Structuring your own diet plan

By: Omar Elsayad.

I’m sure that you know that there’s no “one-size-fits-all” diet plan. Everybody
has a unique body structure. In addition, people have different physique goals
whether they want to lose or gain weight or even maintaining their shape.
I’m going to introduce an old friend to me, he’s Jeffrey. Say Hi.
Jeffrey wants to lose some weight to have more defined physique as he
wonders if one day he could have six-pack to be more aesthetic and attractive.
Anyways, we are going to dive deeper into this topic guiding Jeffrey to
establish his own diet plan, come on Jeffrey…

Chapters Of This Article:

1- Relation Between Muscles & Body Fats
2- What do Calories mean??
3- What's The BMR & How to Know Your BMR
4- Building your Own Nutrition Plan
_______________________________________________________________________________

1-Relation between your muscles cells and body fats:

First, Muscle cells (myocytes) and fat cells (adipocytes) have a complex relationship in the
body, impacting each other in terms of energy metabolism, storage, and overall health.

Fat cells store energy in the form of triglycerides (fats). When the body needs extra energy,
like during exercise or fasting, fat cells release fatty acids into the bloodstream, which can
be used as fuel by muscle cells.

On the other hand, Muscle cells burn calories and use the energy provided by fat cells.
They have mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, that can convert fatty acids into
usable energy, especially during prolonged low-intensity exercise.

So, regular exercising increases the number of mitochondria in your muscles cells which
leads to increasing the rate of burning fats to release energy resulting in decreasing your
body fat percentage. Is that clear??
Actually, fats are the greatest source of energy as 1gm of fat has 9 calories, different from
carbohydrates and proteins that each 1gm has only 4 calories. The carbohydrates are the
main source of energy because they are the type of fuel that the body search for it firstly
when you engage in an activity or even for basic physiological functions such as breathing.

Fats are from the structure of your all body cell membranes and crucial for brain health too,
so the need for protein for a healthy life is the same for fats and carbs.

2- What do Calories mean:

Calories are the amount of energy released when your body breaks down (digests and
absorbs) food. The more calories a food has, the more energy it can provide to your body.
When you eat more calories than you need, your body stores the extra calories as body fat.
Even a fat-free food can have a lot of calories If they contain of a high amount of
Carbohydrates or Proteins.

3- What’s the BMR & How to know your BMR:

BMR Definition: Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the number of calories you burn as your
body performs basic (basal) life-sustaining function. Commonly also termed as Resting
Metabolic Rate (RMR), which is the calories burned if you stayed in bed all day.

I’ll simplify it for you:

Jeffrey every day eats a specific amount of food..
Each type of food contains its own amount of calories according to its contents – protein,
carb and fats.
So
Your income value is "Food Calories"
Your Outcome value is "BMR of calories burnt" + "Your daily activities as calories burnt too".

For example,

Jeffrey ate a meal that contains 300 Calories. (+300)

He burns 150 calories at the gym for a workout. (-150)
He walks to his job daily and burns 50 calories (-50)

His BMR/Day is 50 calories (-50)

So 250 Calories or energy coins are consumed during the day. What about the 50 calories
left??
They'll be stored as fats in his body.

So Calories deficiency means eating an amount of calories less than your daily
consumption. When you do that, you force your body to start burning some of your stored
fats cells to refuel your body with energy. By the time, all fats in your body will act as the
food stored in the freezer that the body uses as a source of energy after it runs out of Carbs
that act as the food in the refrigerator.

SO, HOW CAN I CALCULATE MY BMR??

BMR calculation can be done with an In-Body test or approximately by your body weight,
height and age. But I prefer the In-Body test as it’ll be more accurate even if it’s not 100%
perfect. You’ll also need the In-body test to know your body fat percentage %, as it’ll be our
core focus in your diet plan.

The next step is for the ones who tested their body fat percentage only and want to know
their BMR, you can use this formula to check that the BMR is correct or even taking the
Mean out of the two values:

Now you have your Body Fat Percentage %

You can calculate the BMR By this formula:

First:

(1- Body fat %) ×Your body Weight (kg) = Lean Body Weight.
Second:

(Your Lean Body Weight × 21.6)

Third:

Add (+370)
That's your BMR.

4- Building Your Own Nutrition Plan:

First, We want to add the BMR to your daily activity level to get the amount of calories your
burn daily as we knew before that during the day we got (Our daily activities + BMR) as the
Output.
Take your BMR and calculate:

(Your BMR × your activity level value) = Your daily Calories Outcome.

Let's take an example:

Jeffrey's Body fat % is 30%
and his body weight is 100 kg
so,
(1-30%) ×100kg = 70kg (lean body mass)
then 70 kg × 21.6= 1512
then 1512 + 370 = 1882 calories (BMR)

Jeffrey goes to the gym 5 days a week and walks to school everyday so he’s in the moderate
activity level (1.65)

So, 1882 × 1.65 ≈ 3100 Calories Jeffrey will burn every day.
So go and calculate yours then follow along.

Now what’s next? I calculated my daily calories outcome, what about the daily
income???

First, You'll take your daily calories outcome that you just calculated,

If you want to gain weight → Add + (from 500 to 1000) to your daily calories outcome.

If you want to lose weight → Subtract – (from 500 to 1000) to your daily calories outcome.
“Please note, in losing weight, your must consider your BMR to be your minimum amount of calories, so if
your BMR is 1500, you must eat at least 1500 calories per day to avoid any problems to your body.”

Jeffrey’s daily outcome was: 3100 calories a day. He wants to lose weight so he will
subtract 600 calories from his daily outcome, So Jeffrey now should eat 2500 calories a day
to lose weight.

Now, we will distribute our daily intake among Proteins, Carbs and Fats.
You can google any type of food to know its nutrition facts in each 100 gm,
1- PROTEIN:
Grams of Protein needed per day = 1.5 × your weight (kg)
- So how many calories in the amount of grams of protein that I need daily?
GMs of Protein × 4 = Protein Calories

2- FATS:
20% × Calories daily intake = Calories of Fats needed
then we'll calculate the amount of grams you need from those Calories of Fats by this
formula:

Calories from Fats ÷ 9 = Grams of Fats needed a day.

3- CARBOHYDRATES:
Calories Intake - (Fats Calories + Protein Calories) = Carbohydrates calories needed

then we'll calculate the amount of grams you need for Carbohydrates by this formula:
Calories of Carbohydrates ÷ 4 = Grams of Carbohydrates needed.

Time to take notes:

My Daily Calories intake: (..) Total Calories

(..) Grams of Protein, (..) Calories
(..) Grams of Fats, (..) Calories
(..) Grams of Carbohydrates, (..) Calories

During the day, you should track how much grams of protein, carbs and fats in the meal
you’re eating and subtract them from your daily goal for these 3 types, and that’s it, you
don’t have to track the calories in each meal because as you saw before, we calculated the
amount of grams from the total calories intake, so focusing on protein, carbs and fats will
lead you to the same number of calories per day.

But you can make it easier and faster by writing the meals you eat more often such as:

100 gm of rice contains

(..) gm of protein
(..) gm of fats
(..) gm of Carbohydrates

Morning Oatmeal:
(..) gm of total protein
(..) gm of total fats
(..) gm of total Carbohydrates

And So on,

Let's get back to Jeffrey.

Jeffrey's daily burn = 3100 Calories

So,
Jeffrey's daily Calories intake= 3100 - 600
= 2500 Calories intake

Jeffrey's lean body weight= 70Kg

So, we'll use the formula for protein:
1.5 × 70= 105 Gm protein Jeffrey needs daily
and..
105 gm × 4 = 420 Calories from protein
And we'll calculate Jeffrey's fats calories by the its formula:
20% × 2500 = 500 calories from fats
and..
500 ÷ 9 ≈ 55 gm of fats needed daily
and..
2500 - ( 500 + 420) = 1580 calories from Carb.
and..
1580 ÷ 4 = 395 Gm of Carbs needed daily

So, Jeffrey will eat daily:

2500 Calories
105 gm protein
55 gm fats
395 gm Carbohydrates

You Got it??

That’s it.

Remember to Trust The Process and Stay Committed to your goals. It’s Worth it.

Thanks for Reading <3

~Omar Elsayad.