How To Find Your Ideal Workout And Diet Formula

If you’re ready to lose weight and get lean, you need to know how to find your ideal workout and diet formula. In this article, we’ll cover a few tips that will make the process easier. The main focus is to provide a guide to achieving a healthy weight and body composition. In addition to providing exercise and diet recommendations, we also provide a body composition analysis with our InBody Composition scanner.

Introduction

Finding the perfect balance of working out and eating right can take years to figure out. It’s also different for every single person and will change over time.

So how do you determine what you will do personally? You could always keep throwing crap against the wall and see what sticks or you could take a few minutes, determine where you are now and where you want to be then fill in those gaps.

What to Expect

In this article, we will share with you a universal formula that works for everyone no matter what their fitness level is and how little they may know about nutrition.

The end goal is to get you to the point you love the way you look and feel but most importantly, stay that way!  Essentially get you into maintenance mode.

This formula covers the two most important aspects of getting healthier.

• Workouts – What types of workouts you will do and how often you will do them?
• Nutrition – What nutrition plan are you following and is it sustainable?

These two go hand-in-hand and are accompanied with sleep and mental hurdles.

Time Required To Hit Maintenance Mode

This will vary for everyone but is ultimately determined by your ability to be consistent each and every week. It is also determine by how far you need to go before you love the way you look and feel. 

There’s a saying “everything you track gets better”. Track your spending for a whole month and you’ll quickly learn how much money you waste. The more you track your workouts and diet, the faster you can stop wasting time and start doing the work.

Finding your Baseline

Before doing anything you need to figure out where you are at now. There are a few great tools to better help find your baseline and gauge your progress as you continue on your fitness journey.

• Bodyweight Scale – If your only focus is weight loss, a standard bodyweight scale is the right tool for you. You can even look into buying a smart scale that will give you a body fat percentage estimate which is good enough data to keep moving forward.
  
• Tape Measure and Pictures – These are both great to do on their own or in addition to the other two options. The hurdle with tape measures is being consistent with where exactly you measured last time.  If you measure your thigh, how far up from the knee cap do you go? If you measure your stomach, how far away from the belly button do you go? 
  
  Pictures are great because seeing is believing and constant “after” pictures can keep you super motivated. They’re also great to post online so you can keep yourself accountable and allow others to either cheer on your success or be inspired.

Working Out

There are a ton of different workout options to choose from like CrossFit, weightlifting, kickboxing, Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai, triathletes, body building, HIIT training, and more.

It doesn’t matter which program or methodology you choose as long as you are doing that same program consistently and not jumping back and forth between multiple programs during the week.

Nutrition

You can choose from a variety of nutrition programs like the Zone Diet, Keto, nutrisystem, weight watchers, vegetarian or vegan to name a few. 

The program doesn’t matter as long as you stick to it consistently throughout each week. Just doing it sometimes or mixing multiple programs together is doable but will create a lot more work and more room for error.

The Most Important Question To Ask Yourself

If you knew that doing that “One Thing” would help you get better results and faster, would you do it?

• If the answer is yes, then keep reading.
• If the answer is no, then maybe you truly don’t care about your goals and the rest of this article won’t matter to you or you would do it. (Little harsh, I know).

The Formula

W + N = R

In Layman’s terms – # of workouts + # of compliant meals = results.

• Workouts – With 7 days in a week there are 7 opportunities to get in a great workout.
• Nutrition – Each week gives you the opportunity to have 7 compliant breakfast, 7 lunches, 7 dinners and 7 snacks. That’s 28 opportunities each week to have a compliant meal.
• ***A compliant meal is when you know exactly how much carb, fat, and protein you’re eating.
• Results – What you see when combining consistent workouts with consistent nutrition.

Putting The Formula To Work

Over the next month, how many workouts per week can you commit to? Now lock in that number. 

Over the next month, how many compliant meals will you commit to eating each week? Now lock in that number.
Here Are A Few Examples With Possible Solutions:

• 3 workouts and 0 compliant meals per week and after a month you only lost a few pounds of fat. The most logical change needed is to increase your compliant meals to 5 or 10 per week.
  
• 3 workouts and 10 compliant meals per week and after a month you only lost a few pounds of fat. The most logical change needed would be to bump up to 4 workouts per week OR add 5 more compliant meals per week or do both.
  
• 5 workouts and 15 compliant meals per week and after a month you only lost a few pounds of fat.  The most logical change needed is to add more meals each week. Adding more workouts may not even be doable for you and might have you overtraining.

Here Are A Few Extreme Examples To Think About (and why they don’t work)

1. Take someone who works out hard and often but doesn’t do a thing to improve their nutrition. They probably lost some fat initially over the first 2-3 weeks but then plateaued and hasn’t seen results since. Once they plateaued, why didn’t that person look to improve their nutrition?  They either had no clue where to start or just didn’t care to look into it. 
   
2. Take someone who has great, consistent nutrition habits but rarely, if ever, works out. They will stop themselves from gaining fat but the chances of losing fat are minimal. It’s important to remember that we lose fat by exercising and that proper nutrition supports that, not the other way around. This person simply needs to start moving whether it’s walking/jogging on their lunch break, finding a Coach/Personal Trainer or learning to lift weights on their own.

How To Know If What You Are Doing Is Working

We have a saying at our gym that goes “everything works until it doesn’t work anymore, then you need to change something”.

First, ask yourself a couple questions:

1. Were you consistent with your workouts and nutrition since you found your baseline?
   
2. Outside of your compliant meals, how many times did you over-indulge or not eat at all?
   
3. Did you put all your effort into your workouts or just run trough the motions?

Next, you need to retest your metrics the same way you did for finding your baseline. How does it compare?

If you are happy with the results, keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken.

If you’re not happy with the results, you need to change something. Figure out for yourself what the simplest and most logical change needed is and get to work.

Conclusion

This is an on-going, ever-changing process. Like anything else though, you need to track – measure – optimize.

You have to WANT to make the changes or there is no point in starting the process.

Don’t wait. Go get started this week and put your plan into action!