HOW TO BUILD YOUR PLATE TO FIT YOUR NUTRITION NEEDS

1. Determine your macro needs

1. How do you know what to eat or how much to eat if you don’t know what your nutrition goals are? 

2. By determining what your nutrition goals are, you can then make a plan and figure out what your macros should be.

3. But what are you macros? Well, macro is short for macronutrients, which are your proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. All foods fall into one of these three categories. For example, meats fall under protein, vegetables and cookies and chips all fall under carbohydrates, and butters and oils fall under fats. 

4. This may sound crazy, but no food is good or bad. Those are labels we give to food to demonize or praise foods. Really, food is this, it is fuel for our bodies. We need food to survive; it is a social, emotional, and essential fuel for us. All foods are neutral until we have too much or too little of it. 

5. By keeping our nutrition in balance and using portions that help support our nutrition goals, your goals will be reached with attention and consistency. 

6. Defining Your macros. There are free resources online you can use to calculate your needs. Or, you can learn how to calculate them yourself with the following equations. 

1. Determine your calorie expenditure, then based on that and your goals, you will choose a calorie amount that either increases, maintains, or decreases your daily calorie intake. In this case, let's go with 1800 calories. 

2. Next, determine your daily protein needs: 1.2kg of protein / kg of body weight = # kg of protein / day. For a 150 lb female (68kg), who will eat 1800 calories daily, that is 68x1.2=81.6. We will round up to 82 kg of protein. To get calories for protein let’s multiply 82x4=328 calories of protein daily. 

1. To determine calories for each marco, we first determined the amount of kg of protein needed, but now need to convert kg to calories. The following is the conversion:

1. 1 kg protein = 4 calories

2. 1 kg fat = 9 calories

3. 1 kg carb = 4 calories 

4. 1 kg alcohol = 7 calories (Bonus!) 

3. Next is to determine fat intake per day. Decide if you like to have a high, medium, or low fat diet and choose the corresponding percentage. For this example we will use 30%, a typical volume. For this math, multiply 1800 by 30% or 1800x.3=540. That's 540 calories from fat for this person’s daily fat intake. If we want to do the math the other way and find out kg, we would divide 540 by 7 or 540/7=60kg. 

4. And lastly we determine the carbs. Basically, the rest is carbs. But let’s recap and do the math. 

1. So far, for this 150 lb woman who will eat 1800 calories daily, we have calculated that she will need:

1. 82 kg or 328 calories of protein

2. 60 kg or 540 calories of fat

2. To determine carbs, add the protein and fat calories together, 328+540=868. Then subtract that from the total calories, 1800-868=932. That’s 932 calories for carbohydrates daily. And to get the kg, simply divide 932 by 4 or 932/4=233, that's 233 kg of carbs. 

5. Finally we have our macros! We calculated, for this 150 lb woman who will eat 1800 calories daily with 30% being fat, that her macros are this:

1. Protein = 82 kg or 328 calories

2. Fat = 60 kg or 540 calories

3. Carb = 233 kg or 932 calories

2. Determine your food staples 

1. After you’ve done the math to find your macronutrients (which congratulations by the way! Because that is not easy math), your next step is to decide what your food staples are and stock your kitchen with them. 

2. I will provide you with a few great staples in each macro category that are great to have on hand and will never leave you feeling like you’ve cut delicious food out of your life.

1. Carbs (starch): pasta, rice, rice cakes, oats, sweet potato, popcorn

2. Carbs (veg/fruit): broccoli, spinach, peppers, onions, mushrooms, carrots, cucumbers, strawberries, bananas, apples, blueberries, raspberries

3. Proteins: beef, chicken, eggs, greek yogurt, fish, tofu, beans, lentils

4. Fats: olive oil, peanut butter (natural), parmesan cheese, nuts & seeds

3. The above foods are just a very small, short list of foods that are part of foods you should eat to help you reach your nutrition goals. If you have more specific questions relating to your goals, reach out to me. This is literally what I do to help clients get on track with their nutritional needs to fuel their health and fitness goals. Also, I will link my Healthy Foods List here so you can see the entire list or look below. 

3. How you will measure/portion your food

1. When in doubt, measure it out!

2. But if you can’t, use your measuring cups or the hand method.

1. Measuring cups will be your best friend when portioning food out. 

1. Now, these measurements can be added to, or subtracted from, but for a woman consuming 1800 calories daily, these are general portion sizes (they may vary based on energy expenditure and lean body mass).

2. Also, this is for eating 4 meals a day.

3. Protein ¾ cup per meal

4. Carb (starch) ½ cup per meal

5. Carb (veg/fruit) ½ cup per meal

6. Fat 2 tbsp per meal

2. The hand method is Precision Nutrition’s easy, always with you measuring tool. (Choosing the former for women, latter for men.) View link here. 

1. 1-2 palms of protein-dense foods at each meal.

2. 1-2 fists of vegetables at each meal.

3. 1-2 cupped handfuls of carbohydrates at most meals.

4. 1-2 thumbs of fat-dense foods at most meals.

4. Have a support network around you

1. Having a support system around you who encourages you to keep going when you’re not sure, or want to go off track, someone who checks in with you to see how it's going, or joins you in your nutrition goals and has their own nutrition goals similar to yours. Having one to two people who know your goals and support you makes all the difference, especially when you want to quit or fall off track.

2. Other ways to support your nutrition goals are grocery shopping with a list, and sticking to it; having healthy snacks on hand when a craving hits; recognizing the difference between thirst and true hunger; reducing barriers to eating healthy; putting up barriers to make it more difficult for yourself to fall off track; and using a food tracker (notebook or app) to help keep track of your macros. There are plenty of other nuanced ways to support your nutritional goals that may be very specific and personal to you. We can discover what they are together. If you, or someone you care about, are looking to start a nutrition health journey, check out my website www.izzyfitnesstraining.com for more information, or reach out to me at izzyfittraining@gmail.com to get started today.