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