A Simple Blueprint to Lose Fat with a Plant Based Diet
Let’s Talk about The Blueprint to Get Your Diet back in order (its pretty simple, don’t worry…) and in the next email we talk about our Blueprint to training.
First, before we get into the details, please note that there is no difference in how you should eat and train whether you are men or women. It is all the same. What matter are your goals specific goals. If you’re a women and you want to focus on building your glutes, quads, etc. then your program may be more emphasized on lower body.
If you’re a guy and you want to build your arms, back, shoulders, etc. then your program may be more geared towards more movements to help you reach those specific goals. But regardless of your training objectives, you still need to train your entire body to avoid imbalances.
Goals is what matters when it comes to how you train and eat, not gender.
The Blueprint is very simple:
Keep the diet simple, consist of a few simple foods.
You want to eat from each of the primary plant based food groups.
Fruits, Vegetables, Legumes, Grains, Nuts & Seeds. Here are some examples of foods that you can stick to, but feel free to pick your own.
Fruits: Strawberries, Melons, Bananas, Avocado.
Veggies: Spinach, Bok choy, Broccoli,
Grains: Oatmeal, Quinoa, Brown rice, etc.
Legumes: Seitan, beans, lentils, Tofu, Chickpeas.
Nuts & Seeds (In very small amounts):
Add in some Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, and Protein Powder
If you want some amazing tasting protein powder that’s not chalky, grainy and/or full of fillers, try the BBP Protein powder, Chocolate Frosty Flavor. Tap here and use the discount code BBP20 to save 20%.
The Blueprint to apply is:
If you are cutting down to lose body fat without losing muscle mass, you want to add more of these low calories vegetables into your diet...and...
- if you want to gain weight and build muscle what you want to do is to add more of these high calories meals such as grains and legumes and maybe some more protein powders and more fats as well.
We are not saying that this plan works exactly for everyone no matter what your situation is but it is a base that you can extract your inspiration from and apply to your personal goals and preferences.
You want to be as accurate, specific and make sure you are doing the right thing and progressing towards your goals, so it would be helpful to track your calories. Very important.
So let’s talk about what Matter Most for fat loss, Calories.
To keep it simple, in order to gain weight you need to be in a caloric surplus and eat more calories than what you burn.
To maintain weight, you just need to figure out how many calories you spend per day and then eat that amount.
To lose weight you need to be in caloric deficit which means you have to eat less than what you burn.
Just to explain calories a little bit more, I put together an explanation on what calories are about below:
To lose weight we need to be in a caloric deficit. So for example, if the calories you have to eat to maintain your body weight are 2000 calories.
There are 2 main ways you can create a deficit:
- You can stay at 2000 calories per day and just burn more calories through activity which can create a deficit.
- (RECOMMENDED) You can create a deficit by eating 250-500 calories UNDER 2000. So you can consume 1750 per day for example. Which would be a 250 calorie daily deficit.
Getting Started.
Let’s start be finding your Caloric Maintenance (the amount of calories that you have to eat to maintain your current weight.) This number can be challenging to find as it requires some experimentation because there are a lot of variables that come into place like metabolism, age, height, weight and activity level in general.
You can use our free online calorie calculator to find this number.
It will give you an estimate of how many calories you have to eat to maintain your current weight as well as help you find the number of calories you need to start eating to create your calorie deficit.
KEEP IN MIND: This is just a starting point, you will have to play with the numbers and they will adjust over time.
From our experience sometimes calculators give you a low caloric number, especially if you are a women, it will tell you that you have to eat very little in order to lose weight and this is not always very accurate so we highly recommend you watch out for that and don’t reduce your calories too much.
So, how many calories do you add or subtract from that maintenance calories that you find from these online calculators?
If you know your maintenance calories and you have done experimentation, we recommend dropping them by 100 to 500 per day to create your caloric deficit.
Like I mentioned earlier, You can be a caloric deficit not only by eating less food but you can increase your activity so that’s what we recommend most of the time, to increase your amount of N.E.A.T, rather than solely eating less food. This is because eating less food will eventually make you more hungry and moody than you would be if you were to just increase your activity.
The mistake that a lot of people make is subtracting their calories too much and feeling horrible on a diet. If the deficit is too big, you can feel fatigue, hangry (hungry and angry).
This is something you should really avoid; you don’t want to be on a too big caloric deficit. Start a bit slower and reduce your calories a bit more carefully at the beginning and increase if needed.
It is not only about calories, it is about the quality of the calories as well because eating cereals or a cookie for 500 calories it is not the same. There are calories that are better for you and calories that are not good for you. Keep that in mind and chose as many whole foods as possible.
So, what about macronutrients or protein carbohydrates and fats? How do we approach that because it is really confusing, a lot of information out there. Should I go low carbs, high fat? What should I do?
We include all of those macronutrients into our diet plans that is because all of those macronutrients play an important role for our bodies.
This is confusing because a lot of people online try to promote different magic diets. The most popular right now is going for a low carb ketogenic diet when you remove all carbs from your diet.
It does not make sense to remove your body’s preferred fuel such as carbohydrates. We encourage you take a balanced approach, just use common sense and eat a balanced amount of all types of foods whether it is a protein source, carbohydrates source or fats source because they all play a crucial role in optimizing your health.
Your intake on these macronutrients can depend on your goals. If you are focusing mainly on increasing muscle mass, to train a lot you might need more protein than a person who doesn’t work out or is sedentary.
As mentioned earlier, just use our free online calorie calculator and use the macro split given to you for simplifying this process.
How do you adjust the meal plans and workout routine that we gave you so that you progress on your own?
We really recommend using our app called The Built By Plants Pocket Coach.
You can give it a try for 7 days for just $1, and then only $27 per month afterwards. The Pocket Coach allows you to design your own meal plan from all of our delicious plant based meals inside of our Virtual Kitchen (Which is also included in The Pocket Coach). You can drag and drop your preferred meals on your meal plan.
The Pocket Coach will also generate your shopping list specifically from the foods in your meal plan so you know exactly what to buy at the grocery store and not overspend.
Since The Pocket Coach is an actual app in the Apple store and your account syncs from desktop to mobile app, you can download the app and take it with you for grocery shopping.
We recommend that you download MyFitnessPal as well to actually track the calories that you consume so that you know for a fact you’re in a calorie deficit.
To save time and money, buy your food in bulk when you can and just meal prep so that you can eat the same or similar meals daily, which will simplify your fat loss process. Burrito bowls are one of my favs since they’re so easy to prep and they taste so good. Plus you can make a variety of different burrito bowls by just switching up the ingredients if you’re someone who struggles with eating the same thing over and over.
Start tracking your bodyweight and body fat percentage every Friday or Saturday morning and adjust your calories as needed.
If you need more personalized support and accountability and a plan that you'll actually enjoy longterm, then schedule a Free Coaching call with Built By Plants Coaching.
We'll learn more about your specific needs and customize a plan just for you. Tap here to book your call