Simple Nutrition Advice for Dieting and Meal Planning

A friend of mine asked me for advice about dieting and creating an effective meal plan.

So, I sent him a message with some suggestions and a summary of my knowledge and beliefs about nutrition.

I figured that information might be useful to others, so I’m posting it here as well.

The truth is that nutrition doesn’t have to be complicated for most people.

There are just a few fundamental concepts that you need to know.

Understanding Your Energy Needs

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the amount of calories that your body would burn if you laid in bed all day.

Activity level is an estimate of how many calories that you burn through activity, such as walking or exercise.

Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is how many calories you burn in a day, and it’s the combination of your BMR and your activity level.

Maintenance calories is a concept that describes the amount of calories that you need to consume to maintain your current weight.

There are free online calculators for all of these that are a great starting point for figuring out your numbers. They may not be exact, but they’ll point you in the right direction.

Add 300 to 500 calories to your maintenance calories for a good bulking rate.

Subtract 300 to 500 from maintenance for a cutting rate.

You can bulk with a larger caloric surplus, but you should keep in mind that a higher percentage of your weight gain will be fat.

Similarly, with a more drastic cut, you’ll end up burning a larger proportion of muscle along with the fat. In general, though, if you have a lot of fat to lose, it’s alright to go for a larger calorie reduction.

Essential Nutrition Tips

Drink a lot of water.

Try to get about 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. This number can be lowered if you’re not concerned with building muscle.

Try not to eat or drink a lot of sugar, especially by itself. If you’re going to have sugar, better to combine it with proteins and fats in the same meal.

Personalizing Your Meal Plan

After that, a lot of things are just personal preference or up to the demands of your situation.

For example, your amount of fats and carbs (e.g. more aerobic exercise, more carbs).

The types of foods you eat could be dependent upon the type of diet you follow (keto, paleo, etc).

As a good default, I’d recommend eating a variety of “single ingredient foods”, like fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, eggs, and meat.

You can get more complicated if you’d like to, or perhaps you need a setup that’s more specific to your situation.

If that’s the case, then I recommend the Renaissance Periodization YouTube channel. These are their nutrition related playlists:

• Healthy Eating Made Simple
• Nutrition Myths
• Fat Loss Dieting Made Simple
• Muscle Gain Dieting Made Simple

You can also ask an LLM: explain your situation and ask for advice or information specific to your situation.

Final Thoughts: Keep It Simple and Consistent

The most important fundamental ideas to understand are:

• maintenance calories
• try to mostly eat single ingredient foods
• and drink a lot of water.

Honestly, that should be enough for most cases. If you can understand and implement these ideas, you’ll be set.

An important point is that this doesn’t have to be super strict!

I don’t follow these guidelines 100% of the time. Sometimes I have Oreos on an empty stomach.

I try to stick to this plan 80-90% of the time. This is so that I’m not completely thrown off track whenever I do feel the urge to go off-script.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good!