The Fundamentals of your Nutrition – Counting calories

This section will explore the fundamentals of nutrition – calories. After reading this, you should be able to determine your daily caloric intake and get a little idea of how your body works. Today we will talk about calories.

A diet that does not work…

Most of us have gone through some type of diet or at least something that should ensure a super-fast fat loss…useless and with a subsequent jo-jo effect. Some of these pseudo diets helped, but most of them were just worrying, maybe added more extra kilograms at the end and caused you being unwilling to work on yourself in the future.

We others, whose concept of self-improvement is different, whether we are looking to building muscle or to maintain a perfect form with a low percentage of body fat, we have just ascertained further. We have come to the conclusion that in the planning of the diet there is a precise order of priorities that if they are not understood, it might waste your time and money. This post will talk about nutrition and explain all the approaches that you can use to achieve your goal effortlessly.

First of all, the amount of calories that you eat every day is the most important thing when it comes to fat loss or muscle building or even maintaining weight. This number is known as BMR, basal metabolic rate, that determines how many calories your body needs to run properly on a daily basis, in order to maintain your weight. However, this number does not contain physical activity that needs to be considered as well. 

How to count calories?

For example, you are a 21 years old male (180cm, 80kg), your daily intake is about 1900kcal. There is a number of free software that can do it for you. Once you get this number, you have to think about your daily activity (job, uni, sport, etc.) and add to this number. The table below shows how many calories you approximately burn a day according to your physical activity.

Sedentary job: BMRx1.2

Physical activity 1-3aweek: BMRx1.375

Physical activity 3-6 times a week: BMRx1.55

Based on this information you can determine your caloric intake that will help you to maintain weight. What if your goal is to lose weight or build muscle? Every time you eat less than a certain number, you are losing weight. Every time, you eat more than that number, you are gaining weight. It is simple as that. Of course, in both cases, there are other important factors but this is the most fundamental knowledge that you have to have in order to reach your goal.

So, after you’ve calculated how many calories you should approximately consume, you can use an app like for example MyFitnessPal (available on both App Store and Google Store), where you put the data in and your macro numbers (e.g. 250g carbs, 60g fat, 150g protein = around 2300 calories) and track your food. It’s got most of the common foods and ingredients on there, so you really shouldn’t struggle to find something. If you are, there is an easy way to figure this out.

Each gram of protein is 4 kcal. A gram of carbohydrate is 4 kcal and a gram of fat is 9 kcal. Then if you have an ingredient and it’s not on the app, you can put it in manually from the nutrition label. Simply write in the numbers and you’re done.

Next article will touch upon Macronutrients in more detail. If you understand all of this, you will be able to count your macros – calories, set your goal and enjoy your life.