If you have been searching for the miracle diet that works overnight. Good luck. However, we have put together the basics and this is one article you need to read on dieting. If you are planning to do a cut anytime soon or are looking to loose those few extra pounds (or even a lot of pounds.) This is your foundation! Start here for the basics on dieting.

What does DIET sound like to you? DI-ET = Die Eat, I Eat, Dye It… Ok lets just say that DIET does have the word “DIE” in it, thats scary enough huh? People will almost die to find the miracle diet, or you will simply die trying as you will never have enough time in the world to try every diet there is out there. Not mentioning the marketing hype now days, heck some of this stuff will send someone into depress mode, and make you give up. Why? Because these days many advertise: “This is the last diet for you! If this one doesn’t work, then none of them will!”

Now that’s just great, what if their diet didn’t work? Now your just out of luck & money you spent on their product aren’t you?

For decades, many fitness professionals, every day average joes have been taken in by countless scam-diets, inevitably failing to meet their goals for one simple reason: there is no magic diet!

But, have we got the best dieting strategy for you! Trust us, no hype…this one delivers and guess what? We are offering it right here right now for FREE!

Let’s start with the basics, as we like to keep it stupidly simple (basically because bodybuilding is just basic simple stuff.) One thing you need to understand about dieting is: On average, you burn a certain amount of calories each day. When you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. Eating more than you burn in a day and you will gain weight. The degree to which you eat above or below your metabolic rate will determine how fast you gain or lose.

Are you following me here? You could eat the most fatting foods, candy bars, etc…and lose weight. You could also feed yourself salads and cause yourself to gain weight and get fat. The number one thing to understand is: If you eat more calories than you burn in a day you gain weight and if you eat less calories then you burn in a day you loose weight.

Losing weight is easy. However, you need to question what weight loss is to you. Will you be satisfied with your appearance once you get there? Answer is no; on average most people are not satisfied with the way they look after they loose all the weight. Once you lose the weight you want to lose, you will look in the mirror and feel that you need to look more tone. Your waist will still be larger than you want it to be and you will not like the shape your body is in.

During the process to meeting your goal to lose weight, many people don’t realize the importance of maintaining skeletal muscle. The more muscle you burn, the slower your metabolism becomes for one, since calories are burnt through usage of the muscle. The more muscle you have firing, the more overall calories you will burn; the faster your metabolism.

Keeping your muscle while dieting will also make a huge difference as to how you look when you achieve your weight loss goal. Most people don’t realize this, instead getting caught up with their goal of losing a set number of “pounds.” If you are one of these people, here is something to consider:

One pound of FAT = 3500 calories

One pound of LEAN MUSCLE = roughly 600 calories (varies due to hydration).

See? Just because you lose a pound, doesn’t mean you have done yourself justice. Theoretically, you could burn 600 calories and lose a “pound” (but, of muscle), or you could burn 3500 calories to lose a “pound” (of fat). Most people end up burning both muscle and fat in differing proportions, meaning they could burn anywhere in the range of 600-3500 calories and lose a “pound.”

After you have carefully considered these things, it is time to delve into the actual strategy. Bear with it if it becomes confusing and be comforted in the fact that simple directions follow even if you do not understand some of what you read immediately below.

A safe place to start is to first determine the amount of calories that you currently burn. The first step is to use a chart that specifies a healthy weight based on your height or you can also refer to a caloric calculator on a website (search for “calorie counter” on Google). That will give you a rough estimate. Next, subtract 500 calories from that to put you on pace to lose one pound of fat per week (-500 calories times 7 days equals -3500 calories per week, equals one pound of fat loss.)

The first place to start when setting macro nutrient ratios is to establish your protein intake. Surely you want to burn fat and hold onto as much muscle as you can and the best defense to ensure this, generally speaking, is to eat protein with every meal. There are various sound reasons as to why protein plays such a strong role toward maintaining muscle mass. When you exercise, your muscles require amino acids to heal (muscle is made up of protein and protein is made up of amino acids) and if you give it to them they will not draw it from other muscles. Further, if your body needs protein for basic energy it will eat the protein that you feed it rather than breaking down your muscles. Therefore, you stand a better chance of maintaining your muscle and therefore acquiring a toned appearance. In addition to these benefits, protein digests slowly and makes you feel fuller.

Most healthy individuals should eat roughly 1 gram per pound of lean bodyweight to be safe. How do you find lean bodyweight? Simply take your weight and multiply it times your body fat percentage (if you don’t know it, assuming a BF of 20% will suffice for now). Then take that number and subtract it from your weight. Here is an example using a 180 lb individual at 15% BF:

Bodyweight: 180lbs.

Body fat: 15% (This means that 27lbs of bodyweight is fat: 180 X .15 = 27lbs.)

Lean Bodyweight: 153lbs. (180lbs – 27lbs = 153lbs)

So, this 180lb individual would need to eat roughly 150 grams of protein per day, which would amount to 600 calories (150 grams of protein X 4 calories per gram of protein).

The second step is to establish your fat intake. Generally speaking, you should limit fat intake to roughly 20% of all calories consumed. So, if you find that you should eat 2000 calories per day to get your desired results, that would amount to 400 calories from fat or roughly 45 grams of fat per day (400 calories / 9 calories per gram of fat = 44.4 grams of fat).

Still with me? Don’t worry, I will make it simple in a second and you have all you need here to figure it out, assuming you really want to lose weight the right way.

The final step is to establish the amount of carbohydrates that you are to eat in a day. To do that, you simply take the number of calories that you have not filled in with protein and fat and divide. If, referring to the examples above, my protein consumed 600 calories and fat consumed 400, that would mean that I have 1000 calories left in my 2000 calorie allotment. I would take the 1000 calories I have left and divide by 4 (each gram of carbohydrate contains four calories). So I would eat 250 grams of carbohydrates per day.

1) Go to the calculator (Google Calorie Counter). We’ll say it specified that I burn 2500 calories per day.

2) Subtract 500 calories from the number it gives you. That means I should eat 2000 per day to lose one pound of fat per week.

3) Establish protein using the Lean Body Weight method above.

4) Set fats at 20%

5) Fill in the rest with carbs.

Counting may become tedious at first, but gets so easy that eventually you will be able to eye something and still maintain your proper pace. Many of my friends will testify to this, as I never bring my measuring cups out to a party, but still know my limits come contest time. When dividing up your meals, keep in mind that the body will use up the nutrients from each meal within three to four hours. This is why many professionals commonly recommend five or six meals. Your body will become less susceptible to storing fat since it becomes trained to rely on the energy it receives from each meal.

To take it one step further to ensure that you are burning fat and not muscle as you restrict your calories, you should exercise since your body is adaptive and geared around survival. This means that to keep muscle, you have to give your body a reason to do so such as working out. If you work the muscle, your body basically says, “We have to hold onto the muscle to do all of this work, so we can’t burn it for energy. We’ll have to use the fat, as it is less important to our survival.” Hence, you get lean and reach the image you have in your mind; your goal.

Trust me! In most cases the end result of “losing weight” doesn’t look good. You can disguise it in clothes and other out of shape people may think you look “great,” but nothing beats a fit body. It doesn’t have to be an extreme physique, like in the magazines, but a little exercise goes a long way with proper dieting. And you will realize countless other benefits from exercising regularly, in addition to enhanced good looks!