Personal Trainer Online : Workoutwiz.com : Planning Your Meals

In This Issue.........

I. Planning Your Meals.

II. Scheduling Your Meals.

In the first part of this series, we covered the benefits of eating at least five well balanced meals (frequent feeding) each day. One of the purposes of frequent feeding is to provide your body with just enough calories to make it through to the next meal, thus reducing its need to store extra calories as fat.

Planning Your Meals

The easiest way to plan your meals is to make sure that each meal consists of the correct proportions of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. The average person responds to a ratio of 3 parts carbohydrates, 2 parts protein and 1 part fat (i.e. approximately 50% carbohydrates, 30% protein and 20% fat). However, different people will need different proportions depending on their fitness goals, activity levels and a variety of other factors.

How do you turn these numbers into reality?

Our sister site the Nutrition Wizard^TMcan do this for you, but if you're interested, here's how it works.

Step 1) Changing Percentages Into Calories.

Let's say your eating five meals a day for a total of 2000 calories. Using the ratio of 50% carbs, 30% proteins and 20% fats will tell you that 1000 (2000*.5) calories will come from carbohydrates, 600 (2000*.30) calories from proteins and 400 (2000*.2) calories from fats.

Step 2) Converting Calories Into Grams.

Before you can convert the calories into grams, you will need to know how many calories are in one gram of carbohydrates, proteins and fats.

1 gram of Carbohydrates = 4 calories

1 gram of Protein = 4 calories

1 gram of Fat = 9 calories

Still with me? Great. Now that we know how many calories are in one gram of each. We can figure out how many grams we should be eating each day to stay within our guidelines.

Step 3) Creating Your Meals.

Using the our example of 2000 calories each day. Each of the five meals should contain approximately 400 (2000/5) calories, consisting of 50 (400*.5 /4) grams of carbohydrates, 30 (400*.3 /4) grams of protein and 9 (400 *.2 /9) grams of fat. (It's not really so complicated after you do it a few times).

Scheduling Your Meals

Scheduling your meals based on your activity level will allow your body to make better use of the calories. Before you eat each meal, ask yourself "What will I be doing for the next 2-3 hours?" If you're going to be sitting behind a desk staring at the walls, obviously you're not going to be using very much energy or burning a lot of calories.

In this situation you would want to eat a small balanced meal with very few carbohydrates (carbohydrates are your bodies preferred energy source). You may also want to consider getting another job, but I'll save that for another article :)

Next week, we'll take a look at some other "Rules To Eat By" , including the differences between simple and complex carbohydrates and how to include them in your diet for maximum benefit.

Stay Focused.

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