overdo it with the food.

Hello, yo-yo dieting.

This is why I (and so many other good nutrition coaches) are so vehemently against short term crash diets, cleanses, and over-restriction. All it does is continue the cycle you’re so desperately to get out of.

To find a sustainable calorie deficit, we can take the same sort of formula that we used to find the BMR.

For a sustainable calorie deficit for weight loss, multiply your current bodyweight x 10-12. So a 200 pound person’s sustainable calorie deficit would be 2,200 calories a day (I got that by multiplying 200×11).

What sounds better to you? Eating 500-1,000 calories a day, having no energy, and being absolutely miserable … or eating a days worth of food at approximately ~200-400 less calories than you need to sustain?

I’ll take the ladder any day of the week.

In order to accurately track the amount of calories you’re eating, you’re going to need a few things.

-A tracking app like MyFitnessPal
-A food scale that can weigh in ounces and grams
-Measuring cups
-An open mind and some patience

We use the tracking app to log what we’re eating each day. This is important because we need accurate data to truly understand the amount that we’re eating.

Don’t believe me? Go to your kitchen right now and properly weigh a serving of peanut butter. Don’t use a measuring cup. WEIGH IT. When you weigh it, you’ll realize that you’ve probably been eating 2 to 3 servings in one easy, delicious sitting instead of eating a smaller, prescribed amount.

We’ll get into the nuts and bolts on how to accurately weigh, measure, and track food in another post. For now, keep it simple by planning out the food you’re going to eat, and THEN weighing it so you know exactly how much you’re eating. MyFitnessPal and all of the other apps have tons of entries, but to make finding the food even easier, use the barcode scanner feature! It will automatically populate the nutrition label into your log!

Now, calories are king and are the most important aspect of weight loss, but we didn’t talk about what kind of calories.

Technically, that same person above could eat 2,200 calories of Snicker bars every day, and lose weight. Yes, it’s true. You could do that.

Problem…(I say that a lot, don’t I?)

That person will be miserable. They’ll be surviving off of nothing but dense carbs and fats that don’t have a ton of naturally occurring nutrients.

They’re going to be miserable and feel like a melted tub of Snickers.

For greater success and sustainability, eat more whole, nutrient dense foods.

Each meal should look like a “healthy” meal. Lean proteins. Vegetables. Some carbohydrates. Having a good breakdown of 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 30% fats is a great place to start with your macronutrients (we’ll also do another post about macros here soon).

The reason we prescribe eating whole, nutrient dense foods isn’t just because it’s what our bodies are wired to eat. It’s because you can be much more successful with your weight loss by keeping the volume of food larger.

Have you ever seen those pictures comparing the calories between candy and broccoli? It’s pretty mind-blowing.

For science, I conducted an experiment… I purchased a normal bag of skittles. I wanted to see what one bag of skittles looked like in relation to steamed broccoli.

That normal bag of skittles contained 61.5 grams of candy, coming in at 250 calories. That’s just a normal bag of skittles that I could eat in about 10-15 minutes without even thinking about it (for the record, 1 bag of skittles will barely cover the bottom of a normal cereal bowl).

Do you know how much broccoli it takes to make 250 calories?

A ton. A heaping, heaping ton. Well, not exactly. But you would need 2 and half bags of Steamfresh Broccoli Florets in order to get there.

Two and a half bags!! TWO AND A HALF BAGS OF BROCCOLI!!

One more time just to get the point across. TWO. BAGS. THEN ADD ANOTHER HALF BAG. Then you reach the amount of calories from a normal bag of skittles. SHEEEESH.

There’s no possible way you would even get through the first bag of broccoli and think, “You know what, I definitely want some more broccoli.” There’s also no way that your stomach would want you to eat more than that. I mean, just the thought of eating two and a half bags of broccoli make me want to gag a bit…

But I would definitely be full, and I wouldn’t want to eat anything else.

Whole, nutrient dense foods are going to have a much larger volume. Because of that volume, they’re going to take up more space in your stomach making you feel more full and satisfied. The more full and satisfied you feel, the less likely you are to want to eat extra.

Now, am I saying Skittles are the devil? Nope. Not at all. I ate that entire bag of Skittles… for science. But, I did track the calories, and made sure that I didn’t go over my calorie allotment. This meant that I had to have a smaller dinner, and that’s OK.

Sheesh. 1 bag of skittles is calorically equal to 2 and a half bags of broccoli. That’s insane.

And while there’s a TON more that we could go into like eating lean proteins, the beautiful effects of staying properly hydrated, sleep, stress management … I think this is a good place to put a bow on this topic. After all, the title does say “basic,” right?

But here’s the thing… the magic is in the basics.

We need to be in a calorie deficit.
We need to sustain that calorie deficit.
We need to eat whole, nutrient dense foods a majority of the time (keep the treats to a minimum, but still enjoy your life!).

We need to be patient with this journey and enjoy the ride.

That’s the basics, my friends, and the basics will help you get to where you want to be.

-Clark