Step-By-Step Guide: Achieving Your Dream Body in 2023

Tracking your food and activity is the “red pill” of fitness and changing the way you look. This coming year, if you want to sustainably change your body composition, then tracking your calorie intake is the surefire way to do so. 

For those of you not familiar with the “red pill” concept: in The Matrix, the lead character is given the choice between a blue and red pill in regard to how he’ll view reality. The blue pill keeps you blissfully ignorant in reality and the red pill exposes you to the true nature of reality, for better or worse. 

The ability to track your food exposes you to the true nature of reality, for better or worse. No more guesswork, no more eating salads at lunch because that is the “healthy” option (whatever that means), then doing an hour of Stairmaster because “that is how you burn fat”.  The ability to track food shows in cold, hard numbers exactly how many calories and grams of macronutrients what you’re eating contains (carbs, protein, fat). It leaves no excuses to be made when you’re not gaining or losing weight, only adjustments to your daily intake!

There is no escaping the fact that 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, which is an absurdly small amount, contains 190 calories. Therefore, there is no escaping the fact that the peanut butter you spread on your toast in the morning equates to, in many cases, 400+ calories, depending on how heavy handed you are with your toast slathering. 

The reason for that overly specific example is because peanut butter is the best thing ever, and I was pissed when I realized 2 tablespoons is a meager 32 grams... Live and learn. 

Whether it is using weight watchers or actually measuring and weighing out your portions for a period of time to ensure you’re eating a consistent number of calories, measuring your food intake is the single most effective step you can take to ensure that your body will change the way you want it to. 

Once you realize that what we expend and burn in a day is just a math equation, the guesswork of how much food to eat and activity to perform is completely gone. Seriously. 

It sounds like a pain, I get it. Tony the Tupperware guy at work who weighs his food is seen as, frankly, weird as hell. And guess what? He kind of is! He lacks social skills, smells weird, and microwaves eggs... but also guess what? Tony is SHREDDED! And you’re not! So big T wins in the fitness category. 

Humans really shouldn’t have to weigh their food to stay at a healthy body fat range. Many of us, however, do need to track for a period of time to get some reference of what an actual portion is. Countless studies have been done on the reality that we are awful at estimating the number of calories contained in foods. I’m no stranger to that phenomenon. 

The reason I’m writing this is because I recently started tracking calories again and will do so for the next few months. The purpose is twofold: one, I want to put on some muscle in the next four months and need to be eating in a caloric surplus for the majority of that time and, two, I want to reacquaint myself with some semblance of knowing what 4 ounces of a meat looks like, a cup of yogurt, etc... This is an invaluable skill to have. 

Tracking, in my opinion, is not something you should do forever, unless it gives you a sense of security around food that has a positive impact on your mental. Tracking should be used periodically as a tool to teach yourself what kind of energy certain foods provide. I always learn something new when I start tracking again and can use that information when I go “off” the tracking program. 

Staying on theme with the peanut butter example above, which was an absolute gut punch, I realized quickly that many "health" foods like nuts actually pack quite the caloric punch, and a serving of them is quite small. A sweet potato labeled as “medium” in any calorie counting app (fat secret - what I use, MyFitnessPal, cronometer), will show 200 calories or so... but when you actually weigh it in grams, the sweet potato is far from “medium”, it is actually quite large... and contains 400 calories. You pick up little things like that as you go. The more you do it, the more you can learn and apply when not tracking, which is the ultimate goal.

Okay, I’m going to try and keep this short, but I already know it's not going to be. This is not a quick fix program. This is actually how you do this. This is how you practically go about the process of tracking your calorie intake and bodyweight to achieve your goals: 

1.     Buy a food scale

a. 15 bucks on amazon

b. Weighing your food as you prepare it for the week takes the guesswork out of calorie intake

c. Up front, it takes a bit of time investment getting used to weighing ingredients, but after a few days of doing this you get pretty speedy at it. Maximum, I spend 2-3 minutes a day weighing food. 

d. This is also very helpful in meal prepping. Say you make ground beef, rice, and avocado for your lunches this week. Weighing out your dry rice, cooked beef, and avocado before putting it into containers ensures you are eating pretty much the same number of calories, protein, carbs and fat for your lunches. Then, build your days around that with consistent breakfasts and dinners as well. If you’re not weighing and portioning out meals for the week (most time-efficient), then you will need to weigh out each ingredient before each meal... again, still doesn’t take that long but probably adds 5-10 minutes of leg work each day.

e. NITTY GRITTY TRACKING TIPS: 

• It doesn’t matter if you weight your grains dry or cooked, vegetables and meat raw or cooked, etc... as long as you’re consistent with what state you weigh your food in, it will work out just fine
• Make sure you include oils you use when prepping – for example, if you’re putting some olive oil into a pan, place the container on the scale, pour, place it back on the scale, and mark down how many grams/mL you poured. It will show up as a negative number because you poured out fluid, but the absolute value of that number is how much you used. 
• If you’re weighing out dry rice for 3 meals, say 150 grams, and you try to “eyeball” portion it out into thirds once it’s cooked, you probably won’t get it split exactly equal... THAT IS OKAY. As long as you mark down 50 grams for each of the three meals you’re prepping, the calorie intake will even out over the week. It doesn’t need to be perfect, and it’s okay to still record 50 grams for each meal. Hope that makes sense because it takes a lot of the mental hassle out of this. 
• You probably don't need to track veggies (unless you're adding oil to them) and low-calorie fruits like berries. Eat those foods as much as you want and don't worry about weighing them unless you really want to.
• Although many takeout restaurants have their calorie amounts listed on food tracking apps, it is not the most accurate
• Say you’re at chipotle and you have a stingy or heavy-handed rice scooper: The number of calories in that rice scoop can vary quite easily by 20 percent or more, not to mention the oils and condiments included in those meals rarely matching the given serving size on your calorie counting app.
• While eating out can still work when tracking, I suggest limiting it to ensure that what you’re eating is being tracked with the most accuracy possible. You’re allowed to be a human and eat out with friends, but you need to be at peace with the fact that your calories from that meal are not going to be as accurate, so it’s best to leave yourself a bit more wiggle room those days with your calorie and macronutrient (protein, carbs, fats) targets.

2.     Buy a regular scale

a. Weigh yourself every morning after peeing for consistency’s sake – this is important as weekly trends let us know if we’re on the right track with our calorie intake.

b. If you’re losing a pound a day consistently, you’re eating too few calories, and you’re not losing all fat, I promise. If you’re gaining a pound a day consistently, you’re eating too many calories and it’s not all muscle, I also promise. Body composition change happens slowly. 

c. The reason I say gaining or losing pounds ‘consistently’ in the above bullet is because daily weight fluctuations are common, especially when you make a drastic change in your diet. Carb and sodium intake can drastically impact the amount of water we hold, so don’t freak out if you fluctuate a pound or two in the first two days – it is majority water weight, never purely muscle or fat.

• Side note, this is why people swear by keto and low carb diets’ effectiveness – they get excited the first week when they quickly drop pounds of weight... They’re not eating carbs and processed foods, and are holding way less water. That combined with the early fat loss from the caloric deficit they’re in shows rapid results. 
• This doesn’t mean that high carb diets can’t produce fat loss. Remember the “red pill”: it all comes down to calories. The scale number (our bodyweight) changes more rapidly with low carb because of the water weight we lose.

3. Determine a rough estimate of your Total Daily Energy Expenditure - TDEE - otherwise known as “maintenance calories”)

a. This is a crude estimate in many cases – don’t take it as a perfect number, but use it as a point to start

b. Based on this estimate, set your daily caloric and macronutrient targets that fall within your goal of weight gain or weight loss

c. We’re going to use a maintenance calorie number of 2500 for this example – and we’re going to set our protein, carb, and fat intake numbers to values that fall within that range (see next section)

4. Set your macronutrient targets:

a. Protein (ALWAYS START HERE): 4 calories per gram

• 0.7-1.5 grams per pound of your goal weight. Higher is, without fail, better.
• Say your goal bodyweight is 200 pounds. An easy target to shoot for is 200 grams of protein/day (200x4 calories is 800 calories from protein)

b. Carbs: 4 calories per gram

• Be honest with yourself here: If you’re pretty overweight, I’d recommend not exceeding 1 gram per pound of goal weight here for a host of psychological and physiological reasons.
• In short, your body isn’t very insulin sensitive and probably doesn’t handle carbs that well when overweight AND, psychologically, carbs are way easier to overeat than protein and fat.
• If you’re not overweight and/or you’re trying to gain weight, the more carbs the better. It’s easier to eat more of them, and they provide great fuel for your training. 1-4 grams per pound of your goal weight is a good target here.
• Say your goal bodyweight is 200 pounds again: if overweight, I’d suggest not exceeding 200 grams. If you’re trying to gain, anywhere from 200-800 grams is feasible. 800 grams is a bunch, and probably involves eating a loaf of sourdough every day, but it is a realistic target nonetheless.
• For this 2500 calorie example’s sake, let’s set carbs at 250 grams per day (250x4 calories is 1000 calories from carbs – 1800 calories total with protein)

c. Fat: 9 calories per gram

• With your remaining calories after accounting for protein and carbs (in the case of this example, 700 calories), divide that number by 9, as there are 9 calories per gram of fat.
• For hormonal health, I suggest not dipping below 0.3 grams per pound of goal weight, and not exceeding 1 gram per pound of goal weight (0.3-1 gram per pound of goal weight)
• 700 calories divided by 9 calories per gram of fat is about 78 grams

d. Your total energy intake per day, in this case 2500 calories, is broken into:

                                               i.     Protein: 200 grams = 800 calories

                                             ii.     Carbs: 250 grams = 1000 calories

                                            iii.     Fat: 78 grams = 702 calories

                                            iv.     Total intake: 2502 calories

5. After determining your Maintenance Calories and breakdown of macronutrients:

a. Spend a week consuming that number of calories recommended each day (2500 calories in our example) by measuring out your food as described above.

b. If your weight fluctuates by a significant number up or down that week, you will know that you need to adjust your intake up or down to more gradually increase or decrease your bodyweight. Again, don't freak out over daily fluctuation - concern yourself more so with weekly trends!

For goals of muscle gain, I recommend not exceeding a 0.5-1 percent increase in bodyweight each week (i.e. 1-2 pounds for a 200-pound person). This will ensure that you’re not putting on excess amounts of bodyfat as you gain weight. 

• Though it is unavoidable that you will gain some fat as you put on muscle, you can limit that amount by consistently being in a slight caloric surplus (5-10% above maintenance calories).

For goals of fat loss, I recommend not exceeding a 1-2 percent decrease in bodyweight each week (2-4 pounds for a 200-pound person). This will ensure that you’re not losing excess muscle as you drop weight.

• Though it is unavoidable that you will lose some muscle mass as you lose bodyfat, you can limit that amount by consistently being in a slight caloric deficit (5-10% below maintenance calories) prioritizing protein (1 gram or more per pound of goal weight is a great target), and maintaining strength in the gym.

If you need some help setting up your training and/or caloric and macronutrient targets, I’d love to be a part of your journey. Shoot me a message or email (612-940-4473 - @ericedwardweber@gmail.com )

There we have it champions. I know this was dense, but this is the master key to sustainable success with your body composition. This is the exact process that people who get in phenomenal shape follow... Read, reread, take notes, set your targets, and STICK TO THE PLAN. If you follow this article’s guidelines, I guarantee that you will achieve your goals. 

Achievement of body composition goals does not happen in two, four, or even six weeks. It’s a gradual process of consistency and discipline. You don’t need to track calories forever, but I compare it to budgeting your money – you will never know where to start or finish if you don’t have numbers to work off of. 

Hope this helps.