Basics of Loosing Fat and Putting on Muscle.

Fad diets are the norm now.All the people i have talked to jump on the keto bandwagon without actually knowing the effects.While keto is proven diet to enable fat loss,people often mess up the structuring aspect of it (I Will go in-depth on different diet types on a different post). Other types of diet include carb cycling and paleo. These names are used more for a marketing standpoint rather than people or trainers actually having an idea on how to structure them.

We are living in the internet age. Some people still live of the fact that clean eating can only enable fat loss while the so called dirty eating can't.They simply don't know the basic thermodynamics of the human body. To put into simple words, fat loss or putting on muscle depends on calories in vs calories out and these calories are determined based on the basal metabolic rate or BMR. You find out your BMR based on your activity.If your daily intake of calories is above that BMR then you will put on muscle and fat.If its less than the BMR you will loose fat and when prolonged you will loose a minimum amount of muscle.

These types of diet fads all are based on this theory.You will simply not lose fat if your calories are above maintenance or on par with your maintenance. The structuring of the diet should such that it should have minimal "junk foods". For example my split would 80% of my foods on a day are clean while 20% are "dirty or junk". The reason why they are termed as junk is because most of these foods are less in volume and are caloricly dense and hence wont give you a feeling of fullness.This means you would feel hungry throughout the day and feel the mental effects.

How are the calories to be split ? My split is typically 40% carbs, 40% protein and 20% fats.Ensure that your protein intake is atleast 1-1.2 gm per pound of bodyweight while cutting and atleast 0.8 - 1 gm when bulking. For example here is an image of me weighing 167 pounds.

Now i calculated my Base maintenance calories to be at 2900 .At this weight i can maintain weight.You can calculate yours with one of the calculators available on a google search.My fat loss cals were 2360 and i tapered them to 1700 at the end of my cut mostly because i was sedentary and did nothing throughout my day.I lifted 5 times a week on a PUSH/PULL/Legs routine.Here is an after pic of me at 152 pounds.15 pounds lost in 3 months.

The simple approach what i took was track my early morning weight on empty stomach daily , tracked my calories daily on myfitnesspal and adjusted calories or added cardio if my weight stayed the same for more than 10 days.My choice of foods for protein were Cavin's diet paneer, chicken,soy milk,whey protein and peas.I didn't care about my carbohydrate sources as long as my meals were balanced well between proteins,carbs and fats.I was never short of krispy kreme donuts.Yes.I had them almost every day.I will talk about insulin response of eating carbs alone vs a well balanced meal on a later article/blog.

So how do i build muscle ? Simple use the same theory as above instead your caloric intake daily should be more than your base maintenance cals.Here is what i looked when i reverse dieted to 165 pounds again after the cut.I was actually eating 4000 cals and struggled to put on weight.Reverse dieting is nothing but slowly putting in the calories back again after a cut into your body and going into a caloric surplus instead of binging altogether . I will go in-depth on this in another post.

It is as simple as that guys.You don't need to eat clean all the time.Balance between life and bodybuilding is more important than just bodybuilding.