Look familiar?
As most of you know, working from home and sitting at your computer all day makes it easy to pack on pounds. When I started in this industry about 5 years ago or so now, I was so focused purely on making money that I didn’t really focus on much else. As you can guess (and most probably relate as well), I packed on weight pretty quickly. At my biggest, I hit 278 pounds. Sure, I was making good money and being able to live like I never have, but I wasn’t taking care of my health at all. At that point, I made a decision that I would start to try to find a balance.
Fast forward to now, and I’m right around 190 pounds and preparing for my first ever physique show in May 2013 (Emerald Cup). A lot of people ask me about diet, workouts, finding the right balance, so I wanted to post a little about it here. First things first, finding a balance always seems to be the hardest for people. For me? I have to go to the gym 5x a week now as it’s my one place I can truly release all my pent up stress, anger, etc (Which is great for those in the affiliate industry, just saying). Whether it’s in the morning, at night, at lunch, whatever it may be, find a way to get that workout in and you’ll feel so much better.
Diet
When it comes to diet, I kept it pretty simple. For the most part I was eating on a 40/40/20 split. This means 40% of calories came from protein, another 40% from carbs, and the last 20% from fats. Of course I switch things up now, but this will help 99% of you to get started. First thing you want to do whether you’re a male or female is calculate your BMR which is your basal metabolic rate, which means the number of calories you’d burn if you stayed in bed all day. Great site for this is (http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/) For example, when I go to this site and enter 6’3, 190 pounds, 20 year old male, I get a BMR of 2066.2. This means I need to eat 2,066.2 calories to maintain if I slept all day, but since I don’t sleep all day you need to do some calculations. http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/ Since I am moderately active, I multiply my BMR of 2066.2 by 1.55 and get 3,202.61 calories to maintain my weight if I stay moderately active.
Now if you want to lose 1 pound a week (3,500 calories=1 lb), you would need to be at a deficit of 500 calories per day, so I would eat 2,702.61. It seems like a lot, but it’s easy once you get it down to a science. Look for foods like chicken breasts, lean turkey, salmon, brown rice, sweet potatoes, cottage cheese, eggs, etc. instead of your usual fast food favorites. Replace any soda (even diet) with water. If you’re working out in addition to this, you’ll definitely start to lose weight. Track calories with a site like livestrong.com and you’re golden.
Any questions please feel free to post here or hit me up, willing to do another post for those of you with questions.
