Fitness Watches Men
How worried about carbs should I be?
I am a 23 yr old man, I exercise rigorously twice a day, I don’t eat junk food, I take vitamins and supplements. Would I see real results in my fitness if I cut down on the carbs? I count calories now, should I start watching my carbs too? and what would be a good amount for me to shoot for every day, if I were trying to lose weight? Thx guys!
Not all carbs are bad for you. Whole grain products, fresh fruits and vegetables, and nuts are good for you. What you need to watch out for is refined flour/sugar and high fructose corn syrup, which is the father of all dietary evil. You’ll find HFCS in a lot of things, but soft drinks and fruit juices that are not 100% juice are LOADED with it.
To figure out roughly how many total calories you need per day just to maintain what you have, do the following: (1) Take your weight and multiply it by 11. (2) Take that number and multiply it by 1.25 if you’re mostly sedentary, 1.3 if you’re moderately active, and 1.35 if you’re very active. The number you come up with is your daily caloric maintenance level.
I’ll use myself as an example: I weigh 220 pounds. Multiply 220 by 11 and you get 2,420. I consider myself mostly sedentary, so if I multiply 2,420 by 1.25 I get 3,025. That means I need 3,025 calories per day just to maintain what I have. Now, if I want to lose one pound a week I need to cut 500 calories per day. If I want to lose two pounds a week, I need to cut 1,000 calories per day. So I’ll shoot for two pounds a week and cut my caloric intake to 2,000 calories a day, just to make it easy.
WARNING: Don’t EVER cut your caloric intake below 1,800 calories a day. Your body will go into starvation mode and will greedily hang on to every last bit of fat you have and burn the tissue that takes the most energy to maintain — muscle.
So if I’m on the 2,000 calorie per day plan and I do an even three-way split, it comes out to roughly 665 calories per day from each of the nutrient groups. Protein and carbs are 4 calories per gram, so that means I need to take in about 166g of protein and 166g of carbs per day. Fat is 9 calories per gram, so I need to take in about 74g of fat per day.
Does that help?
Men on Fitness
