How to plan your diets; for Morbidly Obese, Skinny, and Skinny Fat people! [UPDATED]

Hey Everyone!

Yeah yeah, I know that i had promised to write this post about the exercises that one needs to follow to lose weight, but I think it would be better if I do not let my blog get specified for weight loss only, hence taking my last post as base this time I would like to guide our very obese, skinny and skinny fat readers towards their goal of a fit and well shaped body.

Though first those who have nor read my previous posts, I strongly urge them to please go ahead and do so, for that forms a solid base on everything that I write henceforth will be based.

Okay, so lets get going, shall we?

So let me first start with the overweight guys:

So those of you who are corpulent/very overweight (BMI>30-32), you better start taking care of your body before you get into the category of morbidly obese, and for that, here is what you need to do:

1. Go through my last two articles, get some basic know how of how our body uses and gains fats, how to calculate your TDEE and what foods you should completely avoid.
2. Now, I would strongly suggest  that you try and follow a paleo style diet.
   Paleo Diet is a diet based on the types of foods presumed to have been eaten by early humans, consisting chiefly of meat, fish, vegetables, fruit and excluding dairy and almost all processed food.
   To get to know more about Paleo Diet Click Here.
   This diet has an excellent history when it comes to shedding weight for people who are morbidly obese.
3. TIP: Keeping your calories in check and maintaining a clean diet with the right ratio of macros is much more important to lose fat than spending hours and hours in the gym.
   Personal Experience.

P.S: I will talk about the workout regimen in my next post, please make sure you check that out.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
After Obese, lets come to the other end of the spectrum, the skinny guys:
If you fall into the category of people who, no matter how much they stuff themselves up with food, are unable to gain weight, then you are at the right place, please read on.

As a skinny guy, the most difficult challenge that you will be facing is neither planning your diet nor the exercise, but eating the amount of food/number of calories that you need to get in order to gain weight.
Anyhow, not getting distracted from the main topic, lets get started on how can you actually go about gaining weight:

1. Go through my last two articles, get some basic know how of how to calculate your TDEE and Daily Goal Calories (DGC), how to plan your meals and the importance of protein, carbs and fats; especially protein.
2. Once you have calculated your TDEE, your DGC, your macros and decided upon weather you want to clean or dirty bulk (I would strongly suggest a clean bulk, i.e caloric surplus of not more than 500 calories.) you need to go forward and start planning your meals, but let's leave it here for a little while.
3. Coming to your macros, Protein! as an INDIAN, this component is going to be the most difficult to manage, see Indian veg diets are mostly carb centered with a little/no protein, so if you are a vegetarian, it's going to be a bumpy road for you.As a side note, here are a list of foods that i used to get my daily protein intake:
   Paneer (Raw), Eggs, Soybean chunks, Chicken(yeah, i am a non-vegetarian),fish etc.
   Long story short, I used to gorge on anything with a lot of protein given that its not too unhealthy e.g Deep Fried Chicken (Trans Fat).
   Also. I used a whey protein supplement as well.

So, now let me tell you how I, as an Indian student living in a college dorm with limited resources, managed my meals while bulking:

1. Once I got my TDEE, I used MyFitnessPal, I planned a day before and I made sure that I get the projected protein intake from, as i told you, paneer, eggs etc.
   Once I get my required protein Intake, I observed how much carbs and fats I took along with the food that I ate to get my protein and how much more should I need, to get to my projected macros of the day.
2. After this being done, the diet planning is just reduced to fill in the blanks, the carbs and fats that I need to take I try to get them from rotis, bananas, oatmeal and egg yolks, peanut butter and simple nuts respectively.Also, those of you who do not know how to use MyFitnessPal, please refer to my earlier posts.Note: Usually if you are using Paneer, Milk, Whole eggs to get your protein, the daily fat that you need to take is almost covered and there is very less that you need to get from other sources which only leaves your carbs to be taken care of.
3. Now that you know how you can manage your meals, here is my personal advice for you, as you are a skinny Indian guy on a clean bulk, I personally think that as long as you are getting your protein intake of the day, you don't need to sweat it even if you overshoot your calories, It's okay, you're genetically skinny and you won't gain a lot of fat easily and even if you do, it wont be noticeable.

Note: Please remember the fats that I am advising you to eat as your daily goal are the "Good fats" and not trans fats. If you don't know the difference please consider my previous post.


EDIT: Although I would always suggest a clean bulk to skinny guys but please be advised that a clean bulk takes time and results will come definitely, but slow, sometimes frustratingly slow.
If you are on a clean bulk then you'll first need to make sure that your program and diet is good and then you'll have to believe in it because once you get doubts on what you used to believe, its a downward spiral from there.
Also, if you are skinny and want to take up a "Dirty Bulk" its upto you, the results will come faster but there are cons to the dirty bulk as well, e.g. too much fat. So if you want to take up dirty bulking, please be informed about it first.
Also, I should tell you this, Ankit Sharma, the guy that I was in my first post was a dirty bulker, and you can see, his results were phenomenal!
Now it all depends on person to person on how your body reacts to the stimulus provided by weight training, hence it must be your choice which path you want to follow. :)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Okay and now comes the tricky part of the problem, the skinny fat guys. Basically skinny fat guys are simply the ones with a a good amount of body fat without a decent foundation of muscle
So here is the hard truth, If you are a skinny fat guy living in an INDIAN college, buckle up for you are in for a loong battle, and its not going to be easy, not that it is impossible, HELL NO! only that it is not going to be easy, and it will be very specifically depend on the kind of place you are in and the resources in hand.
Also, if you are not a student or living away from home, then no problems as you can manage this situation easily.

So before you continue reading any further, I'll advice you to first confirm and be sure that you are actually a skinny fat guy.
Those who are not sure, please refer to this link HERE
Also, these Images might help as well.
Once you have decided that you actually are skinny fat, lets see what you can do about that:

1. First, if you are a skinny fat guy, you have 2 options with you, either to lose fat or gain muscle, now when you look at yourself into the mirror you look chubby and you think that you must lose some fat, but with the shirt on you look like a skinny guy who has never been to the gym, so what should you do?
   So if you find yourself in this situation, here's what I would suggest you to do:
2. First, calculate the your TDEE and DGC, with the amount of protein, fats and carbs that you need daily.
3. Secondly, get on a Clean Bulk. Yeah, that's right, you need to gain some quality lean muscle before you even start to think about losing fat, cutting with a skinny fat body will spell disaster.
4. Okay and now comes the Golden Rule of your clean bulk that you would be undergoing for at least a year before you start to cut and that is, Not more than a 100-300 calorie surplus! yeah, you heard it, in fact, I would strongly suggest you to be as close to you maintenance calories as possible! I know being an Indian guy it would be very hard to track each and every calorie that you take throughout the day but hey, this is what you signed up for! so stop complaining and get busy.
5. Now coming to your daily Macros, here's what you need to do:
   Get the required protein and fat intake for the day, even if you overshoot on these in your diet, its okay and you can compromise on your carbs to cover it all up, as long as you are not cutting your carbs too much.
6. So this concludes your diet part, as far as the question of what you can eat and what you can not eat goes, please go through my previous posts.
   Also, to read more about how to approach a skinny fat problem, please refer HERE.

Tip: If you are a skinny fat guy and a total newbie to the gym, you don't need to panic as you are in luck, almost all of the newbies can lose fat and gain muscle at the same time and for that all you need to do is to eat clean, almost around your TDEE and exercise hard.
For more information on everything that I have talked about, please refer to the following video:

EDIT: If you are a skinny fat guy, don't even think about dirty bulking! a HUGE MISTAKE!

With this, I'll conclude this post and the topic of the next post, this time for sure, will be workout programs for different body types.
Till then, stay healthy!
Cheers! :)

How to plan your Diets to lose weight; The Indian Edition

Hello Everyone!

So as promised I am back today and this post is going to be specifically addressing all the Indian college going students who live in the dorm rooms and face problems with their weight loss goal, like not being able to track their Macros and many more.
So, before we get started, lets work on some terminologies;

1. Cutting: Cutting means having calories less than your body uses per day, which results in a loss of fat, that basically means those of you trying to lose weight are actually trying to "cut".
2. Bulking: Bulking is just the opposite of cutting, it means that you are having more number of calories than your body uses up in a day, thus all the skinny guys would want to "Bulk".
3. Clean/Dirty Bulking: Clean Bulking will be referred to as consuming a caloric surplus of up to 500 calories above your maintenance caloric intake, whereas during a dirty bulk, you extend your caloric surplus beyond 500 calories.

Today, I'll be talking about Diets: Food items you should eat/avoid, how to plan your diet and meals and how to track your calories.

Diets

As I pointed out in my earlier post, diets make up for 70% of the progress in your weight loss goal, so i will be taking this up first.

OK so first things first, before planning any kind of diets you will have to calculate your TDEE or your maintenance calories, those of you who don't know what TDEE is please refer to my previous post.
After calculating your TDEE you must calculate the amount of calories you should take to lose fat (I strongly recommend not cutting more than 500 calories from your TDEE) and lets call that your Daily Goal Calorie intake (DGC).

Now once you have your DGC calculate the amount of macros (protein, carbohydrates and fats) you must get daily to achieve that daily calorie intake.
You can calculate all of the above things HERE.
Anyone trying to lose/gain weight, you have to calculate your TDEE and DGC nevertheless.

You have the amount of protein, carbs and fats in grams that you must have on a daily basis and also a number of calories which you should not exceed, now let's talk about how will you go about managing that.

For this I would suggest you download the app MyFitnessPal, this app has a huge database of different foods that we eat with their nutritional info. Now you should log a rough estimate of what all thing you are going to eat the next day, the app will then provide you with the estimate of how many carbs, fats and protein you will be all day long with the total number of calories.
With this said, being a student in any Indian college living in a hostel you obviously wont be able to hit all the macros exactly, for this while loosing weight what i did was:

1. I kept my calories in check, never exceeded my DGC by a huge margin.
2. I played around with my macros, I made sure i get me daily intake of protein and the amount of carbs and fats varied, usually i took fats more than the estimated number and reduced my carb intake to keep my calories in check.

This method worked for me, basically I was following a low carb, high fat and protein diet.
Also, please note that the fats i was taking was all healthy fats and not trans fats, e.g egg yolks, peanut butter, fats present in milk and milk products etc.

Now that I have given you the above information, I will leave the calculations part upto you.
After the calculations, you'll have to figure out for yourself how will you hit your macros and what foods are available to you in your vicinity, however, if you need help you can always leave a comment down below.
Also, i will give you a list of great foods, that you can include in your diet and also those which are a complete no-no.
So here goes:

Foods That You Should Avoid:

1. Simple Sugar/Carbs: This simply tops the list, all the food items containing simple sugars are off limits, these include any type of sweets, coke, cake, pastries yaada yaada.
   If you want to know why simple sugars are so harmful for you Click Here.
2. Trans Fat: These are the harmful fats present in the cooking oil that we use (soybean oil, dalda oil etc). which are used to produce chips, french fries or any other deep fried food products available in the market.

Foods That You Should be Eating:

1. Proteins!! Proteins are the holy grail for people in fitness industry. Proteins are necessary for muscle building but they also play a crucial role in burning fat. How's that, you ask?
   Well let me tell you this, research has shown that eating foods that are rich in proteins can curb hunger and provide us with that filling sensation, what this basically means is that when you eat lean proteins, you'll feel full without eating much calories.
   To read more about my above assertion, Click here.
   Here are some great sources of lean proteins: Fish, boiled chicken, egg whites, turkey breast etc
2. Fiber: Fiber too, like protein helps curb hunger and has a very low calorie density which again means that you can eat a lot of it without having too much calories. Apart from this when you go on a high protein diet with eggs, chicken and foods that are known to cause constipation, fiber helps a lot in digestion.
   Foods that are known to contain Fibre: Salad, Green veggies, Oatmeal, Wheat etc.
3. The "Good" Fats: (Monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats) are the good fats and the main sources are:egg yolks, peanut butter, fats present in milk and milk products etc.
   Read More about the good and the bad fats HERE
4. Complex Carbs: Complex carbs are basically "polysaccharides" what this basically means is that they are a bunch of simple carbs(monosaccharides) linked together.
   
   Complex carbohydrates are good because they usually take longer to be broken down into glucose in your blood, meaning they provide prolonged energy and stabilize your blood sugar rather than spiking it up like simple carbohydrates do.
   Sources: Oatmeal, whole wheat bread, brown rice, beans, lentils etc.

Now that you have a rough Idea of how to go about calculating your TDEE and planning your diet let me give you a model diet plan of around 2500 calories :

• Breakfast: 6 egg whites, 2 slices of brown bread OR 30-35 gms of oatmeal, 500 ml toned milk (not boiled, just out of the packet) with a scoop of protein powder.
• Lunch: 4 Roti, the seasonal sabzi that our mess provided (I tried to make it protein intensive, like I used to prefer chicken, fish, black chickpeas etc), dahi, dal.
• Pre-Workout: 2 medium sized bananas.
• Post-Workout: Protein shake with 5 grams creatine and a banana/oatmeal (Again,I did not boil my oatmeal, i used to have it raw).
• Lunch: Roasted Chicken about 100 grams with 2/3 roti.

As you can see, I overshot my protein goal by a large extent but its okay as the protein projected by this app is actually not totally accurate, in fact it projects around 3-4 grams protein in rotis which is impossible considering the quality of rotis that we get in mess. :p
Additionally, It is good to keep your protein high during a serious cut, it'll be very helpful in preventing muscle loss.

Also. the goal calories given in this is actually my TDEE and as you can see i am safely in a deficit of around 300 calories per day.
So with this i will sign off from today's funda session,

Topic for the next post:
Good workout regimen for weight loss.

Till then,
Stay healthy! :)

Nutrition and Diets 101

Hello again!
So if you have decided that you are going to make a change and not sit on your butts all day long eating chips and drinking soda, your body says thank you. :D

Now if you are wondering why I am talking about diets and not about exercises for fat loss or how many kms a day you should run to lose that belly fat, here's why:

"Ounces are shed in the gym, pounds are shed in the kitchen."

Believe me guys, I cannot stress this enough, what you put into your body all day long makes up to 70% of the progress you make towards your fat loss goal, only the remaining 30% depends on your workouts in the gym.

OK, now that I have mentioned GYM, let me tell you this, It is not necessary to go to the gym to lose weight. Period.

The one and only thing necessary for weight loss is remaining in a calorie deficit, what that means is the amount of calories that you consume each day must be less than the amount of calories that you expend in everyday activities.
** What is a Calorie?

Your body needs energy for brain to work, your heart to keep on beating, your stomach to keep on digesting everything you throw at it and finally, to keep you warm. What this means is that even if you are not doing anything all day long, your body uses energy just to keep you alive, this is called your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). When you exercise you expend additional energy through physical activity and that energy when combined with your BMR gives us your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), which is also known as your maintenance calories, i.e if you eat this much amount of calories, you'll neither gain nor lose weight.
Now that you know all this, gaining or losing weight simply boils down to 3 easy steps:

1. Calculate your TDEE.
2. Stay in a calorie deficit or a calorie surplus for losing or gaining weight respectively.
3. Stay PERSISTENT.

Simple enough Right? WRONG!

The 3 statement above actually paints a partially correct picture.

See when you weigh yourself, the number that the wicked scale projects does not represent how fat you actually are, because the weight is actually the sum of 3 things

1. The weight of your bones.
2. The weight of your lean muscle.
3. The weight of your body fat.

Now the 1st thing is a constant, you cannot change that, but the 2nd and 3rd are variables, so believe me when i say this, you would want to lose fat but if in the process you lose all the muscle as well, the number on the scale will drop but you'll not look good. You'll end up becoming skinny fat. (Have a look, only a picture can explain what i wanna say.)

Also, this is the mistake that I did and now am on course to correct it.
So basically what I wanted to stress is, you should aim to lose fat, but not the muscle that you already have!

And here is where micro managing your diet comes into play, which will be the topic of my next post, as of now, I will tell you what all components does our everyday food has.

Each and everything that you eat contains 3 major components

1. Carbohydrates: Carbohydrates are one of the main types of nutrients. They are the MAJOR source of energy for your body. Each gm of carbohydrate has 4 Calories of energy  Your digestive system changes carbohydrates into glucose (blood sugar). Your body uses this sugar for energy for your cells, tissues and organs. Carbs provide us with instant energy which is basically used for explosive activities, e.g Sprinting.
2. Proteins: Proteins are the building blocks of our body tissue, they are needed for the repair and maintenance of our muscle tissue. Protein can also be used as a source of energy in  absence of carbohydrates or fats. Each gm of protein also contains 4 Calories of energy.
3. Fats: Fats are stored in our body in Adipose tissue as a reserve form of energy in case carbohydrates are not available. Now fats can be good or bad, example of good fats: Monosaturated fats (Fat present in nuts and raisins); Example of bad fats: Trans Fat (Refined soybean oil). Fats however, take some time to get metabolized and hence cannot provide instant energy unlike carbs.

And now that you have learned the basic 3 components of any food let me tell you about something that your body makes, which plays a huge role on how your fat cells are metabolized, and that something is  Insulin.

Insulin is basically an hormone released by the pancreas which regulates the amount of glucose in the blood, and how it does that is very important to understand, so instead of 

reading i would like to introduce some audio visual effects instead, Here you go:

So, After this it must be very clear to you how and why our body stores fat.
Now upto this point all the information that I gave was universal, i.e everyone, be it fat or skinny must know this fundamentals.
From my next post I will start explaining how to lose fat, so all the fat guys out there, be prepared.
As far as the skinny guys are concerned, don't worry i haven't forgotten you. :)

Before concluding, I would like all of you who are actually serious about losing/gaining weight to calculate your TDEE and DGC from HERE.
And with this, I'll be taking your leave for now. Cheers!

P.S. The guy at end end of my previous post was Ankit Sharma. :D

Introduction

Hi there!

My name is Aditya Chauhan and today I am starting this blog with very specific goal, i.e to help out Indian students like me who live in college dorm rooms and are now sick of their bulging bellies or their stick figure like body and now want to make a change.
But this post is going to be about me!
Obviously you people would wanna know what good did I do for you to be listening to me :D
So here is my story, in short

1st March 2014
Body weight: 95 kg
Body fat percentage: 25-27 percent
Height: 6ft
BMI: 28.3 (overweight)

Yeah, you guess it right, the red one is none other than yours truly and the guy in the blue is my bud Ankit Sharma. 

Now, fast forward to,

1st March 2015

Body weight: 68 kg

Body fat percentage: 15-17 percent

BMI: 20.3

Looks skinny? Think Again :D

                       

Now that you have seen my before and after pics and are looking down on your bulging belly thinking I'll never get rid of it, here's what I have to say;

"The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it!" - John Belfort

Believe me guys, I was one of the most lethargic and lazy guy one can find, if i can do it, so can you!
You just have to make up you mind!
And once you have decided to tackle this head on, believe me you will not find yourself alone, been there, done that, and now I am all about helping you get out of that flab and into your dream body.
So here i will conclude, letting this sink for a while, and once you make up your mind you can get to the next post from which i will start explaining exactly what you need to do. :)

So strap on guys, it'll be a hell of a journey.

Oh, I almost forgot, speaking of transformations, I have some pics for you skinny guys as well.

                       

Lets play Sherlock, shall we?

Guess Who?! :D