Why understanding your diet is so important to successful weight loss

[TIhealthandfitn]

The reason is very simple, the person that controls they nutritional intake and exercises a certain way will burn more fat.
Here is an example

Mr. Smith is 5’6 tall, 202, male, 31 years old

He exercises about an hour a day, 5 days a week weight training and does not do any cardio. The weight training helps to burn glycogen and fat, but mainly glycogen (the fuel source in every muscle in or body) and minimum fat is used. So on average, he uses about 500 calories per workout. Plus his BMR and stress factors say he needs about 2280 calories a day to maintain his weight. On workout days he can have up to about 2780 calories to maintain his weight, and on non workout days, he can have up to 2280 before gaining weight. However, he has no idea what his intake is and just eats whenever he feels hungry and whatever is around. He must be over eating because he never loses the fat on his body.
Mr. Jones is 5’6 tall, 202, male, 31 years old

He exercises as well, but does both cardio and weight training. He wakes up in the morning and does 30 mines of fat burning cardio and burns about 200 calories coming directly from fat (not using glycogen). After work, he heads to the gym, warms up for 5 mines, does 1 hour of weight training, and 5 min cool down, burning around 600 calories (because of the 10 min extra warm-up and cool down time). He understands that he can have 2280 to 3080 calories in a day depending if he works out or not, so he keeps his calories right around 2400. Let’s compare the 2 individuals
Mr. Smith

2780 calories burned (weight training) times 5 days = 13900 calories
2280 calories burned (non workout days) times 2 days = 4560 calories
Total calories burned in the week = 18460 calories
Total calories eaten in the week = unknown
3600 calories burned = 1 lbs body fat
Total calories eaten (unknown) minus Total calories burned (13900) = unknown because he has no idea how much food he eats
Mr. Jones

3080 calories burned (weight training plus cardio) times 5 days = 15400 calories
2280 calories burned (non workout days) times 2 days = 4560 calories
Total calories burned in the week = 19960 calories
Total calories eaten in the week (2400 calories times 7) = 16800
3600 calories burned = 1 lbs body fat
Total calories eaten (16800) minus Total calories burned (19960) = 3160 calories used
3160 divided by 3600 = 0.87 lbs of fat loss for that week
As you can see, Mr. Jones understands he how important it is to control his nutritional intake so that he can lose close to 1 lbs of fat a week while Mr. Smith does not. He is training hard but is getting frustrated because he see no results what so ever.

[michaelmendyka]

nice post