The Big Nutrition Secret

By: Will Kuenzel

Let’s be honest, most of us want abs year round.  For the vast majority of us (at least those of us over 200lbs) we share this one common “secret”.  At some point we have meticulously weighed and tracked our food for a sustained period of time.  The secret is that we’re accurate.  Really accurate.  How many times have you heard some young kid tell you that he’s trying to get bigger, but that he’s a hardgainer?  I hear it all the time.  My immediate response is, “how many calories did you have yesterday?”  The inevitable response is, “a lot!”  Sorry.  Bullshit. Unless you know for certain, then you certainly aren’t even close.

[wa-wps]

The real secret to nutrition… being accurate.  Get a scale and track your nutrition with precision.  It doesn’t have to be for long but most need to know just how much or how little they’re really eating.  Get a nutrition tracker on your phone.  Be precise.

Studies have shown that folks that are underweight will notoriously over report how much they eat.  The reality is that they don’t even come close.  The same goes for those that are overweight.  They will consistently under report their food consumption.  Some of this is just ignorance and not intentional.  Very rarely is food taught in schools, so unless you grew up knowing about proteins, carbs, and fats it’s rare that you’ll know about them as an adult unless the need strikes you.  Beyond just knowing the basics about macronutrients and food composition, it boils down to how much of it you’re eating.  Honestly, most really don’t know.  Here’s 2 nice examples:

Take a young fellow trying to gain some weight.  He’s looking to put on 5 or 6 pounds in a 10-12 week period.  That seems pretty reasonable.  He’s got his diet all laid out and sticks to it for 12 weeks.  He only gained 3lbs.  What happened?  The difference in 4oz of chicken and 6 oz of chicken is 50%.  Both are fairly small pieces (at least to me), so it’s hard to tell the difference.   The difference from 6oz to 8oz, is visually a small difference.  That 2oz difference could have cost him 3-4lbs over the course of weeks.

4oz chicken is 27g of protein and 110 calories.  6oz of chicken is 40.5g of protein and 165 calories.

55 calories difference.  Even at 3 meals a day for 7 days.  That’s 1,155 calories per week.  A third of what he might need to gain weight.  Just from one simple error.

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2oz of chicken next to a fork for reference.  The fork weighs more than the chicken.

Another example:

Let’s take someone looking to lose some weight.  They get a diet.  Get all their foods prepared and think they’re on the right track.  After several weeks they’re way behind in the weight that they should be losing.  What’s the problem?  There’s the possibly that they don’t track EVERYTHING.  Just 2 tablespoons of a coffee creamer can be up to 70 calories.  Doesn’t seem like a lot so why even think about it?  Besides a true tablespoon isn’t that much.  This isn’t your peanut butter “tablespoon” where it’s a quarter of a cup.  An honest tablespoon could almost be ignored.  Almost.  One cup of coffee every morning adds up to almost 500 additional calories a week.  Two cups of coffee and you’re at a 1000 calories a week.  That is seriously going to slow things down.  That’s just the miscalculation of coffee creamer!  What else aren’t you tracking?

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Believe it or not, not a tablespoon.

We’ve all seen those pictures on FaceBook and Instagram of food tossed into Tupperware as folks do their meal prep.  Do you really think those things are just haphazardly tossed together?  I’d wager that for most of those individuals they’ve weighed and measured everything.  Everything.  Is it a pain in the ass?  Initially, oh yeah!  After a couple weeks of it though, not at all.  It gets easier and easier.  Over time it gets easier to properly estimate the amount of foods so that you’re not over or under reporting what is being consumed.  This also helps to set a very specific baseline.  From the base, how quickly are you moving towards your goals?  Can you add or remove food?   Coming from someone who has been trying to gain weight most of my life, finding my baseline was huge.  Believe it or not, there comes a time when food is no longer fun and that last bit of rice and chicken are just nauseating.  To find out I could still gain weight and eat less was a huge relief.  Same could be said for folks trying to lose weight.  Redistribute those calories away from things that are calorically dense. When we find what is necessary and cut out unwarranted calories we can end up eating more but with overall less calories.  Quite a few of my clients have been eating more (at least it feels that way) and losing more.  Less hunger and more energy are always a good thing when in a caloric deficit.

FullSizeRenderSo I’m going to go ahead and say it, if you don’t have a food scale in the house then you’re not real serious about your physical make up.  If you don’t have some type of calorie tracker (either handwritten or as an app on your phone) then you’re not real serious about your weight goals.  I personally use MyFitnessPal but there’s many out there.  I won’t say that you have to use them 100% of the time, but you need to know your way around them really easily.  I do think that at some point throughout the year that you need to use them for several weeks (with some consistency) at least once or twice.  The ability to better manage food and portion control are absolute necessities for serious athletes.  Sure, it’s easier to eyeball it and get it close but while a 350lbs bench is close to 400lbs. It’s definitely not 400lbs.  A 12% body fat percentage is close to single digits, but it’s a far cry from an 8% body fat physique.

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Most apps have a barcode scanner and a huge database already accessible.  Entering foods doesn’t get much easier than this.

I’m not going to lie.  It’s a pain in the ass for a while.  Weighing it all out on a scale and then entering the data into a worksheet or app.  Most apps learn as you go though.  They also have barcode scanners and make entering food really easy.  They remember foods.  They’ll remember meals and times.  They’re easy to manipulate once the original plan has been set in place.  Of the two though, weighing your foods will be the most important, initially.  So if I had to choose one of the two, it would be weighing my foods.   Weighing your foods is the same, in that you get better over time at guessing true weight.  You start measuring out more portions at once.  You create a system that makes it fluid and you get it done in half the time.  Practice is repetition, learning, and evolving.  Yes, it takes time.  It is one episode of a Netflix show you don’t watch on the weekend.  Boo-freaking-hoo.  I’ll take that 45 minutes to an hour and make myself better at something that will have a life-altering effect than make myself dumber.  (Is that too harsh?)

Once that baseline is established and a general routine is created, it’s easy to work with that and not be completely OCD about your diet.  When goals change or seasons shift from pre-meet to offseason, it’s always a good time then to reevaluate.  Find that baseline and work from there.  Through it all, I’m reminded of the 7 Ps.  Prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance.  Take just a few minutes (really, once a routine is established it doesn’t take that long) and put that plan into action.  Total food prep time for me can be anywhere from 20 minutes on a weekday to 40 minutes on the weekend if I need more time to do stuff.

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Also with the planning part, I have a backup shake with me at all times.  I prep my days based on what my diet calls for but in case I forgot something, my schedule changes, or life happens, I’m ready.  For those of us that are serious about it, we’re serious about it.  I’m not going to lie to say I’m diet conscious 24/7.  I monitor my diet hard about 80% time.  I’ve also earned the privilege of being able to do that.  Being over 230lbs and about 10% body fat I can give myself a little leniency.  Whenever I’m getting ready for a competition though, it’s dialed in.  Performance comes above all and while I have a life and family, my diet is very well organized and planned out around our events.  I always have a backup plan if something doesn’t look like it will fit within my primary plan for where I am in the training schedule.  image

I still get a chuckle when guys come up to me and tell me they want to get back into the same shape they were in high school.  I’m 35 now. I’m in the best shape of my life and still getting better every year.  Every summer I’m a little leaner.  Every winter I get a little bigger.  At this point, it’s small steps.  I don’t make drastic changes.  This keeps me healthy and aware of how I respond to food.  I’m very aware of how much I’m eating.  Some days I guess at it, but my guesses are pretty damn close.  After tracking things so close for so long, it doesn’t take much to keep it up.  It’s also easy to quickly track things and if it’s already in your phone, it’s easy to double check the day.  It gets easier, but you have to put in the work first.

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Low Country Strength

Will Kuenzel is the owner of Lowcountry Strength (www.LowcountryStrength.com) in Charleston, SC. Will started his athletic endeavors as a pole vault; finishing up his collegiate career with a best vault of 16’9” at a whopping 160lbs. He the track and field world to pursue bodybuilding, his first show in 2005, he won 1st place in Men’s Novice as a middle weight. One year later he took 2nd as a Men’s Junior heavy weight. Since 2007 he has been a competitive powerlifter and totaling elite as a 220lber. His best lifts in multiply equipment are a 710lbs squat, a 605lbs bench press, a 615lbs deadlift and a 1930 total. In 2008 Will started Lowcountry Strength out of his garage. Since then it has moved into a 16,000 sq/ft facility and shares space with a mixed martial arts studio. With all disciplines of powerlifting, strongman, MMA, jiu jitsu and other sports in the Charleston area getting trained under one roof, Will heads up the strength and conditioning for a wide variety of athletes and clients.
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