What Matters When I Meal Prep?

Meal prep ensures that you have healthy meals at all times and is also great for maintaining your calorie count if your goal is losing weight.

When it comes to embarking on a weight loss journey, planning ahead is always going to be helpful! Meal prepping is a great way to stick to a plan and control caloric intake. However, it involves implementing the correct strategy to make it effective and nutritious. Below you can learn what matters most when you meal prep.

The three (3) main factors in your weight loss:

• Total calories consumed

• Quality of these calories

• Macro ratio, division of carbs/fats/protein

What The Heck Are Macros?

So, you’re probably wondering what in the world a ‘macro’ even is. Are we right? Well, ‘macro’ is short for ‘macronutrient.’ By definition, a macronutrient is, “a type of food (e.g., fat, protein, carbohydrate) required in large amounts in the human diet.”

Macronutrients are the nutrients that provide the energy to carry out our human functions, and they are broken down into three categories; protein, fats, and carbohydrates. Let’s take a look at them.

Carbohydrates

Think potatoes, fruit, bread, oatmeal, chips, sugar, etc. Those are carbohydrates! They are all of the sugars, starches, and fibers you would find in your fruits, veggies, grains and even dairy products.

Their job is to provide energy for our central nervous system and energy to our muscles. They are critical to our brain function and also influence our mood and memory! Have you ever had a bowl of ice cream and then felt happy? Thank those carbs! They are a key player in mental health.

Carbohydrates can be broken down into two categories: Simple vs. Complex.

• Simple Carbohydrates: are broken down quickly by the body. They are found naturally in foods such as fruit and dairy. They also include things like sugar, candy, soda, etc.

• Complex Carbohydrates: are broken down slowly by the body. They are found in foods such as beans, vegetables, and whole grains.

Protein

The second type of macronutrient is protein. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that make up your muscles, skin, bones, hair, nails, etc. Without protein, your organs can not exist.

Most protein is found in animal sources such as poultry, meat, eggs, and dairy. However, you can also find protein in plant-based foods such as beans, tofu/tempeh, nuts, seeds, nutritional yeast, and quinoa.

Dietary Fat

The last (and usually scariest) macronutrient is dietary fat. Like carbohydrates and protein, dietary fat is also essential to life. Like carbohydrates, dietary fat is an energy source. Your body will store up fat (not make you fat!) and use it as energy once your carbohydrate reserves have been depleted. Have you ever started to feel tired during a workout and then get a second wind? Your fat stores just kicked in!

Fats can be found in foods such as nuts, seeds, oils, butter, fatty meat and fatty fish.

Like carbohydrates, dietary fats are also broken down into different categories. We have two main types:

• Good Fats. These include monounsaturated fatty acids found in oils, polyunsaturated fatty acids found in plant-based foods and omega-3’s found in fish.

• Bad Fats. These include saturated fats found in animal products and full-fat dairy products* and trans fats that come from oils which have undergone processing.

What Macronutrient Ratio Should I Use?

If your goal is:

• Weight Loss: it is usually best to go with a higher protein, lower fat, lower carbohydrate ratio. The standard 25%-45% carbohydrates, 35%-50% protein and 20%-35% fat

• Maintenance: you can increase our fat and carbohydrate consumption a bit. Carbohydrates may range 35%-55%, protein 25%-40%, and fat 25%-40%.

• Muscle Gain: here you will want a higher carbohydrate and protein ratio to fuel your workouts. Your ratio should be around 45% carbohydrates, 35% protein, and 20% dietary fat.

How Many Calories Should I Eat to Lose Weight?

The age-old eternal question people have, is actually a very simple calculation. First off, we need to figure out your RMR, or resting metabolic rate. You can google “calculating RMR”, or “calculating daily calories”.

How Does a Calorie Calculator Work?

To get the best calorie numbers, it’s best to use a weight loss calculator. It’s a simple procedure and can even be fun and interesting—even if you’re not trying to change your weight. 

After you input data, it uses a formula called the Mifflin St. Jeor equation to calculate your resting metabolic rate. That’s the number of calories your body needs to function when it is at rest. Then, based on your personalized lifestyle information, the calculator adds the number of calories you need to fuel your body for daily activity. Finally, it either adds calories to gain weight or subtracts calories to help you lose weight.

You’ll need to provide some important information about your age, gender, height, and your current weight to get the right calorie number. The calculator needs this data because these are factors that influence your metabolic rate—or the number of calories that your body needs to function. In general, men need more calories than women. Larger bodies need more calories than smaller bodies and younger adults require more calories than older adults.

You’ll also be asked about your activity habits. If your body is more active during the day, it requires more fuel (in the form of calories). Try to be as honest as possible about your exercise and daily activity habits. If you fudge the numbers, you won’t get an accurate result. If you’re not sure how active you are during the day, keep an activity journal for a week or look at data from your fitness tracker to get a smart estimate.

Reaching Your Goal Weight

When you complete the calorie calculator process, you’ll get a daily calorie goal. This is the number of calories you should eat each day to reach your desired weight in the time frame that you set.

If you are trying to gain weight, your daily calorie goal will include a calorie surplus. But if weight loss is your goal, a calorie deficit is factored into your final number.

A calorie deficit is simply an energy shortfall. When you create a calorie deficit, you deprive your body of the fuel it needs to function. So, your body burns stored fat (excess weight) for fuel instead. A calorie deficit occurs when you cut calories by eating less than your body needs or burn extra calories with physical activity. You can also combine diet and exercise to create a calorie deficit.

As a general rule, most experts say that a total weekly calorie deficit of 3,500 calories will lead you to lose one pound of weight. If you cut more calories, you’ll lose weight faster. But it is not safe or effective to cut too many calories. Very low calorie diets(less than 800-1000 calories per day) can backfire and should only be followed with a doctor’s supervision.

Sound complicated? Let’s use an example to explain. Let’s say that you are a sedentary woman. That means that you don’t exercise on a regular basis. The weight loss calculator may say that you need to eat 1,200 calories per day to lose weight. But you don’t think that you can cut enough food from your diet to reach that number. That’s OK. You can simply add exercise to your weekly routine to account for a few extra calories.

Here are a few ways you might make it work:

• Eat 1,300 (100 extra) calories each day and add a short evening walk to your daily routine to burn the extra 700 calories each week.

• Eat 1,400 (200 extra) calories each day and add a HIIT workout to your schedule two times per week and three 30-minute walks during the week to burn the extra 1,400 calories each week.

• Eat 1,500 (300 extra) calories each day and add 45 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise to your daily schedule to burn the extra 2100 calories each week.

In each of these scenarios, you’ve added calories to your daily food budget, but you’ve burned more calories with exercise to maintain the proper calorie deficit for weight loss.  If you want to lose weight faster, you simply add the exercise to your daily routine without adding calories to your daily diet.

Good luck with your planning.

I hope this helps clear up a few questions you may have.  As you can see, we are dealing with numbers, which is why being exact is essential.

Meal Prepping helps tremendously with that, as you can calculate how many calories per meal you want.

Making a nice big family sized meal of say 6000 calories, and dividing it over ten (10) meals, ensures you are eating a 600 calorie meal.  The time saving benefits are also a huge bonus to fall in love with.

Start counting your calories today, and make them count!