Nutrition Periodization - What it is and how it can help you reach and maintain your weight loss goals
Many of the clients I work with want to lose fat, gain some muscle, and get a leaner, tighter, more defined shape. The goal being to have a more toned look - less body fat, more muscle. And they want to get there and maintain it long term. There are a couple of ways to go about getting to that goal. One is nutrition periodization.
Periodizing nutrition just means planning and structuring what you eat based on your goals and the demands of your exercise and training. Athletes use this method to plan their nutritional needs based on on/off-season training, and the demands of practice and competitions. It means *not* dieting all the time. It means going through periods of dieting and then strategic increases in calories.
So how does this apply to the general population? Well, you also can match what you eat to what your goals are. And this can be done in a cyclical fashion. Cycling periods of dieting (fat loss) with periods of increased calories (maintenance or muscle-building phases).
If you have a considerable amount of fat to lose, you will start with a period of fat loss, where you eat fewer calories than you burn. This is called a calorie deficit.
(You must first have an idea or estimate of what your maintenance calories are. You can calculate your estimated maintenance calories (also called Total Daily Energy Expenditure or TDEE here).
Once you have either met your fat loss goal or you’re starting to feel the effects of prolonged dieting, you can do one of two things:
Increase your food intake (calories) to then maintain your current body composition. You eat the same number of calories as you burn so you neither gain/lose fat or muscle. Or…
Increase calories above maintenance calories (you eat more calories than you burn) in order to spend some time building muscle. This also requires a proper weight training program. The increase in calories is required for the muscle building process, because building muscle is calorically “expensive”, meaning it takes quite a bit of extra calories for your body to gain muscle size (also called hypertrophy).
If you decide to maintain, you can maintain forever if you like. Tracking your food intake in some way for a while (months at the very least) allows you to gain knowledge around what your food intake needs to be. Also, keep in mind, the food you need to eat to maintain your weight is a moving target. If life gets in the way, and you find yourself being less active for a given period of time, you would need to eat less to maintain your weight. For example, if you worked out every day and ate 2300 calories to maintain your weight, and then suddenly were injured and had to remain sedentary for months, you would need to lower your calorie intake to match your activity level.
So you can see nutrition is a key component to reaching your body composition goals. It’s so important that I would say without a focus on nutrition, you’ll be spinning your wheels indefinitely. Whether it’s losing fat or building muscle, you should be paying attention to what you put in your mouth.
Here’s what I see and hear from friends, clients and the community:
They consistently work out, but are still consistently eating too many calories.
Without focusing on nutrition, they won’t lose weight and will continue to spin their wheels.
They try to build muscle, and they’re training and lifting hard in the gym, but they aren’t tracking/consuming enough protein.
Eating adequate protein and a surplus of calories is the only way for the body to build muscle efficiently. Without it, they won’t make progress, won’t see muscle gain, and they’ll wonder why their hard work isn’t paying off.
They aren’t drinking enough fluids/water, are likely somewhat dehydrated, and their training feels terrible.
Without focusing on hydration, their performance will continue to suffer.They’re eating low-carb or keto and constantly doing circuits and high intensity interval training, but can’t seem to reach their endurance goals.
They’ll likely continue to spin their wheels, because their nutrition doesn’t match the goal.
They’re killing themselves in the gym and training hard, eating as little as possible, but still feel “skinny fat”.
Until they include a phase of nutrition for muscle building, they’ll continue to feel skinny but not toned, muscular, or firm.
If you feel like you’ve been spinning your wheels for awhile and can’t seem to figure out the nutrition piece of the puzzle, feel free to email me or fill out my coaching application here. Sometimes it’s just having the knowledge, sometimes it's needing help with accountability. Sometimes you just need someone to cheer you on. Either way, I’m here to help.